Ryan McFadden

Chasing the Dragon – by Nicholas Kaufmann.

I’ve been impatiently waiting for this title since it was announced by Chizine Publications (the little press that could…these guys rock).  I was actually going to pick it up at Ad Astra, but I decided to pick it up on Saturday when I was at Chapters in Edmonton for my own book signing.

Synopsis: St George and the Dragon. A lie.  Poor George didn’t defeat the Dragon but was eaten.  The quest fell to his descendants, who also failed.  Right up until present day when Georgia takes up the mantel from her father.  Childless, she is the last of the line.  It is up to her.

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For geeks only…

Dungeons & Dragons has come a long way. From cheap, throw-together modules with poorly laid out designs and roughly drawn illustrations, to professional, full colour publications owned by one of the biggest toy companies in the world.

But I can’t help but wonder if the people at Hasbro look over longingly at the WarHammer tables, where gamers spend vast amounts of money on miniatures and settings. With D&D, it was always an inexpensive game — with three core books, you could run a campaign that would last years (and players only needed one book…even cheaper).

Now comes 4th edition. And they’ve tried turning it from game of imagination, into a table-top video game. My problem is simple — if I wanted to play a video game, I’d play a video game. If I wanted to play WarHammer, I’d play WarHammer.

There are a few nice things about the recent upgrade. I like the changes to Armor Class…and really, that’s about it. Here are my initial complaints:

Powers instead of spells (reminds me of hitting the Y button on a controller how you can access all your special powers) and all classes are equal at all levels it appears. I never had a problem with unbalanced classes, where some had their sweet spot at low levels, and others at high levels (again, Wizard comes to mind…able to cast Magic Missile every round, if he so desires).

Not only is every character class the same, every character is the same. No rolling for hit points. Simply take 6 a level, or 8, or whatever. Sure, it prevents abuse, but I was never worried about abuse.

Healing Surges — seriously?

Death — not sure why they changed this rule. Now it’s your bloodied score…that’s a huge minus (at higher levels, we’re talking 50 or 60 in the minus), and you get to make Saving Throws to spend a healing surge and get to 0 again. I don’t know…it wasn’t broken, don’t know why it was fixed.

There’s more wrong for me…but you get the idea.

Too much normalization, and too much like a video game. Gone is the mystique of spells (replaced with cut and dried effects).

But maybe I’m just old

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Cell by Stephen King — probably the best beginning I’ve ever read. That’s high praise. The best beginning? Yup. The action starts on page 2. Planes are falling out of the sky, the cities are crumbling, people are going nuts…

The premise is pretty cool. What if by merely listening on a cell phone, you went crazy — your identity stripped away leaving only murderous thoughts and impulses? Basically, you become a zombie. Why is it a cool idea? I like the thought of a super virus, and what is more ubiquitous than cell phones?

Wow, there’s an accident…better call the wife. Huh, some guy killed that other guy, better call the daughter to stay safe. Wow, the place is going nuts, better call 911.

It slowed after the initial ‘craziness’, then became quite similar to the Stand…and began to drag slowly. But then Stephen King changes gears and the phone-zombies begin to develop a new consciousness, one that is far deadlier than crazed zombies.

One of the criticisms I usually have of Stephen King is the endings. Usually they end with Deus Ex Machina — some improbable, and unsatisfying ending. The Stand was one such book. I remember thinking ‘I read 20,000 pages for that!’.

But Cell had a good ending…both in resolution and in hope.

From my understanding, Stephen King is retired. Since he’s been retired, he puts out a book a year. Cell is one of those books. While I’m no Stephen King scholar, I’d classify his works into three eras: the Golden Years (Shining, Stand, Dead Zone, Firestarter) which are all the classics, then the Bloated Years (It, Tommy Knockers) where the books simply became monstrosities…now I’ll add to that the Retired Years. If Cell is any indication, perhaps slowing down and writing better paced, tighter books will return him to the glory years.

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The Gunslinger, by Stephen King. Also book 1 in a 7 volume series. Stephen King has proclaimed this to be his Magnus Opus. But I’m not so sure. This is a mix of fantasy and western — which is something I’ve always wanted to do. The man in black. The gunslinger (though he ends up having a name, couldn’t help but think of ‘the man with no name’ in the Spaghetti Westerns).

More than anything, I found myself kind of confused at points, and the language — I couldn’t believe how many times I had to head to a dictionary. I risk showing my ignorance but these words I can’t ever remember seeing before:

Golgotha – place of burial
Caissons – water tight structure for construction (such as bridge foundations)
Atavastic – throwback to an earlier type
odiferous – shorter version of odoriferous

Anyways, I found it a somewhat interesting read, though the last hundred pages took me a while. I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. The writing was excellent (other than the crazy amount of referencing I had to do).

And sometimes it felt like he ‘just made stuff up’. Now that comment sounds weird, I’m sure, but what I mean is that suddenly a jawbone can protect you against demons. What? There was no lead up or explanation, just he suddenly whips out a jawbone (that he had stolen earlier from a hole) and uses it. Huh.

Will I read the next six books. No. I didn’t feel attached to the characters, the storyline, or the themes. It was okay.

However, I did learn one thing. Actually, it was Paige who helped me. I was asking Kari — do I use these new words even though I didn’t know what they meant? Paige answered for me — “If people don’t know what they mean, then no one will understand you”.

True enough.

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