reviews of Under the Crimson Sun and Farscape #21
A fella with the online handle of "travizzt" has a book review web site called "Read Between the Lines," and his latest review is of my Dungeons and Dragons novel Dark Sun: Under the Crimson Sun, which he mostly liked.
Money quote:
It was surprising that Under the Crimson Sun had a lot of humor in it. If you read the back of the book, you wouldn’t think that there would be a lot of humor in this story, but there is. It really took me by surprise. The best part about the humor is that it’s not forced and flows into the story naturally. It compliments the situations, no matter how dire they are. It almost enhances those situations, because it genuinely feels like the characters have been through worse. Having them cracking jokes and being witty, makes it seem like this isn’t that big of a deal to them. It also adds to the relationships between the characters. You can see that they are good friends when they can joke like that, and it feels like it’s legitimate and real. To top it all off, the jokes and witty retorts were actually funny. That’s really rare in these types of books, because most of the time, the humor comes off as forced and unnatural. Here, it’s seamless. For a story with a serious undertone, Under the Crimson Sun was surprisingly funny.
Meanwhile, ICN: Irish Comics News has an advance review by David O'Leary of Farscape #21, illustrated as it is by Irishman Will Sliney.
Money quote:
If you haven’t been reading Farscape to now, this issue is dialogue heavy to be sure but there is plenty here to bring new readers up to date. To say that the issue is just a bunch of talking heads is a bit wide of the mark as the final scenes of the issue reveal a few exciting tid bits that may lead to the turning of the tide in the war against the Kkore including the return of a much maligned figure that may hold some important information and a devastating revelation about the past of the Delvians.
Money quote:
It was surprising that Under the Crimson Sun had a lot of humor in it. If you read the back of the book, you wouldn’t think that there would be a lot of humor in this story, but there is. It really took me by surprise. The best part about the humor is that it’s not forced and flows into the story naturally. It compliments the situations, no matter how dire they are. It almost enhances those situations, because it genuinely feels like the characters have been through worse. Having them cracking jokes and being witty, makes it seem like this isn’t that big of a deal to them. It also adds to the relationships between the characters. You can see that they are good friends when they can joke like that, and it feels like it’s legitimate and real. To top it all off, the jokes and witty retorts were actually funny. That’s really rare in these types of books, because most of the time, the humor comes off as forced and unnatural. Here, it’s seamless. For a story with a serious undertone, Under the Crimson Sun was surprisingly funny.
Meanwhile, ICN: Irish Comics News has an advance review by David O'Leary of Farscape #21, illustrated as it is by Irishman Will Sliney.
Money quote:
If you haven’t been reading Farscape to now, this issue is dialogue heavy to be sure but there is plenty here to bring new readers up to date. To say that the issue is just a bunch of talking heads is a bit wide of the mark as the final scenes of the issue reveal a few exciting tid bits that may lead to the turning of the tide in the war against the Kkore including the return of a much maligned figure that may hold some important information and a devastating revelation about the past of the Delvians.