Last session saw Winston gunned down in the street, but he survived, and the New Mexico Mercantile Cooperative (NMMC) retreated for now. So what next for the citizens of Steaming Rock... well, first, we have some housekeeping!

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS

The Turn of the Season

Please note SPOILERS will follow

Founder’s Day was supposed to be a day of celebration, Steaming Rock’s premier family day out, but Howard Ross, of the New Mexico Mercantile Cooperative (NMMC) and a half dozen of his rowdy employees have been taking the celebrations a little too far.

Danny, Cody, Winston, Dutch and Diego, aka The Players, have taken over the Mayor’s meeting and decided direct action works best. A plan is hatched, and they request each citizen at the meeting to go out and gather up two or three like-minded folk. They will meet outside the Sheriff’s office and then approach Ross. A show of force will see him turn tail and head out of town. It is at this point that Danny realises his gun is back at his homestead and requests Aida, his sister, to go and get it.

The card game at the Homestead Inn had come crashing to a halt, as Diego Carter, under the prompting of Francisco Castellanos, a rival to Homestead’s owner William Moyer, had let off a box of firecrackers.

The patrons of the Homestead Inn were on the war path. Diego had been spotted, but dived into the icy cold creek and doubled back to outsmart them, losing his hat in the process.

Diago met back at Francisco’s Mexican Bar, grabbed a bottle of whiskey and headed to bed. Francisco shouted after him, “Hey, man! We've got a lot of people coming to your sermon tomorrow, Founder’s Day is going to remember your words!”

So, we worked through sessions zero and two, but now we are stepping into 1873 New Mexico to take on the King of Santa Fe.

This is a campaign for the Year Zero Engine game Tales of the Old West, from the Effekt Boys. This is not Weird West, no undead, no magic, just straightforward grit and guile as you try and survive and thrive in the wilds.

All of the PCs live in Steaming Rock, located near the Black Mountains and somewhat isolated from major cities. The town survives on lumber, mining, and a bit of cattle ranching, plus the patronage of passersby.

Heading off to the ancient Chancery Lane, a place where the Knights Templar created the lane to connect their ‘old Temple’ in Holborn with their new property south of Fleet Street. Ancient knights and dames tramped the streets to a hidden location…

Alex, JimJim, DaveP put on a bi-annual convention of all things RPG, oscillating between Love and Law; they actually have these two words tattooed on their knuckles. Today, we chose Law.

The venue for GrogL has shifted between some interesting locations, but returned to its original home for 2025, Brewdog, Chancery Lane. Whatever you may think of the owners (an aside, they’re dicks), you can’t fault the location and the setup and the lovely staff. Black Heart on tap, followed by 1200 calories of sticky, messy Buffalo Chicken Burger. London, Chancery Lane, at the weekend is dead, but this Brewdog was alive with the clash of swords, the explosion of gunpowder and the roar of a Lawmaster as it circumnavigates Mega-Way 7 between Benny Hill Block and Boing™ Boulevard.

I picked up Milkman, laughably because I thought it was a science fiction book, and I thought, ‘That’s interesting, a sci-fi novel that is also a Booker prize winner.’ Idiot.

Anna Burns’s Milkman is set in an unnamed city during a period of political unrest that is clearly Belfast in the Troubles. The narrator, ‘middle sister’, tries to stay unnoticed while a figure known only as Milkman, a paramilitary man with local influence, begins to follow her.

The novel’s style is unusual. Paragraphs run long, characters are referred to by roles rather than names (‘maybe-boyfriend’, ‘third brother-in-law’), and dialogue blends into narration. Readers who prefer a clean structure may find it challenging. Yet this anonymity fits the world: one where names are dangerous, surveillance is constant, and clarity is suspect.

Here we go, a fantasy book - hopefully a lighter read after the challenging ones. I believe I picked Jhereg after a recommendation for the best implementation of a detective novel within a high fantasy setting. En Garde!

Jhereg feels like being invited to dinner only to find the host serving up the family jewels instead of a meal. It aims for brisk and witty; what it delivers is a steady diet of deep lore with the occasional smirk.

Vlad Taltos, our guide, is an assassin, small-time crime lord, and consummate heel. He’s meant to be sardonic and clever, but mostly comes across as smug, entitled and cynical. The book clearly wants us to admire his guile; I found myself wishing someone would smash a fist into his face, smearing that twirly moustache all over it. He’s a protagonist you follow not because you like him, but because you’re stuck with him.

The real star, of course, is the world. Brust clearly delights in his creation, and he’s determined you should too. Pages linger and delight over the structure of noble houses, their arguments, and the finer points of criminal etiquette. It’s intricate, coherent, and ambitious. It’s also, whisper it, a bit boring to have lots of these diversions. If lore is your jam, you’ll be in paradise. If not, the pace feels glacial, the plot a thread running through endless appendices.

To be fair, there are flashes of life. Brust’s prose can snap when it isn’t weighed down, and Loiosh, Vlad’s Jhereg familiar, provides welcome comic relief, even if it gets repetitive. The noir-PI-meets-fantasy conceit is clever, and every so often, you catch sight of the sharp novel buried within the maze of digressions.

For readers who thrive on deep lore and don’t mind a hero you’d happily punch and can live with some of the leering eighties attitudes, it may be ideal. For me, it’s one to acknowledge, not to love.

I gave the book 5.0 out of 10.

I wanted something very different to Black Easter, so I swapped around a few books to settle on Ian McEwan. I last read his book On Chesil Beach, and I could recognise his style, though this is a completely different feel. I was intrigued to see how he constructed a murder mystery from the perspective of an unborn fetus.

The morality tale is told with humour and passion by an unborn fetus. There are just a few months until it is born, but it sure does have some robust opinions of its mother, father, and adulterous uncle. Some of this is affected by a wine-fuelled placenta, ‘Even before the wine arrives - tonight, a Jean-Max Roger Sancerre - at the sound of a drawn cork, I feel it on my face like the caress of a summer breeze. I know it will be a good evening.’

It seems from the start all is not well; the father, a poet, is estranged from the mother, and we quickly see that the father’s brother, Claude, an accountant, is planning to run off with both the mother and fleece the father out of his savings, and perhaps darker outcomes are on the horizon.

It’s only a hundred or so pages, and I gave myself an extra week to read this after holiday time allowed me to get ahead.

This is Hard Fantasy in its strictest sense: the occult ceremonies are rendered in technical detail, as though excerpted from an academic treatise. Plot progression, character psychology, and dramatic action are present only in outline.

The novel forms part of a trilogy, collectively known as After Such Knowledge, in which each volume interrogates a discrete body of human understanding. Here, the subject is demonology as a practical science.

Some heavy stuff in recent reads, so I was happy to pick up some Space Opera fiction and return to Alastair Reynolds. I am not the most avid reader of his books, but I loved the double header Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days.

Revenger concerns Fura and Adrana Ness, well-to-do daughters of a rich family fallen on hard times. To help out the family, they take it on themselves to abscond and join a ship, Monetta’s Mourn captained by Rackamore. These ships head out into the depths of space to raid Baubles, essentially alien tech locations that range from small stations to almost planet-sized beasts. They only open at certain times and then for a limited period, and whilst they contain many riches, they are strewn with devilish traps. These initial chapters play very much like a YA style sci-fi yarn - somewhat clichéd but fun. Things take a dark turn, leading to Fura, fifteen at the start of the journey, growing up fast and heading down a path of revenge and retribution. As I’ve read more around the book, it seems it IS seen as a YA novel, though the author just wanted to make it more accessible to a wider range of age groups. A warning, it is pretty dark and grisly at times.

The book initially moves at a quick pace, making it extremely enjoyable as the two sisters adjust to ship life and find their roles on board, slowly proving themselves until disaster strikes. There is some excellent world-building during this phase as you are introduced to aliens, the life of a space scavenger ship and hints of previous, alien civilisations that had tech far in advance of the current human-centric worlds.

Thanks to Matthew Broome for recommending a starting point for Camus. The Outsider, or The Stranger. The difference seems to stem from the translation of the original French L’Étranger. But as Camus himself says, it is about a man who defies social conventions and is disconnected from his own life. Feel free to argue either way!

We follow a man named Meursault, who remains disconnected and ambivalent about life. We start at the funeral of his mother, and he tramples over the expected conventions and ceremony, showing little emotion, whilst others are tearful, emotional and respectful.

Meursault continues to be cold and indifferent as he takes a lover but feels no commitment to love, and helps a fairly despicable neighbour write a cruel letter to punish an Arab girlfriend.

The full title is Great-Uncle Harry: A Tale of War and Empire. Another Michael Palin tour de force, where he delves deep and wide to find out the background of one of his relatives who died in the First World War.

My Great-Uncle Charlie also died in the First World War; he was 24, so there are some very similar memories reading this book, due in the main to talking to my mum and helping my son do some research into Charlie on my son’s school trip to Belgium.

Reading the book, you can’t help but think that Michael was lucky to have so much support in researching this, well, he IS Michael Palin, national treasure, etc. So he ropes in Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson, using his wonderful They Shall Not Grow Old resources to trawl through picture archives to pick out various photos of Harry and his mates on the front line. Michael also gets his hands on the complete set of war diaries and various archives of reports from the front, a veritable treasure trove that seemed to have kicked off the whole, “Could I make a book out of this?”

I bought The Loney in 2016, read a few chapters, got bored, put it away, felt guilty after a few months, started it again, got more bored and decided Andrew Michael Hurley was not for me.

However, the Reading Challenge I started in 2025 is precisely designed for circumstances like this. I’m putting myself through the pain so I can gain a bit of understanding about my reading habits.

So, in returning to this, the familiar feelings of dread also returned, it… was… so… slow. I almost gave up again, but I persevered; something had struck a chord. My grandfather was a vicar in Norfolk, and I remember visiting his house in the 1970s. It was bleak and isolated; the house was all dark wood and low lighting inside. He was a peculiar man, a history, if not of criminal activity, then actions that bordered on what was the very edge of morality. I came away, though very young, with a feeling that I’d had a lucky escape, a person, supposedly holy and good, who didn’t come across like that, cold, cynical, a little bit cruel but with a practised wit and charm.

The Nantz Diaries

These diaries were written after each session by Alex Marchant, who played Nantz in the game. With Alex’s permission, I’m reposting them here on the blog. They brought a wonderful sense of atmosphere to the sessions, and I always looked forward to reading them, so I’m delighted they’re now preserved here for posterity.

Content Warning: Copious amounts of the word f**k

Character sheet

A man goes for a drink with an acquaintance in a pub and also meets the woman of his dreams and wishes, but she disappears. He is determined to find her. Thus follows mystery, corruption, death and squirrels.

If you have seen Bob Mortimer on telly, then you know what to expect; it’s like an extended episode of Would I Lie to You? But amongst the funniest things in the book is the fact that Americans can’t cope with something being called Satsuma. In typical Bob style, the main narrator, Gary, seamlessly blends the mundane and the surreal into a readable murder mystery and romantic comedy.

There are some lovely, well-drawn characters, as you would expect, no Gary Cheeseman, the sniper’s dream, on account of his large head, but there is Grace, his spiky elderly next door neighbour with a dodgy hip, a pie fetish and her dog Lassoo. There are more menacing and unpleasant characters than you’d usually get in a Bob anecdote, so it is pleasing to see him stretch himself into real drama.

We’ve now completed Into the Dust, having travelled through the three Stops that shaped our Journey. Some characters reached their destination, chasing dreams they finally grasped. Others found a quiet contentment in simply arriving — not where they had intended, perhaps, but somewhere that felt enough.

It has been a few weeks since we finished, time enough to decompress and reflect on the setting, the mechanics, and the strange, quiet emotional pull of the game itself.

Here’s what I’ve taken from the experience.

Again, the group make progress down the road, until they are waved down by some hill billy types. Getting out of the car, they see the group they have encountered have patriot badges and baseball caps on. Things seem to be turning nasty, a possible interrogation, when Willy turns on the waterworks and the patriot’s mamma takes pity on him, berates her sons and sends the team on their way.

This could have been quite a nasty Encounter and there is a growing mantra with the players, “Never get out of the car.” But some excellent empathy rolls from Jon, Willy’s player and to then I invented the character of Mamma to get them out of trouble after such a roll.

Session Six

Welcome to Airstrip One. It is 1984.

I bought the book in 1984 when the movie featuring John Hurt and Richard Burton came out, and The Eurythmics’ Sex Crime, also from the movie, was on Top of the Pops. There was an alternative title to 1984 or Nineteen Eighty Four, and that was 1948. Right? No. 1948 is just a myth; there is no evidence that Orwell called this novel after the year in which he wrote it and then, under pressure from publishers, reversed the last two digits - even if my Dad presented this to me as fact, it’s just quite well-reasoned speculation. One title, documented by Orwell, that he did consider was The Last Man in Europe. But all this is just one of many, many untruths that have grown up around the background and writing of the book, a book that is intrinsically about truth and who decides what the truth is.

1984 concerns Winston Smith and his life, serving INGSoc, the Party, a totalitarian government of Oceania. Life is bleak, regimented and likely to end in death by firing squad for real or imagined traitorous activities or through malnutrition and illness. Winston hates this life, but the only steps towards rebellion are a few scratched thoughts in a diary. That is, until he meets the mysterious Julia and falls in love.

2.2 is Stop Two of Three, and it’s called Roadside Murder. Time to throw in some oddities, a large Drone pokes its head out of a barn as the group stops to stretch their legs. The Drone beckons to them.

Session Four

Cade is, of course, the first to go and investigate. He tries speaking to the Drone or its operator, the Drone gestures that it will hide, Willy also joins in this impromptu game of hide and seek. After a few games, they start to leave, and the Drone grabs Cade. Billy-Lee intervenes and is thrown bodily through the air, landing with a grunt as the Drone starts squeezing out of the barn.

I remember that as a kid, my dad had walls of bookshelves in the living room, dining room, and upstairs. Many of the books were collections, like Punch, The Strand, but also a vast amount of boys’ adventures, like G. A. Henty and his ode to colonialism 😬 By Right of Conquest: With Cortez in Mexico. Within this mishmash, it was easy to find the odd classic, including Treasure Island. I remember reading it through in a few days during one long school summer holiday.

Some of the most memorable passages in the book are at the start as Jim Hawkins entertains a collection of pirates in his parents’ remote Inn: Billy Bones, Black Dog and Blind Pew. I remember the description of Pew sending shivers up my spine: “He was hunched over and moved quickly, with a cruel, silent precision,” and his icy, cold hands that grabbed hold of Jim. Reminds me of a spider, waiting to pounce on some unsuspecting prey. All senses bar the eyes are operating beyond their maximum.

It’s not long before Jim is dragged into this adventure by way of the most excellent McGuffin, the treasure map. Jim heads off to find gold doubloons along with Doctor Livesy and the squire, coming across the infamous Long John Silver.