What better cure for melancholy than to serve under a captain whose obsessed pursuit of a leviathan will surely doom all involved?

Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall

What could possibly go wrong with playing along with an unhappy teen's delusions?

Babel no Toshokan by Tsubana

A bundle for Mists of Akuma, the tabletop roleplaying campaign setting of Eastern fantasy noir steampunk from Storm Bunny Studios for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition.

Bundle of Holding: Mists of Akuma

Seven books new to me. four fantasy, one horror, one ostensibly non-fiction, and one romance. Three are series. Yeah, there does seem to be a shortage of science fiction.

I had a bunch of stuff come in just after the cut-off time for these. Next week will look very different.

Books Received, February 14 — February 20

TTRPG campaign idea.

PCs are field agents in charge of finding and dealing with arcane occupational safety violations. That six-sided summoning pentagram? Flagged. That storeroom where the universal solvent is next to the lemonade? Flagged.

That deadly-trap-filled dungeon abandoned by its creator when the maintenance fees got too high? Red tagged.

This isn't the same as my recent FabUlt campaign. That was about discouraging the worst excesses in a world run by oligarch mages and there weren't really regulations. This would be set in a regulatory state, and would be more an exploration of normalization of deviance.

Classic SF was chock-full of dubious ideas; Martin Gardner supplied the antidote.

One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

What hope has 10th century Icelandic culture against an armed and moderately educated 20th century American?

The Man Who Came Early by Poul Anderson

Ben Reich plans a perfect murder in a world where getting away with murder is impossible.

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester