Henry Hyde's "The Wargaming Compendium"

Bzzzzzzzz Bzzzzzzz
Bzzz Bzzz Bzzzz

"Hello!?"
"Postman = I've got a big parcel for you"
"On my way down"

That was the bleary-eyed and scraggy-tailed conversation I had this morning, a few minutes before heading off to work.

"But what was in this heavy parcel?" you ask. Well, obviously this was:

but also a few Ospreys, "Achtung, Schweinhund!" and an ultra-sonic cleaning bath. the last will be used for a number of purposes - cleaning jewellery, assisting with stripping paint from minis and if I ever get into airbrushing for cleaning the parts. But let's return to the main event.

After a much prolonged gestation (how many times did Amazon put it up for pre-order then take it down again?) and then delays in actually getting the printed copies to the publisher, Henry's masterpiece is finally available for sale to the great unwashed grateful public. How Henry found time in between editing issues of MW to buckle his swash and wrest the shipping containers from the pirates that held them up is beyond my knowledge.

I've got to admit that so far I've only had a quick leaf-through of the book, but I'm definitely impressed. As one would expect from Henry, the illustrations and photographs are superb (and lots of them). The text is printed in a large enough font that it should be easy for everyone to read comfortably, with good line spacing. Equally impressive is the "heft" of the book - 1.47kg of glossy goodness. And it is just the right height to slip under that wonky table leg (just kidding Henry!).

I'm definitely looking forward to reading this at home over the next few weeks. It certainly looks to be well worth the wait, the weight and the full cover price of £35 (although it is available for £16 on Amazon).

Quick Update and Book Review: Redshirts

I'm back! It's been interesting the last two weeks watching to see how many page views I got despite the lack of posts. It seems that I've got 50-100 people who take a peek every day. To those 50-100 people I offer my apologies for not having posted anything for so many days.

I have been doing a little bit of painting over the last couple of weeks, but nothing worth showing just yet. My plan for tomorrow is to finish off painting the 30YW cuirassiers - there's not much left to paint now, but it might be a while before they are completely finished - the cold winter weather isn't conducive to opening windows to provide ventilation for spraying matt varnish!

I've also done some work on the FSE spaceships - various panels have been painted red or white. I just need to touch up some of the blue, paint weapons, engine surrounds and the exhaust. The red and white panels do improve the look of the ships, but I'm still not sure about the colour scheme. I'll see how they look when I've finished painting them, but suspect that I might end up stripping and repainting them.

As well as the above, I've also assembled one of the Conquest Norman Knights to see whether the technique I use for 15mm horses will work for 28mm horses. I'm pretty much finished on the horse (the technique seems to work OK) and just need to finish the rider.

Well, that's enough of an update. Onto the book review.

Redshirts by John Scalzi

Imagine you are a junior officer newly assigned to the fleet's flagship, the UUS Intrepid
Imagine that all of your colleagues make themselves scarce when the senior officers are looking for people to go on away team missions
Imagine that junior crew members on away team missions have an extraordinarily high chance of dying in stupid and pointless ways
Imagine that at crucial moments the laws of physics seem to take a vacation
Imagine that a feral crew member warns you to stay away from the bridge and to avoid "the narrative"
Imagine he later tells you that the only way all the above makes sense is that you are somehow part of a television show (and not a very good one at that) in some alternative past timeline
Imagine that you come to realise that he might be right
Imagine that you don't want to die a pointless death as part of "the narrative"
Welcome to the world of the Redshirts


Heading the dedications at the start of the book is this:

"To Wil Wheaton, whom I heart with all the hearty heartness a heart can heart"

Yuk. In the words of the inimitable Dr Sheldon Cooper:

Yup. I'm not a fan of dear Wil. However, I didn't let that detract from my reading of the book.

The book was very well written (no surprise there) and absolutely hilarious as you read how the characters come to terms with what is going on and how they resolve to beat "the narrative".

As you would expect from the title, there are references/homages a-plenty to Star Trek (ToS) and the story just keeps you turning the pages. I read it in an evening. However the ending was a bit of a let-down (although Chapter 24 - the last one - did make up for it a bit).

And then I thought "Hang on a second, there are still a whole wodge of pages left in the book. What the heck?"

There are three "Coda" after the end of the main story, written in the first person (a blog); the second person and the third person. All are worth reading.

*****Highly Recommended*****

Over the past week I'd also read two other SF humour novels by Scalzi - "Fuzzy Nation" and "The Android's Dream". If you're unlucky I might subject you to reviews of those next week.