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PC Video Games

“Blue Prince” Hands-On Preview

 

We’ve all read books, seen movies, and watched episodes of Scooby-Doo in which someone must spend the night in a haunted house so that they can inherit said house from their sadistic dead relative.

But in the upcoming first-person puzzle game Blue Prince — which will be out on PC this spring — the house isn’t haunted, but its constantly changing configuration makes things difficult for its hopeful new owner.

Or so I found out when I recently had a chance to play this intellectually challenging game.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “Hammajang Luck” Author Makana Yamamoto

 

You know what I hate? When you finally get released from prison, but the person waiting for you is the one who double-crossed you. And it’s not like you can avoid them, since you’re on a space station. In the future. Where are you going to go? McDonalds!?!

But as so often the case, annoying situations in real life make for interesting ones in fiction. Which is why I wanted to do the following email interview with author Makana Yamamoto about their noir sci-fi crime story / cyberpunk lesbian space heist novel Hammajang Luck (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).

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Music Reviews

Ivo Perelman, Tyshawn Sorey: “Parallel Aesthetics” Review

 

It can be intimidating to work with someone who has a lot more experience than you. Like, say, if you were drummer and piano player Tyshawn Sorey, and recording your first album with iconic saxophonist Ivo Perelman, who is twenty years Sorey’s senior, and who’s recorded exponentially more albums in the last twenty year than Sorey has his whole life.

But on Parallel Aesthetics (CD, digital), Sorey and Perelman’s first album together, the younger musician more than holds his own on these freely improvised jazz duets.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “The Miranda Conspiracy” Author James L. Cambias

 

Like the previous novels in his Billion Worlds series, author James L. Cambias’ Picaresque / pulpy sci-fi space opera novel The Miranda Conspiracy (paperback, Kindle) is set thousands of years in the future.

So it might surprise you to learn that, in the following email interview, Cambias says this story was influenced by a novel from 1939 that was made into a famous movie in 1946.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “At The Fount Of Creation” Author Tobi Ogundiran

 

As those wise sages The Rolling Stones once noted, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”

It’s a song that popped into my head as I was editing the following email interview with author Tobi Ogundiran about his new “secondary world fantasy story with elements of mythology and cosmology” novella At The Fount Of Creation (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), the companion to last year’s In The Shadow Of The Fall in his Guardian Of The Gods duology.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “The Teeth Of Dawn” Author Marina Lostetter

 

With The Teeth Of Dawn (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), author Marina Lostetter is concluding the epic fantasy with “a dash of horror” trilogy The Five Penalties that she launched in 2021 with The Helm Of Midnight and continued two years later with The Cage Of Dark Hours.

In the following email interview, Lostetter discusses what inspired and influenced this series and this final installment.

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PC PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Reviews Video Games Xbox One Xbox Series S Xbox Series X

“Sniper Elite: Resistance” Review

 

Violence is never the answer, even when you inflict it on someone terrible. Y’know, like Nazis.

But virtual violence? Like in, say, a video game? That’s okay. And, if done well, can be as cathartic as it is fun.

It’s why I’d never punch a Nazi in real life, but absolutely love playing the Sniper Elite games, a series of fun third-person stealth action shooters set during World War II in which you undermine the German military by, well, shooting, stabbing, and blowing up Nazis. And German soldiers. And their stuff.

I enjoy them so much, in fact, that I don’t even mind that the newest installment, Sniper Elite: Resistance (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC), is basically just the previous one, 2022’s Sniper Elite 5, but with new locations and one new mode.

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Uncategorized

Exclusive Interview: “Aurelia” Author Stephen R. Lawhead

 

Twenty-six years after he seemingly ended The Pendragon Cycle novels, author Stephen R. Lawhead has returned to the legends of King Arthur in a big way.

Not only is this fantasy / historical fiction series being adapted for television by the streaming service DailyWire+, while the first three books — Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur — have been reissued, but he’s also written a prequel to the series called Aurelia (hardcover, Kindle).

In the following email interview, Lawhead talks about what makes The Pendragon Cycle different from other stories about King Arthur, as well as whether you should begin with the new novel or go back to it later.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “The Distractions” Author Liza Monroy

 

In fiction, it’s easy to portray the future as a utopia or a dystopia.

But in Liza Monroy’s science fiction novel The Distractions (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), she presents a society that is both at the same time. And it’s a balance she employs in other aspects of the story as well.

In the following email interview, Monroy discusses what inspired and influenced this sci-fi story.