Books 51-53

51) Conan - the Road of Kings, the Scrolls of Skelios and  the Heretics of Tarantia: These are the other Conan RPG books I got from Dr. CPunk. The Road of Kings is one of the best World Gazeteers I've come across, with lots of plot hooks, tons of meaty detail and, blessedly, stats for Conan himself that are possible within the game mechanics (avoiding a common problem with media property sourcebooks). OK, Conan is insanely badass, but I have seen other 4d6 drop low AD&D characters with his stats, meaning it's possible for your character to be just as insanely badass. if the  ook as a flaw it's that it repeats some common information in each country entry (such as details on the Church of Mitra, which is common across all the Hyborian countries). That's the perpetual tossup between making each country entry as complete as possible or save space by having you refer elsewhere. The Scrolls of Skelios is a good solid book of magical options for the Conan game, with plenty of new spells and monsters - just enough to finish fleshing out the system, and if I ever run it the spell lists will stop right there rather than have sourcebook proliferation. The Heretics of Tarantia is a Conan Module, and it's everything you _don't_ want in  a Cona  Module - an urban based conspiracy mystery where the PCs are dragged into because a priest dies at their feet, so the city ruler forces them to handle the investigation under threat of punishment. Plus, the villain is obvious a mile away. Who published this drek for Conan? Still, that's one clunker out of a pile of good stuff!

52) The Painter of Battles: one of Arturo-Perez Reverte's modern stories, it stands out in that the main female character isn't irredeemably evil and dragging along the hapless, lovestruck hero to be patsy for her own ends. While that makes it different, it certainly wasn't one of his stronger works.

53) the Manual of Detection: this is the first work of Jedediah Berry, and it was well worth picking up. It's part of the odd Genre of dream mysteries set in unnatrually dreary cities, which is just large enough for you to be aware of its antecedents without it being a mass of cliches. Our central character, Charles Unwin, is a clerk at a large detective agency, cleaning up the case files of a fameous detective (who has faced a Dick Tracey like rogues gallery) who Unwin has never met face to face (against company regulations you see). His very orderly life already thrown into disarray by a new fascination with a woman he spied at the train station, he is shocked to discover that his detective is missing and, against all protocol, he has been promoted to detective. He is armed only with his bicycle, umbrella, a copy of the angency's Manual of Detection, 17 years of analyzing case files and the help of a nacoleptic assistant. The book was very engaging, and, if it draws too heavily from its predecessors it does so with style.