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Deepgate Codex

posted December 15th, 2012 in Books,Writing

A few years ago, Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content had recommended the Deepgate Codex. I finally got around to reading them this year and just finished the last book last night.

Overall, they were decent, although it took a while for them to pick up — Scar Night in particular is, in my opinion, very slow for the first half of the book, and Iron Angel was also slow for about the first hundred pages. The end of God of Clocks, on the other hand, is maybe even paced a bit too fast — I remember wondering, as I was finishing it last night, how they were going to resolve everything in the remaining 5 or 6 pages. (Campbell does a decent enough job of it, in an ending that was a bit of a surprise.)

The only other thing that bothered me was in Scar Night, which seems to introduce a character for no good reason. It looks like he will get his own plot, and it’s even set up that his plot will continue through out the remainder of the trilogy, but as I closed the third book I wondered what his purpose was in the first place. He serves to set up some world building, perhaps, but in a way that is only “obvious” upon reflection. Otherwise, he doesn’t even seem to serve much purpose in the plot of the one novel he’s featured in.

At any rate, they were overall a decent set of novels set in an interesting universe, and gave me two ideas for my own world-building. You know, in case I ever actually get around to writing.

A few authorly shout-outs

posted June 27th, 2011 in Friends,Site News,Writing

Some visitors may know that at some point, I’d like to write a novel. Especially since I’ve crossed “record and sell at least one CD” off of my to-do list. (Maybe I should’ve set the bar a little higher, but this was before just anybody could release a record on Bandcamp.) I’d started a few times in high school but never quite finished. Maybe I’ll finally get to do National Novel Writing Month this year, finally, and get a little closer.

But it turns out several of my friends are aspiring authors as well and write blogs, either about the writing process or as an entertaining aside to their main writings. So, here’s a shout-out to the ones I know off-hand:

Amanda Hanna
Jenn Johnson

In other news, yes, I know, I still haven’t changed the layout or started the process of posting photos. But one day, before the end of the year at worst, there should be a grand unveiling. I’m just too nitpicky about the presentation to settle on something!