Morning Ramble 393: New Game, Old Books, and more Runaways

Today I woke up to two surprises…Raymond Feist is coming to Kindle and Fortnite is out for my PS4. Couple that with the latest Runaways issue and I’ve got plenty to ramble about…

Raymond Feist’s Magician: Apprentice on Kindle

This is the opening book for a series I read a while back…like back in high school. Actually, I’ve never finished the epic story since the entire series covers something like 30 books and only came to a conclusion in the past few years…before I started reading again regularly. In any case, it’s finally coming to the Kindle and Audible and I’ll take that opportunity to get through the whole thing…I think. 30 books is quite a few and I’m also getting the itch to reread and finish the Drizzt series by R. A. Salvatore. I’m just astonished that I just happened to be checking to see if I could find my copy and when I checked online, the kindle edition was being announced. From what I recall, the series focuses on a kid who grows up to be a powerful magician and then has to deal with rifts that spawn between his world and another world that is staging and invasion. Creatively drawn from D&D style gameplay, this series really set my imagination free back in the day and from my understanding, the later novels are as good as the earlier ones.

Fortnite released

I’ve been tangentially following Fortnite since I heard about it at Comic-Con back in 2012 and I suppose it ran into some issues since it’s been 5 years and it looks like they’re finally in Early Access. Granted, it’s on PC and console so that’s probably part of the reason for taking so long, but back in 2012, they were talking about a Beta, and I didn’t see an Alpha till 2016. Anyway, it is here and so far it looks pretty good. I haven’t had much opportunity to play around ingame, but all the parts seem to be there on the PS4 version and I did something I’ve been avoiding…I purchased a full price early access game. With the game going free-to-play next year though, I may hold off on encouraging my friends to get into the game unless it really knocks my socks off. Time will tell.

Runaways (2004) #10

Runaways (2004) #10 – Teenage Wasteland: Conclusion
By Brian K. Vaughn, Adrian Alphona, and Craig Yeung

At the end of Issue 9, we left Nico (aka Sister Grimm) with Topher after she discovers he’s a vampire. If that’s not bad enough, he’s been lying to the Runaways all along – he was not escaping his evil parents, he was actually using his minions to commit crimes and the team disrupted their latest heist.

Spotting an opportunity, Topher decides to ‘turn’ Nico so she’ll help him kill her friends, but as soon as he sheds her blood, the Staff of One emerges and shoots through Topher’s chest. Somehow it didn’t kill him, but Alex shows up to save the day. He smacks down the vampire and runs with Nico back into their hideout to warn the others. But Topher isn’t gonna be taken down that easily, he follows them into the Hostel and starts putting the beat down on the Runaways. And he takes most of them outta commission but then Lucy In The Sky offers to be his first true victim. Presenting her neck for a bite, Topher obliges and is destroyed by Lucy’s solar energy.

A good fight, a good resolution, and an enjoyable issue – these kids have a lot to learn. I rate this issue a B+.