There’s 8 books in total. The first two (in order, The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny) are collections of linked stories, but they are important in setting up the world and characters. Then there’s a five-book series (starting with Blood of Elves), followed by a stand-alone prequel, Season of Storms.

Worth noting that Glen Cook was a huge inspiration for Erikson and Cook is a big fan of the series.

Also worth noting that the gods are not “gods” in the usual sense. They’re all people who’ve just acquired a bit more power than most. They’re not omnipotent, they’re not invulnerable and they are brought low by mortals quite a bit in the series.

Rothfuss is an excellent writer looking for a good story. He has some nice prose, but the story being told in his first two books is pretty standard stuff, with the Gary Stu protagonist, superheroic antics and Harry Potter-esque school setting. The first book is better, being tighter, but the second book is sprawling,…

There are certainly better fantasy writers than Steven Erikson: Ursula Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Terry Pratchett, probably J.R.R. Tolkien. Kameron Hurley and Nora Jemisin show promise of getting up there. Martin and Hobb are probably better than Erikson when they are on their A-game, but both are less disciplined as…

Amazon can afford to make the problem go away. Whether they’re prepared to buy out Netflix’s airing rights which would require giving money to a perceived rival (although both companies seem to be happy pushing the idea they want people to get both, but they know a lot are choosing one or the other) is another matter.…

It runs on Netflix nine months after it airs in the States. If you’re a megafan of the show, you’re going to have watched it “by other means” long before that, and as it’s not a proper Netflix Original, Netflix have never bothered doing any marketing for it at all.

I resisted getting Amazon Prime for quite a long time and succumbed a few months back. The Tick and Man in the High Castle are both great, and I’ve been going through a lot of shows that AP snapped up before they could air anywhere else here in the UK, like Agent Carter, Into the Badlands and The Americans. Amazon…

There’s a mechanism in the books which allows the actor to come back (the books have various sub-sections and spin-off novellas set before the series and back when the character was alive, among other things). Whether the TV show was planning to do the same thing is unknown.

According to a Netflix rep, Season 1 will adapt The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny, so in theory yes. However, the producer said that it won’t be as 1:1 to that, so it sounds like the series will pick up on elements from the short stories and merge them together (since they only have 8 episodes and there’s 13 short…

The Witcher books have sold between 5 and 6 million copies around the world, only a small number of those in Poland. Yes, that’s where the series came from and where the author’s from, but the series also had a very strong following in Russia, Spain, Hungary and a few other countries, and now in Germany, the UK and…

Yes...from a certain point of view.

Well, to be fair it kind of is already. You just pause every now and then to shoot something. Firewatch is more non-linear than any of the Half-Life games ever have been (not a criticism at all, just an observation).

BioMob. You put together a crime syndicate who fuel their criminal tendencies by reading Ayn Rand. Also, the game takes place in a city build inside a steampunk golfball.

Out of interest, have to played Just Cause 3? That game (and its forebear, to a lesser extent) had excellent helicopter gunships.

There’s a strong sense that this is a real problem and it’s getting worse. It may have even killed Sense8. Season 1 did reasonably okay, but before Season 2 dropped Netflix had an unexpected big hit with 13 Reasons Why. They diverted a lot of resources into building up that buzz, getting more marketing done for it etc…

To be fair, a lot of the people who made BioWare BioWare left a long, long time ago. They’ve moved on to other studios and projects. The Banner Saga trilogy (last game out this year) is made by ex-BioWare devs and is exactly the kind of narratively experimental, morally challenging game that BioWare used to make.…

Steam tells me that I have 216 games, about 50 of which I haven’t played. A lot of it is down to game-specific stuff - I’ve enjoyed reading about Crusader Kings II but have never felt the inclination to boot it up despite getting it in a sale - but a lot of it is down to time investment. I have a fondness for large,…

A lot of people expressed similar issues with the “surgical disguises” donned in TNG and DS9 in the 1990s. The conclusion was that it should be not thought about too hard.

I’d go with it. Most satisfyingly, it explains why he needs Burnham. He knows Mirror Burnham is missing or dead, so he can use Prime Burnham to infiltrate the Mirror Universe and get the information he needs to pull off his rebellion.