"To obtain anything, something of equal value must be lost. This is the principle of Equivalent Exchange." In an alternate world in which the mystical scientific discipline of "Alchemy" (renkinjutsu) serves as the central power for development of mankind's capabilities, the early 1900s are both wildly different and yet somehow familiar. Edward Elric and his brother Alfonse are orphaned when their mother dies, their father having left mysteriously years before. But Edward and Alfonse are young alchemists, and [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Terry Brooks’ _Shannara_
August 13, 2012 By 6 Comments
In 1976, I first entered the world of the Lord of the Rings, and my hunger for epic fantasy was suddenly insatiable. In 1977, I saw this huge book with a group of people – human, elven, and dwarf, I thought – around a sword in a stone. A book titled The Sword of Shannara. I immediately grabbed it up – the first of many purchases Mr. Terry Brooks would convince me to make – and took it home. There were obvious similarities to The Lord of the Rings – many of them quite deliberate. But there was a great deal that was [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Chrono Trigger
May 21, 2012 By 2 Comments
When my wife and I were married in 1995, one of our wedding gifts – partly as a joke – was a Super Nintendo gaming system. There were a few games we occasionally played but it was more an in-joke for the group than anything else. At that time we were also heavily into Dragonball/DBZ fandom, with my wife specifically a fan of Akira Toriyama's art. So when, some months later, we heard about a new video game, a so-called "RPG", that Toriyama had done the design work on, we decided to get it, mostly for the neat character [ Continue reading... ]
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