Reviewing novels, short stories, plays and non fiction.
I’ve seen this going round the blogs and thought I’d do an adapted version for book lovers. I’m anxious right now, and I imagine a lot of you are too. So I’ve focused on comforting or cathartic books and interactive fiction recommends to help people relax and unwind.
Mask of the Plague Doctor is an interactive fiction text adventure by Peter Parrish, released under Choice of Games on the 23rd of April. You play as a doctor sent into the quarantined town of Thornback Hollow. Working with an army surgeon and an idealistic new medic, you have to work to eradicate the plague while unrest and religious conflict erupt in the town. And you’re on a time limit – if you can’t cure the disease, Baron Morlond waits outside the walls to purge the contagion by the sword.
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Help the Witch by Tom Cox is a collection of short stories and modern fables. It was published in 2018 and won a Shirley Jackson award. It was crowd funded through the site Unbound, to over 300% of it’s target.
This review is of Make do and Mend (Keeping Family and Home Afloat on War Rations). It is a collection of delightfully reproduced WW2 leaflets, with a foreword by Jill Norman. It’s a beautiful snapshot of the past. It can be easy to romanticise the wartime era, and think that everyone knew how to sew, cook and fix their homes. In reality, the much lauded ‘Blitz Spirit’ was formed and reinforced with a lot of propaganda and hand holding. This included classes, radio shows and detailed leaflets. The leaflets covered home maintenance, fuel conservation, and tips on how to wash, store, and mend clothing.
They could even help you learn how to make do and mend today!
Money saving expert Martin Lewis begins Thrifty Ways for Modern Days by explaining that this is a crowd sourced book. He gives all credit to his resourceful forumites, on the Old Style Board.
He explains he himself is not an old-styler, as it is a lifestyle, not just an adjustment. He recommends it for people who *need* to do it, due to debt or unemployment, and for people who want to live a greener, thriftier lifestyle. The book is divided into cleaning, shopping, fashion, DIY, special occasions, presents, growing your own and recipes.
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Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams. Most of the play takes place in the Royal Palms Hotel, an “old fashioned but still fashionable” hotel in St. Cloud, on the Gulf Coast.
Chance Wayne is first introduced wearing the classic Williams trope; white silk pyjamas. He starts the day with a cigarette and a ‘bromo’; an alka seltzer hangover remedy. The waiter has to mix it for him, due to his hands shaking, due to his alcohol consumption the night before.
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was a 1968 novel by Philip K Dick. The novel’s protagonist is Rick Deckard, a man who hunts sentient androids for profit on a ruined, irradiated earth where the majority of the population have emigrated to Mars. Animals are mostly extinct, and extremely valuable; Rick can only afford an electric sheep, not the real thing. The book explores the nature of the soul, the value of animals, and what constitutes a human being.
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The Suicide of Rachel Foster, by OneOOne Games and Daedalic Entertainment, is another work of interactive fiction. It centres around a woman called Nicole. She has returned to her family’s dilapidated, abandoned hotel to discharge her parents’ estate, and becomes trapped by a snowstorm. She is contacted by Irving on an old, modified cell phone. He claims to be a FEMA agent, on the line to look out for people trapped by the ‘atypical storm’.
Some Distant Memory, by Galvanic Games and Way Down Deep, is an interactive story about a professor who is desperately searching for the Sunken City of Houston. She is accompanied by ARORA, an AI who can rebuilt memories from notes, letters and photographs. Throughout the game you are also in touch with your companion Commander Ti, from a nearby colony. Earth has been subsumed by the Bloom, an ecological disaster accompanied by terrible earthquakes.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Cadfael books by Ellis Peters (Edith Mary Pargeter OBE BEM). The Rose Rent is a classic. It is a medieval mystery novel set in the summer of 1142, as the battle between King Stephen and Empress Maud rages on. This is the thirteenth novel in The Cadfael Chronicles, first published in 1986. It charts a wealthy young widow who donates a house to the Abbey for a symbolic rent of a single white rose a year.
