Monthly Archives: September 2008

A long, bloody time in the making, Spore finally hit store shelves (of course it had to be 3 days before I leave the country…) and I couldn’t resist picking it up to finally get my hands on it, despite how crappy my PC might run the game. Still, I’ve put a bit of time into the game and have come away utterly charmed!

While the game is a shadow of what was promised years ago (more or less and ‘Everything’-simulator), what is there shines. Spore‘s success lives or dies on its creature creator and, though I’ve only hit the second stage of evolution for my creature (called a Kruppe!), I’m already astounded by the level of customization available and how it all works! The flexibility of the engine becomes rather mind boggling when one takes a look at the Sporepedia and peruses the creatures created by all the other players in the world, a number over 10 million strong.

Here’s a look at the creatures made by my brother and I:

If you want to follow along with my creations (well, mostly my brother’s while I’m gone), you can head on over to my profile in the Sporepedia and see everything that’s come out of my twisted mind!

If you’ve got Spore, be sure to leave my your name so I can add you in game and have your creatures populate my galaxy!

Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
   Miriam Beard

Next week is going to be a big time for me, but a sore time for A Dribble of Ink. I’ll be flying away from my lovely country of Canada and making again for the wild shores of Europe.

This’ll mark the second time that my girlfriend and I have up and left everything behind, teeming into the wild yonder together in search of adventure. Hardships are sure to come at us from all sides, but through our strength we’ll persevere!

Heh, alright, I’ll stop talking like a cliché-ridden adventure fantasy novel.
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The Ten Thousand by Paul KearneyThe wily Jeff, scribe over at Fantasy Book News & Reviews, has been preying on my noble spirit, issuing me a Gentleman’s Challenge with regards to my review of The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney.

What I want to do is propose a challenge to Aidan: If you will read the rest of The Ten Thousand…I will read and review a book of your choice. I know you might not want to revisit that book, given the discussion around your review, and your recent comments about being burned out a bit on epic fantasy. But I thought I would try this gentlemen’s challenge anyway :)

The reason I wanted to ask you to read the rest of it, is that i had the EXACT SAME opinion as you (seriously) for the first 1/3 or so of the novel. The entire book changes right after the point where you left off reading.

Being a gentleman myself, there was no reasonable way to refuse! His opinion of the first half of The Ten Thousand was eerily similar to mine, but the second half was enough for him to name it his favourite novel so far this year. Big words indeed.

In exchange for finishing The Ten Thousand, my novel of choice for Jeff to read (provided he hasn’t already) is Greg Keyes’ The Briar King. Keyes’ is, in my opinion, easily the most under-read author in Epic Fantasy and I’ll take any chance I can get to spread the word!

Challenge accepted, Jeff! The Ten Thousand will make it into the pile of books I’ll be stuffing in my backpack next week and we’ll see if it holds more water with me this time!

A few months ago, Neil Gaiman gave away electronic copies of his Hugo winning novel, American Gods. Well he’s back at it again, and this time he’s giving away copies of Neverwhere.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

EDIT: Looks like it’s open for US residents only. I’m not sure if it works, but for those of you who live outside of the US, you could always try to use a fake US address.

UPDATE: Looks like the PDF file will only last for 30 days, so read fast!

From Gaiman’s blog:

For those people who grumbled about reading American Gods online, here’s Neverwhere. You can read it online, and it’s also downloadable. That’s the good news.

The bad news is you don’t get to keep it forever. It’s yours for thirty days from download, and then the pdf file returns to its electrons. But if you’ve ever wondered about Neverwhere or wanted to read it for free, now is your chance. And free is free…

You can download the novel HERE.

There’s some exciting news out of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, as it looks like Patrick St. Denis, (relative) veteran blogger and bigtime Steven Erikson fan, will have a hand in the upcoming Limited Edition publication of Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon.

In other news, guess who’s going to pen the flap copy of the Subterranean Press limited edition of Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon!?! Yep, Yours Truly!

So if the gorgeous art by Michael Komarck wasn’t enough, now you’ll have a 200-250-word story blurb from me to look forward to!

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

Exciting for Pat, to be sure, but this is also a great step forward for bloggers and goes to show that what we’re doing can have a positive effect on the industry!

A big congrats to Pat! My envy burns very brightly indeed….

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