Books I read in 2022, part 2

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection: Lifetheft by David Micheline, mark Bagley, and others

This is what I think of as my “default” spider-man; recently married, vaguely 30ish, big eyes on the costume, and no clones in sight.  This closes out David Micheline’s run on Amazing Spider-man, which kind of winds down with a wimper.  I enjoyed it very much, but I’m not sure how this would play to someone who wasn’t there when it was new.

The Interdependency Series: The Collapsing Empire, The Consuming Fire, The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

Fun, fast paced, pulpy space opera from start to finish.  This is Scalzi with the dial set to “Full Scalzi”, and it’s tremendous.  You can sort of tell that it was going to be two books originally since the second book just kind of… stops, but I enjoyed every page of it.

Back when I had delusions about being an author, there was a kind of zippy adventure science fiction I wanted to write, but could never make work—or, in the circles I moved in, find good examples of.  Scalzi in general, and these books specifically, are exactly the kind of books I wanted to write.  I don’t record this out of envy or jealousy—far from it!—it’s something of a relief to see that what I was groping towards al those years ago actually can work.

Dungeons & Dragons: Fizban's treasury of dragons

A surprisingly dull and lifeless collection of material, considering the subject matter.  Books all about one kind of monster have always been a mixed bag, and this does not break the streak.  The best part of the book was that it didn’t include stats for Dragonlances or Draconians, which essentially confirmed that a full DragonLance book was coming.

Dungeons & Dragons: Mordenkain’s Monsters of the Multiverse

The sort of book you get when an edition is wrapping itself up.  Somewhere between a “greatest hits” album and massive errata update, this is a collection of all the non-core books playable species from the 5th Edition line to date, along with the greatest hits of the non-core books monsters.  In a lot of ways, this and last year’s Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything are an understated “5th and a half” edition, but even more so this feels like getting the house in order before moving on to “One D&D” next year.

This finishes the job started in Tasha changing “Races” from fixed physical and moral points to, essentially, different cool aliens you can play.  Long overdue, very well done.  If this in an indicator of how the next version/revision is going to go, I’m looking forward to it.

And, we finally have the Genasi rules somewhere I can find them.