The Spook's Curse

by Joseph Delaney
  It's actually taken me a while to find this book in the library.
   I originally became interested in this series when I borrowed an audio book of The Spook's Apprentice. I really liked it, so I've been looking for a while, but whenever I come across the series in a library, I couldn't remember which one was next on the series. But now I've finally read it.
   It's about the Spook and Tom going to the funeral of one of the Spook's brothers. The Spook also wants to destroy the Bane, a spirit that he'd been defeated by before. Also, the Quistor, a fanatic, is going around accusing everyone of being a witch or warlock and then burning them, and he considers Spooks to be warlocks because of their jobs. And he has captured Alice, who comes from a family of real witches, and is Tom's friend. The Bane can also control people's minds, causing them to give it blood, and is trying to use them to get back at the Spook.
   I found this story to be suspenseful at times, in a very good way that I liked, because Tom doesn't know who he can trust, and is often confused about whether to stop Alice from doing from what she's doing or not. Alice is a very interesting character.

Links are now up!

Ok, just to let you know, the links on the "Stuff to Look out for" page are mostly up.

Dragonforce

   I recently went out and got the album Twilight Dementia by Dragonforce. This album is a live recording of one of their performances. This is also my first Dragonforce album. After I listened to Soldiers of the Wasteland, then to a studio version, the live version sounded better, because of the parts where the audience is yelling ay ay ay during some of the slower bits, and it really sounds better.
   And on a few side notes:
   I am starting on a story. It's set in the future, and is about a girl named Tanya, her (probably) crazy sister Selena, friend bird-girl  Amanda and her part-dragon adoption father Flare, and they have to survive for a week while they wait for a space ship to take them off-planet and away from a gang that killed Lilith, Tanya's other sister. I'll also be doing drawing of the characters, and I might put them on if I can work out how a scanner works.
   Also, in Guild Wars 2, I think that there should be a playable Tengu race.

Guild Wars

Recently I want and bought the Guild Wars Trilogy off steam, then I want and got the Eye of the North Expansion. I'm having alot of fun with this game, though it takes ages to get to the Eye of theNorth using the characters I've already got. Generally, for secondary professions, I've gone for a ranger, just so I can have an animal companion. I've been wondering, though, how you can look like monsters in towns. I've seen blobs, giants, golems, and pets, though I can't see mine in town. My favourite classes are Dervish and assassin, the assassin because it's satisfying when you can chain together a massive combo, and the dervish because they can fight groups of enemies effectively. It is annoying, though, how in Nightfall, one of the quests involves getting the rank of first spear, and I've run out of quests to do, so I have to go kill fifty-odd monsters of a spesific type.

Oathbreaker: Assassin's Apprentice

by S R Vaught and J B Redmond.
   The version that I read is actually an "uncorrected bound proof", so it's may be slightly different to the published version.
   This book is about a boy named Aron, who is taken away by the Stone, who are a large group of people who are trained as assassins. The other guild, Thorn, train healers. Aron's master, Stormbreaker, looks after him, and has a legacy to call storms. Aron becomes friends with Zed, who also works with Stormbreaker. Almost as soon as Aron leaves his family, they are killed by Brailing guard, and their spirits are sent to kill Aron, Stormbreaker, Windblown, and the girl named Dari who Aron found being carried with them, and they travel to Triune, where the Stone are trained. Meanwhile, the Thorn attempt to murder Nic, a prince.
   I thought this book was interesting because of the characters, especially Stormbreaker. The book is written from multiple perspectives, Aron, Dari, and Nic's, but is in third person instead of first person. The end of the book reminded me a bit of Alanna: The First Adventure, because it has a sense of them going somewhere haunted together. I would probably like to read the next book later.

MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Pyro's Mildly Disturbing mask

Two evil things: one, halloween, and there are new maps, and two, I started a 40k Chaos Daemons army. First, I'll talk about a TF2 map: Mann Manor. This map is a haunted mansion. When you play on it, it is a three point CP map. BUT there are two changes to this map. First, occasionally gifts will appear, and whoever picks one up first gets a halloween mask, one of nine one for each class, but anyone can wear any hat. There masks aren't as interesting as the Mildly Disturbing Halloween Mask, which for the pyro has a picture of a red duck with an ! above it's head. Cute. But the main feature of this map is the "Horseless Headless Horsemann" (yes, with two ns"). If you assist in dealing a near fatal or fatal (actually, temporarily fatal) attack, you will get a hat called "The Horseless Headless Horsemann's Head", which is an evil pumpkin head. If your near fatal blow was a melee attack, you will also receive some haunted metal (which I don't have yet:(), which can be used in crafting "The Horseless Headless Horsemann's Skullcutter", (if I have to write that ONE MORE TIME...) or something like that. It's basically a fancy eyelander. Just to show you've beaten him in melee, which is not easy, seeing he has a one hit kill melee attack, and (I think) 2000 HP + 300 per player in-game. He can't kill ubercharged people or scouts using BONK! punch, and a spy using the dead ringer won't usually be killed (someone could work out how much damage he does, since you'd multiply the lost HP by 10 since the dead ringer absorbs 90% of damage.
  And the Chaos Daemons, well, I've only got 20 bloodletters and Skulltaker, and I'm thinking of expanding with a Daemon Prince. Oh well.

Red

I went to see this movie with one of my friends, for his birthday. I'd seen a review of this on The Movie Show and I thought that it looked interesting. The statement of "overkill" definitely fits, as seen early on when Frank sets off some bullets in a frying pan and several people appear with machine-guns and shred the house with automatic fire. There are also silly parts, like when the stuffed pig containing a folding-stock grenade launcher, which is fired directly into someone, then when another man throws a grenade, he whacks it right back with the stock, then a girl pops up with an RPG-7 and fires it at the three of them. Marvin faces her down, with a revolver. When she fires her second RPG, he fires a shot right through it, exploding it, and the woman spontaneously explodes for some reason as well. Quite a fun movie, with lots of action mixed with comedy. I liked it alot.

Strange Angels

by Lili St.Crow.
    This book is about a girl named Dru Anderson. She's the daughter of a monster hunter, and helps him when he goes out to "work", by being able to see things he can't. Unfortunately, one night he goes out without her, and comes back an undead zombie. She gets away, and at school, meets Graves, who finds her a place to stay at the mall and becomes friends with her, when he is bitten by a werewulf, but does not become one completely, instead becoming a half-breed type, so he doesn't "change" like others do.
  I really liked this book. It has a good story, lots of great moments, and I like this sort of supernatural theme in writing. Action supernatural, that is. I'm now reading the next book in the series, called "Betrayals", and there appears top be another book coming out this year-or maybe it was already released, and I didn't notice.