I should love Sunless Sea.
It’s a game with so many great ideas, so many wonderful concepts working together. Almost everything that Sunless Sea is trying to do is something that I want games to do well.
I should love Sunless Sea, but somehow I find myself underwhelmed.
Dark Blood is the second book in the Tristopolis series, the sequel to Bone Song. I read the first book recently, and wrote about it here. Almost everything – positive and negative – that I said about Bone Song applies to Dark Blood too. The books have the same setting, and the same strength – the elaborate Gothic setting, the bleak, mysterious tone.
Dark Blood has a new plot, and an updated cast, but the fundamentals are the same – it’s still mostly about a weary detective a city built on the bones of the dead and staffed by zombies and wraiths. Sometimes, a series will jar between books, and you’ll end up with two very different things under the same label. That is not the case here.
It’s been a while since I’ve read sci-fi, and Bone Song isn’t even really sci-fi: it’s a strange cross between Noir crime fiction, dark fantasy, and science fiction, all rolled into one.
Donal Riordan is a cop in Tristopolis, a city powered by the suffering of the dead. Tasked with protecting an opera singer from having her bones harvested for their dreams, Donal uncovers the edges of a vast conspiracy that affects all levels of Tristopolis’ government. Continue reading “Bone Song – John Meaney (Review)”
Inconsistent Pacing 