A Glimpse Into What Summer Will Look Like This Year...

A in-depth look into the history of James Bond's Nintendo 64 debut, a cyberpunk thriller, and a Metroidvania that takes place in the sky— Taken with an iPhone 8

Sunday won again, but that was more or less me getting distracted by Tears of the Kingdom, which has been a beautiful experience that can sometimes be a little overwhelming. I'm not going to spoil anything here, but I did write a small thread on Mastodon with my initial thoughts on the game. The individual posts are all behind sensitive content filters, but the first one is spoiler-free and provides a window into my foray back into Hyrule. That, and it also highlights the way I played through Breath of the Wild along with how I approach open-world games.

I'll end up writing a few more posts on the game there as I play it, but for the next game review, we'll be going to a different set of sky islands!

Earlier into the year, I decided to sign up for the Super Rare Club, which is a service from Super Rare Games that more or less allows you to pre-order games earlier than the general public alongside a few other perks like exclusive merch. They are a company that specializes in physical games—like Strictly Limited and Limited Run—but solely focus on indie developers who might otherwise be overlooked. I've been a fan since I stumbled upon Project Warlock, which was Jakub Cislo's take on Doom that added role-playing game elements into the mix (plus magic spells). Some of my favorite Switch games are straight from Super Rare Games's physical releases—The Lion's Song and The Flower Collectors from Mi'Pu'Mi Games, Horace, Deponia (eventually in its entirety), and Dicey Dungeons to name a few. 

So when they announced Islets alongside the featured trailer, I thought that it would be right up my alley between the genre and an art style that fits itself gracefully between Hollow Knight and Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. 

My plan is to do a run on easy mode first to get the full narrative experience while getting a feel for the exploration and gameplay mechanics. Then, I'll do a playthrough on normal to see how difficult the bosses and combat become to provide a (more) proper review. 

I'm aiming for late-June to write and publish the review—possibly July if I'm sidetracked by more Tears of the Kingdom shenanigans. (Although, I feel like I've made enough progress to take a little break.)  

As for the books...

There was a tie in the results between Cory Doctorow's Red Team Blues and Alyse Knorr's Goldeneye 007: The Making of an N64 Classic. I though that, instead of doing a tiebreaker poll, I would read and review both books starting with Red Team Blues and then doing Goldeneye 007 with the review for the former being slated for June. I'm aiming for July for the latter...

...and I'll also be doing a review of The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane in August—or July if I finish reading it before then. 

Thank you to everyone who voted in the polls! I think this will be an excellent summer for blogging! 

A Slight Break for the Kingdom (And More Importantly Myself)

"The Machine Rises Once Again. Welcome to Turrican, Link!" —Taken with an iPhone 8

So the past few weeks have been surprisingly busy on the blog between finally deciding to write out a long overdue review, and having the opportunity to critique someone else's books. The latter being one of those out-of-the-blue moments that I'll always appreciate and, again, I'd like to thank Jaz Jazalyn for giving me the chance to read and review them for the blog. It was a good challenge and a nice change of pace for what I usually read.    

Thing is, I'm having some burnout from all the blogging so the rest of May will be more relaxed. I already dedicated some hours over the weekend to the recently released Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. which is both a therapeutic and challenging game. Of course, the figurine of Bren McGuire or the Turrican dude in the photo is from an order that, three years later, has finally made its way to my home. More on Tears and Turrican later...

I'll still do an entry around Sunday and possibly sneak in a blog post on Puffins near the end of the month. In the meantime, I'm going to be running two separate polls on both Twitter and Mastodon as to what I should review next. One will be for video games and the other will be for books so expect two long-form critiques in June*. So here's what on each poll:

Video Games

• Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom—The sequel to Breath of the Wild and the second open-world Zelda game in which the sky is the limit and then some 
• Turrican Anthology—The personally long-awaited set of games developed by Factor 5 and published by Strictly Limited that bring titles from the Amiga, Genesis/Mega Drive, and the Super Nintendo, to modern consoles
• Islets—A metroidvania from Kyle Thompson, in which an explorer traverses sky islands, looking for ways to reunite them
• Heaven Dust Collection—Two survival horror games from Indienova where you must escape either an isometric mansion or research institute

Note: For the Turrican review, I will do a brief look at the items in the Ultra Collectors Edition alongside the games themselves. 

Books

• The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane by Kelly Harms—A rom-com (of sorts) in which two women, similarly named, believe they won a house up in Maine 
• Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow—a cyberpunk thriller that focuses on cryptocurrency and global finance
• In Other Words edited by Mainspring Arts—an anthology of stories from writers across the autistic spectrum
• Goldeneye 007: The Making of an N64 Classic by Alyse Knorr—one of the latest books from Boss Fight Games that takes a deep dive into a well-known 1990s video game tie-in

If you have any suggestions, feel free to comment below!  

I hope you all are having a wonderful week! 

*Or one in June and the other in July depending on which game wins the poll.

Hollow: A Love Like A Life—A Voyage Into Cosmic Romance

No glare and not as pixelated this time. Also, no overhead light. —Taken with an iPhone 8

Much like being around a crush or speaking in a public forum, I am very nervous about reviewing a romance novel for the first time. It is not even the just matter of it being outside of my comfort zone for my gender—Christine Sneed wrote some good novels which focused on relationships—but its something that I never even considered. I do not think it is a secret that love stories get a bad rap whether in literature, television, or film for presumably lackluster (or rather, generic) writing. Yet, this novel in verse has the power to change that paradigm while making my first journey into the genre go a little more smoothly than I thought.

Hollow: A Love Like A Life is a romance novel in poetry written by Jaz Jazalyn where two spirits, hailing from completely different universes, find themselves in love with one another. The laws that govern both universes, however, prevent them from properly meeting each other, which gives the illusion that their love is completely impossible. Yet, they still both yearn for each other and by the end, manage to make the best out of an improbable situation. It is not exactly a book with a happy ending, but their love is far from unrequited.  

I initially got myself lost at first, unable to make the distinction between the light and shadow spirits. I thought that it was similar to vVilrRuUsS: I Never Forget, where the lack of direction was intentional, leaving the reader to decided who the spirits are in each poem. Then I read it again and paid attention to the section titles. This time, the sense of confusion faded out between the sections “Dreaming of the Light” and “Dangerous Skies”. The distinction is made clear, even if only for a brief moment, and the shadow spirit provides some clarity as to how they fell in love with each other in the poem “Strange Eve”. Their romance may be forbidden, but fate works in strange ways no matter what universe one resides in.

Once these sections pass, the difference between light and dark is rendered unclear once again as they become more enamored with each other. There is the spark of inspiration, the wish for a chance to meet, the encounters within their own dreams, followed by intensifying feelings that prompt both jealousy and doubt between the spirits. All things which, in a reality-based romance novel, may be symbolized by antagonistic characters, unfortunate accidents, and strict families among other things. Yet, there is little mention of those aspects in Hollow, which added to the tension to their relationship and lack thereof.

An aspiring reader may wonder how these spirits manage to maintain a strong bond if they cannot communicate across universes. Much of it comes across as inferred telepathy, and one poem titled “Infinity” suggests that one does end up imitating the other. Another set of poems near the end of the novel suggest that their telepathy ends up manifesting itself through text messages and social media posts. This would be the closest thing to them properly meeting each other, meaning that whatever secret language they use evolves throughout the narrative. It may not make sense, but Jaz Jazlyn puts the same level of ambition into making their relationship work as she did to ensure that no account was left behind in vVilrRuUsS’s large-scale apocalypse. That level of dedication makes this supernatural love story into something both emotional and heartwarming.

Jazalyn’s proper romance novel also comes with some solid, inspirational pieces of verse, One of my personal favorites is the poem, “I Changed After Loving You”, where the spirts reflect on how their chance encounter inspires them for the better. I feel like this idea could apply to any relationship or long-lasting friendship where meeting them carries that very same effect. Even if things do not end up working with the person that they like or were friends with, that initial impact is the potential driving force for something better especially if they look solely at the positive. For the spirits, this reflection only renews their faith in each other regardless as to how many universes divide them.

The other poem that personally stood out was “Who I Really Am”, in which the spirits promise to be completely honest with each other—flaws and all. I feel, in a universal sense, this is the most difficult and nerve-wracking thing to do, even if your ideal self in a relationship is your genuine self. I think part of it also comes from fearing disapproval not just from partners but friends, co-workers, and family as well—even for the simplest of differences. These anxieties do not bother the spirits since their genuine honesty acts as a sort of buffer for the emotional intensity they experience as their relationship develops.     

From a novel on self-love to a full-on romance in poetry, Jaz Jazlyn captures the reader’s heart through her ambitious tale where light desires an encounter with shadow. These spirits carry that determination throughout Hollow: A Love Like A Life to ensure that they can reach some sort of happily ever after—even if the path there is somewhat meandering. It is a love story may be a better fit with Neil Gaiman’s books than with other romance writers, but this cosmic, sentimental tale stands on its own with each verse lighting the night sky as part of a constellation.  

In Sum: Not a Bad Start to a Cruise Across the Stars—3.5 out of 5 

Hollow: A Love Like A Life is available through book retailers including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.   

Outside of the Literary Comfort Zone—Ink for May 8th, 2023

Last weekend, I wrote that I would be doing just one review for the week and that would be, well, it. 

Instead, I decided to read through the second of three and belt out another review for Thursday and bumped vVilrRuUsS: I Never Forget to Tuesday morning. Rose: Future Heart, I think, is the first time I reviewed something in the romance genre—or close to it anyway—but Hollow: A Love Like A Life is the real test. Whereas Rose: Future Heart was a journey of self-love and empowerment, Hollow is more of proper, supernatural romance between two spirits.

So I'm fully venturing outside of my literary comfort zone for this one, but not unprepared...   

I asked a friend of mine what they thought made a good romance novel and they gave me some very solid points to work from. I felt like those qualities could also act as a narrative framework for what I'm looking for with Hollow: A Love Like A Life. 

Like last time, I plan on aiming for Thursday or Friday since, while the books may be challenging to critique, the format that I set up for them works amazingly well! 

Admittedly, I'm also doing some research on my own based on my friend's advice... 

A couple of weeks ago, I checked the mini-library I usually pass on my walks to see if they had any romance novels I could study from and decided on what I thought was the closest facsimile: The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane by Kelly Harms. Both the title and the premise gave me Return to Monkey Island vibes and with Shipwreck being more of a rom-com than a straight-up romance, I could still look for some of those same key factors but in a more familiar genre.  

I'm not sure if I'll rank it on Goodreads since I'm not the book's intended audience, but I do plan on reading that one to the end. Maybe I'll give a proper review on the blog, but I'm not sure about that yet. 

Okay, that's the admin done with...

The video of the week goes to John Rodgers for one of his recent adventures alongside the River Brent. He's become a sort of go-to channel for my post-work Sunday afternoons with his walks across London, and even Paris (although I feel like he's done more than that), which I find very relaxing. He has a way of bringing tranquility to the city's heavily populated streets, making even the most mundane bits of architecture shine with historical relevance.    

Those familiar with CheapShow will be no stranger to one of the locations featured during the video. It was actually through their live show for episode 300 that I learned who Rodgers was during their YouTube parody intermission, (I caught Paul mention his name in the live chat.)  

John Rodgers also has his own blog, the Lost Byway, in case you're interested in reading more from him.

Other Videos I Watched...

• Pixel Vixen in Japan is back with the second installment on how to speak Japanese for retro games shopping
• Rebecca Watson reviews Solaris
• Banjo Guy Ollie experiments with ChatGPT, allowing the program to write some Irish tunes for him to play
• Even more Taskmaster recommendations (and some I discovered along the way)—putting rain boots on a spider, finding someone's occupation through just yes or no answers but with a twist, high-five one of the hosts but specifically be the third person to do so, and yoga ball billiards     
• MsMadLemon plays a Saturday morning session of Robocod (James Pond 2) for the Amiga 
• Mr. Wright Way goes to Japan for some game hunting and more
• Ashens looks at cheap Coronation-themed things

Other random links...

• The Cozy Mystery anthology, A Warm Mug of Cozy, is still accepting submissions for stories until May 31st  
• Highly inspired by MsMadLemon's own blog, Jason (or BloodRayne on Mastodon) decided to join the blogging bandwagon with his own blog, "We don't tape the top 40" where he talks about his family (and how they inspired him), electronics, computers, and more! It has a memoir feel to it to, which I really like     

Hope you all have a great week!

Rose: Future Heart—Love's Labour's Hope

Mostly glare free, but slightly pixelated. It is a nice cover though. —Taken with an iPhone 8

Love. It is an overwhelming concept for some and a highly sought after notion for others that gets constantly debated and explored. Universally, it could be a little bit of both—at least I think so anyway—but is there a strict definition of what that sort of affection or passion could be? There is a book out there, which helps answer this particular question… 

Rose: Future Heart is another poetry novel from Jaz Jazlyn, which follows a Rose personified as a woman as she deals with her own internal conflict about how she views and experiences love—both as interpersonal intimacy and as a source of self-motivation. This personal clash between seeing herself as an independent person who rejects romance and as someone who desires affection plays out throughout the poems and—unlike in vVilrRuUsS: I Never Forget—these poems have a clear link between one another. This is another great stylistic choice by Jazalyn who wants the reader to know about how the Rose deals with her initial resentment about love and how she transforms that into a form of self-empowerment.

To call this a book of mere poetry cliches does this novel a disservice as some of the poems and verse allude to a deeper trauma. Once the Rose realizes where her psychological pain stems from, her voice becomes more grounded and confident with the verses becoming more orderly by the novel’s end. She is fearless in noting similar cases in the poem “The Criminal Country” with this revelation and it fits right into the narrative. For me, this realization that made Rose: Future Heart a poetry novel worth reading for the depth of both the poetry and storyline.

There are many notable poems in Rose: Future Heart, but admittedly I enjoyed “Entertainment Made Me Love Like That” where the Rose examines how her desire for romance stems from music, television, and film. It is not a long poem—and it could be considered cliched for its critique of showbiz—but I feel like it can be considered a universal feeling, considering how many stories carry some sort of romantic subplot. Later on, the poem “Love is not Entertainment” acts as the Rose’s realization that love is not just about intimacy, prompting her to think about what her own definition of love is.

There is another set of connecting poems, “Silent SOS” and “Me No — Know Me”, that I enjoyed partly for that fact alone. The distance between the poems allows for the link to act like a left-hook since, in “Silent SOS”, the Rose shouts “Me No, Know Me” as a means to keep rejecting romance regardless of how it would aid her. This saying in the namesake poem gets directed at a person who is highly unkind to the Rose and helps in shaping the revelation which comes later. Both these poems reinforce the narrative’s focus on the Rose and allowed me to appreciate how she deals with her internal struggles to come out empowered by defining what love is for herself.

While it is not a conventional love story, Rose: Future Heart is a poetry novel about how important it is to love oneself while not letting others define what the word means to you. Jaz Jazlyn does an almost impeccable job at illustrating the Rose’s personal battles with the concept, from resistance to acceptance on her terms. Even if you are not the usual audience for anything romance related, this book could help motivate you to steal your heart back from cynicism alongside your own traumas.

In Sum: A Romance, in which the self becomes the love interest, and deconstructs the idea into something greater—4.0 out of 5   

Rose: Future Heart  is available through book retailers including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

vVilrRuUsS: I Never Forget—An Apocalypse Full of Ambition

Sadly, I couldn't get the coffee cup in shot this time. Glare mitigation took priority. —Taken with an iPhone 8

One of my favorite scenes in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is when Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect find themselves at the mercy of Prostetntic Vogon Jeltz who makes them sit through a poetry reading before they get shoved out of an airlock. It was funny to watch the reactions of both the mostly non-plussed Arthur and writhing Ford, but it also made me appreciate how science fiction could change the way one saw the world through the power of comedy. Decades since the publication of my favorite novel, a new author by the name of Jaz Jazalyn seeks to do the same thing, but instead of comedy, she does so through the power of verse.   

 vVilrRuUsS: I Never Forget is a poetry-driven, fiction novel where three distinct viruses infect the masses throughout the course of what could be considered a long apocalypse. The first one sets the stage by making everyone criminals in one form or another, while the second messes around with people’s memories, and the third one could be considered the panacea that protects the survivors by enlightening them on the past. 

This is probably the best interpretation of events as the poems lead themselves into discussing civil unrest, what it means to love and be loved, the definition of God (at least, presumably in the Christian sense), the state of mental health, and a few other topics. In a way, it is like Jaz Jazlyn covers the stories of everyone impacted by these viruses, meaning that no account is left behind. Even with no proper protagonist, Jazalyn makes up with the world-building alone, verse by verse.      

As I read through the book, I could not help but feel slightly lost in-between viruses. If the gap between pandemics was long enough, it started to read as more of a poem anthology than a poetry novel. Considering the novel’s ongoing apocalypse, this may be intentional and that the reader might also be infected by proxy. If Jaz Jazalyn did plan out the novel with this idea in mind, that sort of artistic ambition makes this book worth the read alone. 

My personal favorite from this novel is a poem called “.M.A.C.H.I.N.A.T.I.O.N.S.” where the words form themselves into something resembling a hat. At the hat’s peak, the words make the it look like it has a plate attached to it and what slips into the hat, well, does not exactly bode well. It reminded me of the idea of a “tin foil hat” on first impressions and one could easily think it has conspiratorial roots. Considering the first words that get fed into the hat, I thought so too, but with how these viruses impact the populace, it might not be the case. It may be that survivors, both infected and clean, are trying to figure out what kind of world they are living in by patching available memories together. 

There is another poem of note shortly after “.M.A.C.H.I.N.A.T.I.O.N.S.” titled “Of the Trash” that had a sort-of cyberpunk feel to it. There is an unknown group that is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful, and the speaker seems to be rallying people against it by calling out every presumed injustice. It does feel similar to the way some cyberpunk novels involve a drastic power struggle between the affluent and the working class, but that is about it. In a way its a sort of turning point in the novel where the masses are now aware of the multiple pandemics.

 vVilrRuUsS: I Never Forget is an interesting science fiction novel in verse, where chaos exists in both the world and the text itself. It may be a hard sell for those who are into the typical apocalypse novels, cyberpunk thrillers, and dystopian literature, but this is far from Vogon poetry. If you are looking for a unique science fiction experience, or just enjoy a good set of poems, Jaz Jazalyn has you covered. 

In Sum: Artistic Drive meets Dystopia Mayhem—3.5 out of 5

vVilrRuUsS: I Never Forget is available through book retailers including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.