INKY SQUIGGLES

The Harm Tree by Rose Edwards , £7.99   (UCLan Publishing, 9781912979004) Publication date:  19 July 2019 My rating:   ★ ★ ★ ½ The resistance is rising and dark forces stir to take back what was once theirs. Belief in the ancient gods runs strong—the sacrificial Harm Tree still stands.  Torny and Ebba are friends. Sent away by their families, they work together and watch out for each other. Too young to remember the war that tore apart the kingdom, Torny dreams of the glorious warriors of old, while Ebba misses her family, despite the darkness she left behind. But when a man is murdered on the street and Torny finds herself in possession of a dangerous message, the two friends must tread separate paths. These will lead them through fear, through grief, to the source of their own power and to the gates of death itself. As Torny and Ebba are used as tools for the opposing factions of the war, a deep power is ignited in them both. Can they uncover their own strengt...

The Raven's Children by Yulia Yakovleva  and  Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp (translator) , £6.99 (Puffin Books, 9780241330777) Publication date:  5 July 2018 My rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ A bestseller in its native Russia and translated into English for the first time, The Raven’s Children was written to ‘break the silence’ surrounding a dark and largely hidden period of history. However, despite its setting of Stalin-era Russia, a time of terror, paranoia and the Secret Police, Yakovleva delivers an accessible, engaging and resolutely hopeful story. This is achieved through the courageous protagonist, seven-year-old Shura, whose innocent world is shattered after his family—Mama, Papa and baby brother Bobka—vanish overnight, spirited away by a mysterious figure called The Raven. Nevertheless, Shura determines to find them himself, navigating a hostile, unpredictable city where birds talk, the walls have eyes and few can be trusted. As Shura discovers the truth about the S...

While I found Dreamfall Chapters immersive and enjoyable, the various disparate narrative threads simply didn't come together at the end for me. I ended up looking forward to Zoë's parts of the game much more than Kian's, who I found somewhat dull. In keeping with this, I found Stark, Zoë's futuristic cyberpunk world, more compelling than Arcadia, which presents a much more typical magical fantasy setting. Because of this, I was disappointed at the fragmentation of the gameplay into three different main characters and settings, all of which had intrigue but none of which felt fully fleshed out (particularly Saga, the third character, who mostly remains a mystery throughout). While Stark and Arcadia appear large, atmospheric and interesting, most of the buildings are simply decorative and cannot be entered, and most of the city inhabitants cannot be interacted with meaningfully, only eavesdropped in on. Similarly, Riverwood and the Purple Mountains are stunning ...

While it's difficult to find a legit (cough) copy nowadays,  Discworld is worth revisiting if only as a curious and charming relic of a bygone age (1995!), when the adventure game reigned and creative puzzles and witty dialogue were everything. This also hails from an era when authors collaborating with games developers made perfect sense. The result is a game infused with the hallmark (if sometimes arcane) humour of the legendary Terry Pratchett , which is   especially delectable when combined with the voice work of British treasures Eric Idle, Tony Robinson and Rob Brydon, among others (available only on the newer version). The music is uncomplex (but then that comes with the age of the game), but whimsical and appropriate, complementing the quirkily appealing cartoonish background art. And, while this is far from high res and needs to be played in windowed mode, I've always felt that this type of hand-drawn art style has weathered the ravages of time much bet...

'Without even thinking about it, I used to be able to fly. Now I'm trying to look inside myself and find out how I did it.'  - Kiki, Kiki's Delivery Service After my fellow blogger Lynette shared a climactic passage from one of her first stories, in the interest of fairness, I dug around in my own under-the-bed reserves of shame (the writer's equivalent of the dirty magazine collection, if you will). I present to you an extract from one of my earliest longer story attempts, The Lightbearers :

When a friend recently challenged me to list ten books that have influenced my life in some way, I was presented with two problems. The first was the painful process of whittling my favourites down to just ten. I hummed and hawed over the issue for several days and had to suppress some serious feelings of guilt at 'betraying' some of my other favourites before reaching any kind of resolution. The second was the frustrating feeling that Facebook (where the challenge was circulating) wasn't an adequate platform for conveying just how much I loved these books. After all, as Jorge Luis Borges wrote, 'I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met... all the cities that I have visited.' To redress that wrong, therefore, here are my picks in the order that I discovered them, alongside some of my favourite book covers and quotes for each. 1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Collins edition (2002)

Strata by Terry Pratchett My rating:   ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ THE COMPANY BUILDS PLANETS. Kin Arad is a high-ranking official of the Company. After twenty-one decades of living, and with the help of memory surgery, she is at the top of her profession. Discovering two of her employees have placed a fossilized plesiosaur in the wrong stratum, not to mention the fact it is holding a placard which reads, 'End Nuclear Testing Now', doesn't dismay the woman who built a mountain range in the shape of her initials during her own high-spirited youth. But then came discovery of something which did intrigue Kin Arad. A flat earth was something new... An intriguing early work, connected as it is to the grand vision of Mr Pratchett. Strata also happens to be one of Pratchett's few forays into science fiction. Nevertheless, fans of the Discworld series will notice foreshadowings of Pratchett's later work and sparks of the humour and a preoccupation with the existentialist philosophy t...

This is a gorgeous game with a cast of fun and well-voiced characters (if not somewhat typical for the genre) and stunning music to match; I had high hopes for this title. However, the exasperating ' your princess is in another castle ' gameplay pattern that emerges after the first chapter is a serious let-down. I felt slightly hoodwinked into playing on in the conviction that [ they couldn't possibly make me do everything again, *again*, right ]?! ( highlight to view spoiler ) Granted, many of the repeat tasks are optional, but after a certain point the game offers little that's new in terms of gameplay, plot  –  or even dialogue. Extra quests and activities should enrich the gaming experience, not drain the life out of it. Unless you get a kick out of recycled mega bosses and grind-fests, in which case this could be the game for you. You are rewarded with some intriguing character revelations, but it all gets a bit lost in the sheer repetition of it all. You mi...