This unique game draws the player into the frightening world of Senua, a young Celtic warrior, as she’s pushed over the edge of sanity upon discovering that her lover has been tortured and killed by the Vikings. She launches on a dream quest to wrest his soul from the clutches of death, a journey that takes her — and the player with her — through the depths of her personal hell. It’s an experience both disturbing and deeply touching, deeply human. A story of love and courage in the face of torment and despair, presented through incredible acting, stunning visual and audio effects, and last but not least, engaging and fun gameplay. Hellblade is one of those very rare games whose value reaches far beyond good entertainment.
NaNo 2017 Winner
Yesterday afternoon, I finished the first draft for “Under Her Wing” at 50850 words and won NaNo. Yay!
NaNo 2017
This time around, the decision to do NaNoWriMo again came out of the blue. Other than a rather vague idea for a story and the nagging feeling that I should get back to writing, I had nothing in the last week of October, when I remembered that November was a Novel Writing Month. It took me all of that week to come up with a slim outline which doesn’t cover even a half of the plot (read: I’ve no clue how story will progress beyond that point) and imagery for a couple important scenes. You’re thinking that doesn’t bode well? So did I! But lo, 10 days and 15,000 words into it, I’m making steady progress, I’ve no trouble allocating the time or meeting the daily goals, and my writing, although very rusty indeed, isn’t half as crappy as I expected it to be after five years of break.
Hyperion
By D. Simmons
After reading the first of four books, I wrote a one-line comment on Goodreads saying, “Liked it despite numerous annoyances.” After reading the second, I change my statement to “Didn’t like it despite numerous qualities”. These are mainly related to the authors indisputable ability to create and maintain suspense, and to surprise. Book one ends with a cliffhanger so epic that I had to pick up book two immediately. But I won’t be reading the rest of the series.
Mrs. Dalloway
by V. Woolf
What an odd book! With no plot whatsoever, the narrative flows from one point of view to another, sometimes smoothly and sometimes making nearly unintelligible jumps. Almost every character that’s mentioned, no matter how thin their connection to the titular Mrs. Dalloway, her friends and family, gets to to ‘speak their mind’. I struggled to find connections. At times I struggled to tell what the hell was going on. But despite the oddity, I mostly enjoyed reading it. The writing is unorthodox, occasionally poetic, and I was struck by its beauty more than a few times. So here I’ll save some highlights: