Black: The Fall is precisely in the vein of the games mentioned above. A 2.5D side-scroller, players are tasked with guiding a character, in this case a robot-esque man, through a series of traps and environmental puzzles. Jumping, dashing, activating buttons, and an arm-mounted laser are the tools at your disposal. Die, and you respawn where you left off, the puzzle still in front of you.
Best friends Jack and Wynn have set out into the deep wilderness of Canada for a two-week canoe trip. Dropped off in the middle of nowhere, they are surprised to to run into a couple of other parties on the river. They meet a pair of drunk rednecks, who are quickly left behind. But they never have a chance to meet the second pair; only the sound of the couple's argument can be heard carrying through the trees. But nothing prepares them for a forest fire appearing on the horizon. Jack and Wynn outdoor veterans, however, they proceed carefully. But no matter how cautious they are, some things simply cannot be prepared for.
Nora Seed is a woman living in London. Her life largely directionless, she was briefly in a band, chose to study philosophy at uni, and now in her late 20s works in a record shop earning minimum wage. Likewise single, her only companionship are a couple long-distance social media friends and a cat, Voltaire. But even those circumstances are subject to change, and when they do, Seed elects to end it all. Situation is, however, that she never gets a chance to finish the job. Ending up at the midnight library, she has the opportunity to see life in a way we can only imagine.
Familiar territory, Hadrian Marlowe kicks off the collection in “Demons of Arae”. Commanding an army, he is tasked with suppressing a pirate insurrection on an alien planet. The real enemy, however, has yet to show its “demon” head. First-person Hadrian, the story is very comfortable, if not a little over the top. It does, however, complement certain scenes in Demon in White.
Right off the bat: get out of here with politics. We're talking about the individual's decision. Who in their right mind thinks: There are riots occurring in the next state. So, I'll strap on my assault rifle, grab a first aid kit, and jump into the fray. Nothing bad will happen, right? Sorry. Guns and riots don't mix. It's not altruism, it's stupidity. And its stupidity costing two lives that Rittenhouse will likely be acquitted of.
The Crook Factory is a story told by retired FBI agent Joe Lucas. Half Irish and half Mexican, he has used his heritage for a couple successful missions in Latin America. Getting the call from J. Edgar Hoover at the outset of the novel, he receives his newest mission—something so outrageous he almost can’t believe it. His job is to represent the FBI alongside Ernest Hemingway as they do their counter-espionage part to gather information and hinder the Nazis in the Caribbean. What follows is double-agents, colonial cities, palms and parties, and the blue seas between Cuba and Florida.
In structure, A Visit from the Goon Squad is like a food web that’s been chopped up and put out of evolutionary sequence. Rather than the line of dominoes most novels are, Goon Squad moves from this animal to that, bouncing over to this phylum and rank a decade ago, then to this species in the future. Each chapter focuses on a new specific person or situation. There are stories of women, men, rich, poor, black, white, young, old, and everything between—a real spectrum of humanity linked in direct fashion (family or friends) or indirect fashion (same time and space or industry).
The author’s name escapes me as I sit here, but there is one, a famous one from the early 20th century, you know that guy whose name I can’t remember, who said something to the effect “Fiction which does not concern itself with life and death is pointless”. I paraphrase, mightily, but you get the idea. Stories themed beyond mortality do not address the burning question of life, and are therefore of lesser quality. If there is any late 20th century writer who has taken this to heart, it’s Don DeLillo. (Cormac McCarthy also, but this is a DeLillo review, natch.) In his 2001 novel/novella The Body Artist, he brings the idea front and center through the eyes of a performing artist.
The Body Artist is the story of a few months in the life of Lauren Hartke. Married to the famous film director Rey Robles, the story opens with the couple in a quiet but sublimely tense scene over breakfast. More happening than the simple details of toast and coffee, in the next scene, Robles is found dead of suicide in his ex-wife’s apartment. Hartke withdrawing from the world afterwards, she finds solace in an isolated life, that is, until a man reveals himself in the attic one day. Forced to care for the man, Hartke’s life changes directions yet again.
In Pandemic, one to five players are charged with finding the cure to a global, viral outbreak. The board a map of the world with major cities interconnected by travel routes, players start by taking on one of five unique roles to fight the virus, then set forth on their globetrotting mission. Set collection combined with action points, players must collectively use their wits to move efficiently around the board knocking back outbreaks, setting up research stations, and collecting the cards necessary to find a cure. There are, after all, three losing conditions compared to only one winning condition.
While Island Reich moves like a school of minnows, the central story—the biggest minnow—is Bill O’Hagan. Convicted as a thief just as WWII knocks on Britain’s door, he’s given a choice: hang by the neck or put his skills as a safecracker to use for British intelligence. And so it is that as Hitler invades the Channel Islands, Bill is given the fastest agent training possible and airdropped onto the main island Andernay, there to pose as a British aristocrat while finding and cracking an important safe. To tell the rest is to spoil the story, suffice to say that with elements of the British monarchy, American intelligence, and a tight, tense, a detailed historical setting all coming into play, it’s a thrill. (That O’Hagan is not James Bond likewise lends the story a little realism.)
