Sarevok! Sarevok!

Awesome new games come out every month. So, of course, I've spent the last month or two playing through a game from the 1990s. For the second time. I'm pleased to report that Baldur's Gate is as good as ever.

Periodically, a game comes out that's so good that its fans aren't content to merely play and praise it. Fervent mod communities grow up around these games, with gamers pouring their love back into the game. This makes the game even more fun for others, and drastically extends the shelf life. I kept on playing Civ II and Civ IV long after their respective sequels came out, largely because I had a steady stream of fresh content from other fans to explore. The original Half-Life was infamous for its extended life, which spawned off some other franchises as well.

I'd originally played Baldur's Gate way back in... it was probably the summer of 2001. I think that I had already played Ultima IX: Ascension, which explicitly ended and capped what until then had been my favorite RPG series. I was ready to find another franchise that could fill the void left behind by Ultima, and the two series that were most often mentioned were Baldur's Gate and Elder Scrolls. I'm not sure now why I picked up Baldur's Gate - probably because it was on sale, or perhaps because I still remembered the frightening stories of Daggerfall's bugginess.

I played Baldur's Gate straight-up: just the original game, without the expansion or any of the mods, fix-packs, or other contributions. It took a little while to get into it. While I'd enjoyed playing pencil-and-paper RPGs, I'd never played Dungeons & Dragons, so I didn't come to the game with the specific knowledge of its magic system, THAC0, dual-classing, and other arcana. I did love that wonderfully thick manual, though, and probably read it cover-to-cover (including the spell descriptions) before I started to play. As previously noted, I selected to play as a male half-elf bard named Cirion. I'm pretty sure that I specifically didn't play as a mage or a cleric because the magic system seemed kind of overwhelming, and with the restrictive rules around memorization, I was worried that I'd spend too much time fiddling with my spells, and still not make the right decisions.

I'm pretty sure that I enjoyed playing BG1. I must have, otherwise I wouldn't have kept on going. That said, almost all of my vivid memories of the series, and my unabashed praise for it, are due to Baldur's Gate 2 and the Throne of Bhaal expansion, which built on BG1's foundation and added an incredibly rich social system, including intra-party dynamics that felt truly organic, plus the famous romance storylines, stronghold-centric professional quests... just lots of awesome stuff that made the Sword Coast seem like a fully-realized world with interesting people inside.

So, one of the awesome things that the fans did was take the best aspects of Baldur's Gate 2, and bring them back to the original game. This happened in a couple of ways. First, from the most technical perspective, they actually took the effort to get the Baldur's Gate 1 game to run on the Baldur's Gate 2 engine. BG1 and BG2 were only separated by a few years, but BG2 did have better graphics, a better interface, and a fuller implementation of the D&D rules that added things like specialization kits, dual-wielding weapons, and so on. I found EasyTutu, which wraps up this conversion and some other useful stuff in a single convenient install package. (Incidentally - all this software is great, and I really appreciate that the fans don't show any inclination towards allowing piracy. I'm also really glad that I held on to all my install CDs throughout the six moves since I first played!) There have also been fan-based efforts to fix some of the bugs that Bioware never squashed, or otherwise clean stuff up. I vaguely remembered Baldurdash, which I think I used during my original play through BG2. It seems like this has now been supplanted by the BG2 Fixpack. (Another nice thing about Tutu: pretty much all of the user-provided enhancements for BG2 now can improve your BG1 experience.) It seems like these days, most of the fan activity occurs around the Gibberlings 3 and the Pocket Plane Group web sites (with some notable assistance from sorcerers.net as well - man, I love this kind of competition!).

In addition to the purely technical improvements, fans have also been contributing a wealth of content to fill out the game. From what I've seen so far, it doesn't seem to be quite as extensive as that done for BG2, but it's still an impressive set of stuff. Again, a lot of this is taking good ideas from BG2 and bringing them back to BG1. For example, one of the things I enjoyed best about BG2 was party bantering. Sometimes, while you're just randomly walking around, one of your party members will strike up a conversation with you. How you respond to that conversation will help determine how much that member likes you, or may open up other side-quests. Even better, sometimes party members will just talk amongst themselves, without your involvement. The results are often hilarious, but sometimes are sobering, or intriguing, or deliciously awkward. Anyways, I don't remember that happening very much at all in BG1, but people have now gone back and written a bunch of new banters for your characters.

And really, that's the thing that impresses me the most. I don't know why it would. It takes a relatively rare set of skills in order to, say, be able to convert a FPS game into a mystery whodunit. On the other hand, pretty much anyone can write. And yet, when I find someone who can write well, it makes me unusually happy. Well, here we have a case where dozens - heck, maybe even hundreds - of strangers have collaborated through the Internet to write a novel's worth of text, which isn't only well-written, but which also manages to match the tone of characters who were created by an entirely separate set of people. I mean, wow... that isn't just talent, that isn't just hard work, that's artistry.

Before starting up this new game, I spent... heh, it was probably about two hours, just installing all the software and researching which mods to install and how to best do them. One thing I was already excited about was checking out the Tales of the Sword Coast. I'd skipped the expansion when I first played the game, going straight from BG1 to BG2. I also installed EasyTutu, of course. Then, I layered on the other user-provided content. Fortunately, the community has simplified stuff greatly, combining related items into single mods. The advantage is that there are only a few files that you need to download; the disadvantage is that a single installer might ask you twenty or fifty questions about what kind of mod experience you want to have ("Do you want unlimited stacks of ammo? Do you want unlimited stacks of potions? Do you want full hit points granted on each level up?"). It would have been nice for a simple option like "Pick the most common answers." But, whatever... it took less than an hour, and I've gotten months of pleasure from the results.

Looking back, I think the single most enjoyable mod was the BG1 NPC Project. This mod significantly expands the amount of content related to your NPCs, adding personal side-quests, a lot more banters, and interjections. (It also added romances, but unfortunately I wasn't able to experience any of these.) Again, what's most impressive to me was how all of this was done by enhancing the already-existing BG1 characters. Back what I was playing BG2, I saw a good number of mods that added stand-alone new NPCs. That's cool, but I was never particularly tempted to check them out. Here, though, they've taken the faint outlines of personalities that were shown before, and expanded them into deeper three-dimensional characters. In some cases, this is taking the revelations we got in BG2 and retrofitting them into the prequel - we get to know Minsc and Jaheira VERY well by the end of BG2, for example. However, a lot of these characters' stories end after BG1, which makes me all the more glad that I can get to know them better.

After running through a bunch of installs and offering a silent petition to Tymora, I was ready to set foot back in the Forgotten Realms. Right away, I ran into an interesting quandary. I wanted to make my new play-through a new experience, and so I needed to make different decisions about how to play the game. That meant, for starters, not rolling another bard. However, what to do about alignment? Cirion had been a neutral good character, so for completeness, I really should play as chaotic evil or lawful evil; that would let me pursue a couple of bad-guy quests that I hadn't done before, and also give me a very different experience both in playing the remaining quests and in role-playing the game in general. However, I just really didn't want to play an evil character. It can be fun in little bursts, but for an epic, ongoing stretch over a long period of time and across multiple titles, I knew it would become too dispiriting. I wanted to LIKE my character. I'm pretty much neutral good in real life, so I decided that alignment was one area where I would accept a repeat from the 2001 play-through.

So: my new character was Sebrina, a female elf sorceress. My normal go-to character is a thief, but that felt a bit too close to my previous bard. Having played through the whole saga before, I felt like I now had a good handle on arcane magic, so some sort of mage made sense. I wanted to take advantage of the BG2 kits offered by tutu; I believe that BG1 only offered standard specialist mages (Invokers, Illusionists, Necromancers, etc.). Sorcerers sounded awesome, since they didn't need to memorize spells, by far my least favorite aspect of the D&D magic system. (Being ignorant, I initially thought that this meant that sorcerers can cast an unlimited number of spells per day. Not so: you are still limited to a certain number of spells per circle per day, but you don't need to pre-determine which spells those will be.) You can't dual-class a sorcerer, so I didn't want to play as a human; that left being either an elf or a half-elf, and I decided to play this game as a full elf.

After leaving Candlekeep, I of course joined up with Imoen, then headed out. I soon met Xzar and Montaron; as in my first play-through, I joined them in order to better handle any abuse I encountered. I think that in the first game, I might have headed straight down to Nashkell after they suggested it; here, though, I knew that I wanted to drop those two ASAP, so I went to Friendly Arm and joined with Khalid and Jaheira. I was more comfortable with that party, but I knew that I was already on the wrong track, since my original party had also included Imoen, Khalid, and Jaheira. I resolved to find a sufficient number of good-aligned characters that I could form an at least slightly different group.

Now, in my first game, I had very briefly traveled with Dynaheir. I think that it was almost immediately after rescuing her that I went to the Nashkel mines, where she had perished during the battle with Mulahey. (Whether through the BG2 engine or one of the mods I installed, it looks like permadeath was no longer a problem on this latest play-through, but in the original game, if one of your characters died just the wrong way, they won't just die, but explode into parts, which made resurrection impossible.) At that time I had Xan immediately available to take her place, and had finished the game with him serving as my mage, but I resolved that this time I would keep Dynaheir alive and get to know her better.

That meant I needed to rescue her first. I went to Nashkel, joined with Minsc, booted Montaron and his buddy, then struck out west for the gnoll stronghold. It took me an incredibly long time to find Dynaheir; for some reason, I initially couldn't see her at the bottom of any of the prisoner pits, so I ended up revisiting all of them before I could find her. She and Minsc were gladly reunited. I was already finding the new benefits of the BG1 NPC project, as everyone was more chatty, and I was receiving a new quest related to Dynaheir's missing journal.

Jaheira had traditionally taken care of my healing needs, so if I was going to replace her, I'd need to find a cleric. I knew where Viconia was, and kind of wanted to do more with her this time, but also knew there was no way she'd get along with my nascent good party. Instead, at the Nashkell carnival I found and rescued Branwen, a neutral cleric. I don't think I'd even encountered her in my previous game, or knew how to save her, so that was a plus right there. I gently let Jaheira go, and she and Khalid returned to the Friendly Arm Inn.

BG1 does have an unusually large set of paired characters. Many of the NPCs you find essentially have their own small parties; you can join up with them all at once, or not at all, but you can't split them up (unless one of the characters is dead). Xzar and Montaron go together, as do Jaheira and Khalid, and Minsc and Dynaheir (after you've rescued her). I now needed another warrior type to replace the departed Khalid. Minsc is a great brawler, and Branwen is quite useful especially since she can wear strong armor, but I had two mages and a thief to protect.

Outside High Hedge, I found another character who I didn't remember from my first play-through, an elf ranger named Kivan. I'm not sure if I'd just missed him, or if my party had already been full before I met him. He's a compelling character, though, especially for a good-aligned party. He has very high Strength and Dexterity; I almost always used him as an archer, but he was one of my only characters with over 18 Strength, and later on he got quite deadly at dual-wielding bastard swords. (Weirdly enough, he gets a custom-made magic spear early on that only he can wield, even though he has no proficiency with the weapon.) I was now pretty well set: I could use Branwen to soak up damage, while Minsc dealt heavy blows up front, Kivan ruthlessly attacked from a distance, and my mages did their heavy firepower thing from the rear lines.

I picked the plot back up in the Nashkel mines. All my wandering had led to a lot more experience, and I'm pretty sure that I was heading in at least a few levels higher than before. I made short work of the hordes of kobolds roaming the levels, and even the climactic battle wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd remembered. I was tempted to get Xan, but decided to stick with my guns and keep around Dynaheir.

One of the great things about BG1 is how loose it is. A lot of RPGs start out with a tightly focused plot that sort of guides you through the world for the first part of the game, and then eventually open up to let you explore and do what you want. In BG1, though, not only are you free to go pretty much anywhere almost from the beginning, but you don't even really know what the plot of the game is going to be. You can spend a long time just wandering before you stumble across the major plots that are taking place between Baldur's Gate and Amn, which adds to the sense that this is a full world that you're passing through, not just an excuse for setting a game.

All that is to say, one could very quickly run through all seven chapters in the game, but you'd be missing out on a lot of the world and atmosphere that Bioware created. I took my time after Nashkel, exploring all the various wilderness areas, doing the fun mini-quests and chatting up everyone I met. I knew that a lot of what I was seeing, I was seeing for the first time; but, for any given encounter, I was never entirely sure whether I was seeing "premium" content that was added from Tales of the Sword Coast; or "fan" content that was inserted by the BG1 NPC project and related mods; or stuff from vanilla BG1 that I had missed in my first (FAQ-less) play through this huge world.

I was pretty happy with the course I was charting, but still wondered if I could do more to shake things up. I felt like I needed to have Imoen, since she was the only good-aligned thief in the game; and Minsc just has an awesome personality, plus he's the strongest NPC in the game and a must-have for good parties. Since they had both been in my first game, though, I wanted to try doing something different with them. I couldn't do a whole lot with Minsc; in retrospect, I really should have tried the Level 1 NPC mod to change Minsc into a straight-up fighter or berserker. However, I did decide to have him dual-wield maces, instead of being a two-handed-sword guy like before. That was fun; he was able to deliver a ludicrous number of hits per round.

For Imoen, I realized that I could dual-class her into a mage. This is actually what happens in BG2, and I was realizing the the BG1 NPC mod was already strongly insinuating that Imoen was interested in investigating the arcane arts. Why not indulge her, and get a very versatile spellcaster out of the deal?

I thought that the big question would be when to dual-class her. It should be late enough that she could pull her own weight on thievery without any more levels through the rest of the game; but if I waited too long, either she'd never get back her thief skills, or they would come too late to do me any good. It turns out that the question I should have asked was what activities I should do before leveling her up. I was having such a good time wandering throughout the, um, wilderness, which doesn't exactly have a ton of traps and locked chests lying around. I got so much experience from this that, by the time I dualed her over to a mage, we didn't have much wilderness left to explore, which meant that I could really only advance in levels by advancing the plot, which often meant visiting dungeons and other places where a thief would really come in handy.

I was tempted to pick up another thief to tide me over. There are a few female thieves, whose names I forget, that seemed like likely and likeable candidates. However, that would mean booting one of the other members of my party, and I really liked its composition already. Losing one member while Imoen leveled up seven times would mean that they would never fit back in.

So, I just kind of suffered. As much as possible I delayed visiting dungeon-y locations. I'd once tried to visit Durlag's Tower while Imoen was still actively thieving, and was turned back by my very first fight, with a not very friendly Battle Horror. For the cases where I needed to deal with such issues, I would generally just suffer the traps, and try to get Minsc or someone to force open locked chests (sometimes after drinking an appropriate giant strength potion). It was far from elegant, but I could soak up the abuse well enough.

While hunting through the Iron Throne's secret iron mine in the Cloakwood Forest, I stumbled across Yeslick, who perfectly complemented my party. Branwen had been a great asset, but as the only neutral-aligned character, she was never too pleased at our goody-goody two-shoes image. Plus, I loved the idea of getting a legitimate multiclass fighter to go with my cleric; Branwen had been playing that role herself, but pretty much just because she was one of the few people who could wear decent armor. Yeslick could actually develop strong proficiencies in his weaponry.

Heh... now I can't remember why this is, but for some reason I chose to drop Imoen instead of Branwen when I let Yeslick into the party. In general, Imoen is the safest character to drop - she always likes you, so she'll always rejoin you later. But since he was going to replace her, I should have just dumped her. Anyways. I told Imoen to stay put so I could come back and get her. She refused. I thought that was weird; then I realized that it must be because (spoiler alert) you end up flooding the mines and destroying them, thereby killing everyone left inside and preventing yourself from ever returning. Good save, developers! That would have really sucked. Instead, Imoen decided to head back to the Friendly Arm Inn, which by this point was getting rather crowded from members of Sebrina's Party Rejects.

We unclasped another link in the Iron Throne's chain, found the key to the pumps, and shut down their operations. I gently led Branwen down. She stormed off in a huff, no doubt comparing my unfavorably to Tempus. I went back to Friendly Arm, said hello to my favorite half-elves, and picked Imoen back up.

I was having more and more fun as the game continued and Imoen kept leveling up. In my last game, I'd had several weak magic users, but relied on Xan for all my spellcasting. Now, fully half of my party consisted of advanced spellcasters. Sebrina, who eventually rose to a level 9 sorceress, concentrated on offensive magic; she could call down a crazy number of magic missiles, acid arrows, and other badness. (Sorcerers and sorceresses (sp?) are much more limited in the number of spells they can learn; depending on their intelligence, a mage might be able to learn twelve or so spells per circle, while a sorceress can only learn four, and once she learns them, she won't be able to learn any more from that circle. Because of this, and since I plan on continuing this character in BG2, I avoided spending any slots on spells that would be supplanted by more advanced versions later on; Minor Spell Sequencer is incredibly handy in BG1, but I would never want to cast it after I'd learned regular Spell Sequencer in BG2. Stuff like Magic Missile, that keeps improving as you keep on leveling up, is the best choice.) Dynaheir also had an offensive component, as well as spells which were useful for the whole party, like Knock (when Imoen was in apprentice mode) and Haste. (I also used Dynaheir for any spells that I wanted but didn't want Sebrina to learn, Haste being a perfect example. I'm saving Sebrina for Improved Haste, but it's extremely difficult to beat BG1 without access to regular Haste.) Imoen got some good defensive spells, like Mirror Image, Blur, and Invisibility, that would let her get a bit closer to the battlefield. Imoen also eventually picked up on some more strategic offensive spells, like Greater Maeleson.

When all three of the ladies got going - well, it was amazing to behold. I don't think it's exactly cheating, or even power-gaming, since it takes a bit more strategy to keep your rear line safe when you have so few fighters; but the effort was well worth it, as we could blast our way through any problem with ease. It led to a totally different style of play, which was a lot of fun. Each individual battle was riskier, but they also tended to be over much more quickly; the overall effect is a bit like launching a mortar to take care of your skunk problem.

The team as a whole worked well. Of course, Yeslick had just as many spells to contribute; unfortunately, he didn't often get to use his good offensive spells, like Holy Smite, because he was so busy smiting himself with his Mastery in a +2 electrical warhammer. As before, Kivan rained death from behind, and Minsc tore through enemies like so many fleas on a hamster's back. The boss fights were still nicely challenging, and we could swiftly handle the regular conflicts that headed our way. I remember micromanaging almost every fight the first time I played BG1; now, I was comfortable letting the AI handle the majority of them, once I had a few extra hit points as buffers and had assigned reasonable AI scripts to each member.

After flooding the mine but before entering Baldur's Gate, I headed to Ulgoth's Beard, one of the new areas atted by TotSC. Ulgoth's Beard itself is quite small, a little village with just one inn and no shops. However, it's a jumping-off point to several of the new quests added in the expansion. The first one I tried was a quick but weird one, where you're teleported to a snowy waste (possibly an Icewind Dale crossover?) and explore the caves beneath. You eventually learn that this area is a... kind of a magnet, I guess, that pulls in mages that are teleporting over long distances. Once they arrive, the mages are stuck there. They're free to do what they want (mostly building things and squabbling among themselves), but the most popular pasttime is apparently going crazy and trying to kill adventurers. You cut your way through all of them (well, all but one; one of the craziest was actually pretty nice, and offered to help me), eventually retrieving the Magic Macguffin and emerging from the caves before teleporting back to Ulgoth's Beard.

The next quest is a bit more involved. You meet a reclusive scholar, who speaks with a strange accent, and asks for your help in chasing down the mystery of what happened to Baldur, the legendary founder of Baldur's Gate. You travel to Baldur's Gate proper, where you infiltrate a shipping company and steal some sea charts that the scholar has learned of. (This was a fun mini-quest: you need to get a barrel of grog in order to intoxicate the sea-captain.) Once you have the charts, you board a ship and sail off across the waves, replicating Baldur's ancient last journey. A storm arises, wrecking the ship and casting you on the shores of an island.

At first, I was thinking that this would be like Aldous Huxley's The Island, some utopic vision of a peaceful community which is isolated from the grimness of the real world. You swiftly learn that this isn't the case. The little girl you meet at first is friendly and intelligent (like the little girl at the start of Huxley's book), but the community as a whole is quite suspicious and guarded. You eventually meet with the chieftess, who fills you in on the situation: the peace-loving villagers are descended from a ship that wrecked on the island long ago. They occupy only a small section of the island; the rest is overrun by the "others" or "beasts", who look quite like the villagers but smell different (the villagers are all very big on smell), and who violently attack them whenever they venture beyond the walls of the village. The chieftess knows that there is another ship on the island that you might be able to use to leave, but in order to travel there you will need to help them destroy the beasts.

The rest of the village warms to you after you have met with the chieftess, and several of them have little quests to give you. Another little girl wants her doll back, and graciously gives you permission to play with it after you find it. Several people have family members which have gone missing when they dared enter the wilderness. There's only one course of action open, so you head out.

If the talk of "others" puts you in mind of "Lost"... well, yeah, that's not too far from the truth. Very soon after leaving the safety of the gates, you run across a man who asks for your help. You follow him deeper into the woods, where he reveals that what he really wants is supper. He transforms into a werewolf (well, according to the engine, it's actually a "wolfwere"), and he and several of his budies leap on you. Being wolfweres, they're immune to most weapons, but fortunately I had some fairly highly enchanted items, and spells seemed effective.

You continue exploring the island. Sometimes wolves will simply attack you; other times wolfweres will approach, either trying to deceive you with tales of lost children, or taunting you before they attack. Other dangers fill the island as well, including the Sirene Queen, who has lured males from the village to her lair.

Eventually, in the north of the island, you find an old "cabin" which is actually the forecastle of an ancient ship. Inside, you find a slightly insane mage, the last surviving member of Baldur's crew. He doesn't really have all his faculties, but he does let you know that he has spent all of his energies over the last several hundred years just surviving in this small space, keeping the wolves at bay. He entreats you to enter the main part of the ship to retrieve his spellbook, so he can regain his lost spells and help you cleanse the werewolves.

The battle inside the ship is extremely difficult; this is one of the few places in the game where I resorted to cheap tactics like entering a room, then immediately fleeing, in order to lure away one or two enemies from a larger group of foes. I made much use of my Haste spell and other buffs, and rested extensively after clearing each level. Eventually, at the very top, you encounter the head wolfwere and engage him in a bit of dialog. Typically, I'm all for exploring the peaceful option and seeing if there's a way to resolve conflict without battle, but he was mad and so was I. We accused each other of needless slaughter, I accused him of kidnapping a child, and the battle was joined. The higher-level wolfweres were immune to almost all weapons, and they had some nasty spellcasters as well, including some deadly use of the Confuse spell. We struggled for a while; I eventually started making use of Dynaheir's monster summoning spells just to soak up the wolfweres' attention, tried to get the best position I could in the cramped quarters, started sending Minsc and Yeslick up the stairs first to get their attention and then having my weaker spellcasters follow. At last, after several tries I was able to kill them all.

The chests included the mage's spellbook, but just as intriguing, it included Baldur's diary, my ostensible reason for visiting the island in the first place. The diary explained how Baldur had sailed back across the sea to re-visit a land of immense wealth, where he traded and took on more goods. He also had to fight several battles to resolve grudges from his earlier journey there. He needed to replenish the men lost in combat, and so he took on a combination of captives and hirelings. They seemed weak and passive, but were all Baldur had available. Much later, when they were in the middle of the sea, they showed their true colors, transforming into werewolves. They infected much of Baldur's original crew. Their ship wrecked on the island, and... that's all that history knows of Baldur.

I returned the spellbook to the mage, who unceremoniously Dimension Door'd out of there without even a thank-you. Slightly miffed, I looted his little cabin, then headed back to the village. The villagers were mostly delighted to see me, and repeatedly asked/suggested/implied that I stay. They had taken in at least one other outsider before, and many said that with the beasts all slain, the whole island would become a paradise.

Back at the chieftess's hut, I told her what I'd done, and she filled me in on some more details. I had to re-play the dialog since at first I didn't quite believe what I was reading. She had no intention of letting me leave; my reward for slaying the beasts was to become one of them. She did this by giving me the gift of lycanthropy. Yep, that's right - the villagers were all werewolves. I'd thought all along that it was a little weird that they hadn't just said "werewolves" when describing the Others, instead just saying things like "They're like us, but not like us." For all the violence shown by the Others, they weren't the ones who had attacked Baldur and infected the ship. Instead, the whole situation was inverted from what I had originally surmised. The villagers were the descendents of the werewolves who had betrayed Baldur and wrecked him. The Others were the descendents of Baldur's crew, poor Sword Coasters who had been bitten, infected, and then turned into wolfweres. Yes, they were violently trying to kill the villagers, but the villagers had really started the whole mess.

That was cool, and another example of Bioware's suprior story-telling prowess. It's so rare that I'm actually surprised by a plot twist in a game, even an RPG. Developers seem to be so worried that gamers won't follow what's happening that they fall over themselves to foreshadow the heck out of any upcoming development. Here, they did a good job at seeding some clues, but did an even better job at misdirecting my attention, making the whole experience that much greater.

It turns out that not all the werewolves like the idea of accepting newcomers to their tribe; another village leader transformed and attacked us, while the chieftess cheerfully apologized and made her escape. After killing him, we emerged. Almost all the villagers would now transform and attack us once we got close enough. I was (in character) rather upset at the whole thing, and so went on a long detour through the village, killing all of these abominations. One or two of them stayed kind (and humanoid), one of them directing me to the hut which contained a secret passage to the eastern coast. I also met up with Baldur's old mage, who confirmed my understanding of what was happening, and who advised me to board that ship.

After making my way through an underground tunnel, I emerged and confronted the chieftess. She explained that the reclusive scholar I'd met was actually her husband/mate, who had gone ahead to prepare the way. With the wolfweres all dead, and the sea charts I'd brought, and free access to the repaired ship, the werewolves would now be free to leave the island and spread throughout the world. I felt a bit of sympathy for her, but also didn't like the idea of lycanthropy annihilating all the races, so we attacked, defeated her, seized the ship, and returned home. In the coda, back at Ulgoth's Beard, the scholar became furious when he realized what we'd done. A final fight killed him, the pack leader of all the werewolves, and so the lycanthropy curse was broken.

We had now managed to level up Imoen quite a bit, but not enough to get back her thief skills. Unfortunately, there was nowhere else to explore, so we headed into Baldur's Gate to try and finish Chapter 5. I went ahead and did all the quests here, except for the few that very explicitly required a thief (burglarizing the Hall of Wonders and dealing with the Thieves' Guild). I unmasked the doppelgangers that were piloting the Iron Thrones' rivals into oblivion, and in the Iron Throne building proper I started collecting evidence on the organization's plot. I learned that the leaders were meeting in Candlekeep, and so worked with Scar from the Flaming Fist to head back there and confront them.

Once I finally met up with the Iron Throne leaders, Yeslick started bellowing at Rieltar, who had betrayed and imprisoned Yeslick, and desecrated his clan's land and memory. Yeslick, furious, demanded revenge. I don't much like revenge, but I do like Yeslick, who had been a very loyal and reliable companion, so I decided to stand by him, show my support, and take those SOBs down.

This ended up having wide-ranging ramifications. I'm pretty sure that in my first game, it went down slightly differently - I probably wouldn't have attacked them, so either they struck first, or else doppelgangers finished the job. Fighting is very emphatically not allowed in Candlekeep, so my attack caused a lot of problems and estranged me from old acquaintances. Later on, the party became known as the murderers of the Iron Throne leadership - even though we still had a reputation of 20, we were constantly hearing stories about the bad thing we'd done. And, well, they were right - we HAD attacked and killed a group of admittedly bad people. It just set a really different and slightly unsettling tone for the remainder of the game.

In the meantime - we escaped Candlekeep through the catacombs, which proved to be extremely creepy. In the first place, Imoen had raised her mage level equal to, but not greater than, her thief level, and so we were left thief-less in one of the more trap-filled areas of the game. I could slightly compensate by having Yeslick cast Detect Traps, but nobody was equipped to actually disarm traps, and so I needed to send a sacrificial party member forward to take the hits, and see if what lay beyond the traps was compelling enough to damage the rest of the party as well. I typically used Yeslick to do the scouting as well. Having never before played a long time with a dwarf in my party (!), I was just finding out about his amazing saving throws. Apparently this is a standard thing in 2E D&D: the shorter races like dwarves, halflings, and gnomes all get extra bonuses to their saving throws. And so, Yeslick was often able to duck under fireballs, slip past lightning bolts, and otherwise avoid the high-damage traps that he needed to pass through.

Probably the most challenging part to do without a thief was an optional section with a nice treasure trove. It required walking through a long V-shaped hallway that was filled with traps; then through a room filled with phase spiders; then opening a locked container; then going back again. For this, I used Dynaheir, who consumed more potions and scrolls for this one part than anywhere else in the game. She drank a potion to protect her from magic; since all these traps were magical, that meant she could trigger them and not take damage. She also Haste'd herself and drank invisibility, so she could scoot through the Phase Spiders without them seeing her. Finally, she memorized some Knock to open the container.

She got through the corridor all right, checked to make sure that the spiders were out of sight, then cast Knock... only to get a failure. Dang! I'd forgotten that this was a version of the spell that kept magic from coming in OR out; the same stuff defending Dynaheir from traps would keep her from casting her own spells. I'd need to wait for it to wear off. Turns out, that takes a long time. 10 turns' worth. That's 100 rounds, which is 600 seconds, which is 10 minutes. I went to get some dessert while I was waiting.

Finally, that globe was gone, and Dynaheir could Knock. Fortunately, she'd had the spell memorized twice, otherwise I would have been screwed without the ability to rest. She Knocked, grabbed the stash, drank another few more potions, and high-tailed it back to the group.

Overkill? Arguably. I was glad I did it, though. I ended up with one of the Tomes - I forget which one, but it boosted either my Strength or another stat by 1. In other words, it's one of the only items in the entire game that provides a benefit which will actually carry over to BG2.

By the time we escaped Candlekeep and started Chapter 7, Imoen was just a few thousand XP shy of having her skills restored. I'd already cleared out pretty much everything from the map, so I returned to Durlag's Tower. I was pleased to see that the Battle Horror could now be handled without too much trouble, thanks to my three powerful spellcasters and my wealth of +2 weaponry. We opened up the door and headed inside.

We'd heard many tales of Durlag's Tower, partly from regular commoners but particularly from the folks of Ulgoth's Beard. Several of those villagers knew people who had gone on "tours" of the tower, or gone adventuring there, driven by tales of the wealth inside. From a dwarf who was a relative of Durlag himself, we learned about how Durlag had built the tower from the wealth he'd collected over a lifetime of adventuring. He somehow attracted the attention of a group of doppelgangers, who secretly infiltrated the tower, killed his family members off one by one, taking the form of each one. Durlag eventually figured out what had happened; he was able to escape his death, and destroyed the doppelgangers, but was driven to extreme grief over his loss. He shut himself up in the tower, and nobody's entirely sure what has happened since then.

The tower itself is massive, the biggest single addition offered by Tales of the Sword Coast. We started off by going up, which was pretty easy, with just a few traps and some weak enemies to kill. I helped a succubus escape, which wasn't exactly Neutral Good of me, but seemed like an interesting thing to do. By the time we had finished with the upper floors, Imoen had reached Level 8, and I had my thief back. Cheered, we headed down to the dungeons.

Durlag's Tower is pretty epic. It's pretty common in fantasy RPG franchises (Final Fantasy, Ultima, Elder Scrolls, etc.) to have some sort of "super-dungeon", a completely optional and challenging area where hard-core gamers can experience a set of levels that are often more difficult than anything in the main game, including the final boss. Usually, these dungeons are difficult just by dialing up the factors you would ordinarily encounter. They have more levels than usual, a larger number of enemies, maybe some new and more difficult monsters, fewer healing potions, and so on.

What I loved about Durlag's Tower, in contrast, was how varied and interesting it is. There's something like five levels down the dungeon, and each one is quite different than the rest. The very first one you visit has a bunch of traps scattered around, and some mini-quests to go on. Essentially, you need to locate some items that are used to solve the riddles posed by ghostly specters guarding the way down. You also fight a variety of monsters along the way - slimes, skeletons, doppelgangers. At the end of that level the four specters transform into powerful enemies, which you must defeat in order to proceed. (Have you ever wanted to kill Love? Now's your chance.)

The next level down is completely different. There are almost no traps. Instead, there's a complex system of locked doors. As you make your way through the rooms, they will open and shut behind you, forcing you towards or away from certain areas. You only encounter one type of enemy in this level: doppelgangers. You witness ghostly apparitions of all of Durlag's dead family members: his wife, his sons. You see them re-live their deaths over and over again, before transforming back into the dopelgangers who had killed them. After killing them, another door will open, and you'll push a bit farther into his home.

The level design was pretty disturbing. First of all, the unreliability of your path makes things a bit uncomfortable. Secondly, you really need to watch your step and keep your party together - at one point, Dynaheir got separated from the rest, and I needed to keep playing for nearly half an hour more just to get to a point where she could rejoin me. Mostly, though, it's the look of the rooms themselves that's disturbing. It starts out with fairly domestic sites - a bedroom, a library, the throne room. At one point, though, you come to a torture chamber, and the sight of it pressed up against so many family-oriented locations makes it all the more disturbing.

Eventually, you find a room filled with switches and levers. With some patience, you can use these to open all the doors you want, which makes navigating the level far easier. Near the stairway down are four dwarf guardians. These were another incredibly tough fight, though I don't think it's required - they'll only attack if you try to take the very nice enchanged loot from a nearby treasure chest. I had to re-play this battle about three times; to make matters worse, this was while Dynaheir was MIA, so I couldn't bring as much firepower to bear. I ended up carefully locating my characters so Minsc and Yeslick bottled up a passage, meaning that only two dwarves at a time could hit my front line, and nobody could get around to the back line. I seeded the area with Skull Traps before triggering their hostility, made use of Greater Maeleson, and desperately kept my spellcasters going non-stop until they all went down.

The level below this had just a few fights, but they were all rather interesting. You start off with fighting a great Wyvern. This isn't too hard, but you have an interesting choice to make. You can awaken a number of frozen heroes to join your party and help you slay the wyvern. However, you'll only have their assistance for a short time, and after it expires, they will attack you. I ended up waking all of them and using them as fodder to attack the wyvern, not directly involving any of my people. A few of them died off; the rest turned on me a bit later while I was fighting off some ghasts. I ran away at first, then later on came back and finished them off.

This level also has some elemental-ish fights, which generally require some paritcular strategies. There's a slime that is only affected by fire, and a phoenix warrior that will be reborn if you slay her, and so on.

After defeating all of these, you are instantly transported to the grand attraction, a chess board. Your six party members are now two knights, two bishops, a queen and a king. There are special rules about the movement each can make, and you'll receive damage if you violate them. There are some pawns in front of you, but they don't move and don't help you. On the far side of the board is... well, death.

It's probably getting boring for me to keep writing "this fight was really hard"... but man, this fight was REALLY hard! For starters, you're vastly outnumbered; the other side has everything you have, and also two rooks (very powerful archers), AND eight functional pawns. The pawns aren't too strong, but they can take a couple of hits; worse, if any pawn makes it to your end of the board, they are transformed into a Queen, a powerful enemy who can fight and cast spells. In order to win, you need to defeat the King, but he's very strong, and a few enemies will linger to fight on even after he dies.

The movement restrictions in this battle made it particularly interesting. Since you were teleported here, you can't do many of the standard cheap maneuvers, like advancing and then retreating. It's also WAY harder to protect your vulnerable members; you're stretched out in a horizontal line, and can't position everyone the way you might prefer. In my first few fights, Imoen and Dynaheir would die very quickly from the archers, while Minsc would wander around confused before the rest of us were cut down.

I eventually evened the odds a bit. I seeded the far side of the board with some Skull Traps, then summoned some monsters to form a fleshy screen in front of Dynaheir. Imoen and Dynaheir each took a Wand of Flames, and started tossing fireballs blindly across the board. This blew up a few of the pawns; the rest of the enemies started charging forward. As soon as they came into view, I had everyone target the bishops and the queen. I needed to turn party AI off so Minsc would stay put for this phase, but Kivan could start shooting as the enemies approached. The Skull Traps did a good amount of damage across the board.

Still... stuff moves so quickly. In just a few seconds, Dynaheir and Imoen would be fighting for their lives. I would need to shift my focus to preventing the remaining pawns from finishing their cross-board trek. Meanwhile, the enemy King tends to charge forward. Once he got close, I had Minsc (legally) move to intercept him, and then they started pounding one another. Yeslick (my King) was blocked from his usual melee role, but I finally had a chance to make use of Holy Smite. After the battle was joined, I had to cool it with the fireballs, but whenever a spellcaster fought free of an enemy they could switch over to Flame Arrow or Magic Missile and let the King have it.

FINALLY, the enemies fell, and after a few tries I was able to do it without losing anyone on my side. (I'll usually gladly accept a temporarily-dead party member at the end of a tough fight like this, but wasn't in the mood to trek back to a friendly temple from several levels deep in Durlag's Tower. Speaking of which, one of the things that the mods added which I really appreciated was some Raise Dead scrolls, but I wasn't happy any more once I realized that (1) only Clerics (and I'm guessing maybe Druids and Rangers) can cast these, and (2) they still require INT and not WIS to cast. Who the heck (in BG1) is a Cleric with both high INT and WIS? Argh.)

We now headed down to the next level, the actual mines from which Durlag's tower were built. Part of this area is a dungeon crawl, large sprawling mines filled with undead and crypt crawlers and other uglies. A good chunk of it, though, is devoted to more of a psychological dungeon crawl. For all the stuff I loved about Durlag's Tower, I think this might be my favorite part. You need to take all the information you've learned throughout the quest - all the dialog from the ghosts and dead family members, all the hissing sibilant threats from the doppelgangers, all the anguished words written within Durlag's journals - and piece together the chronology of what happened. It's pretty fascinating. You already know what happened, but why? And when? You can put the events together in different orders as you try to judge which was the cause and which the effect. Did Durlag fill the tower with traps before or after the doppelgangers came? What role did the builders play in the disaster that arrived?

Eventually, you piece the story together. By now it sounds similar to what you heard in Ulgoth's Beard, but with more of the details filled in, and a bit more resonant. Durlag's own father had been a very successful adventurer, but had died far away from home. This is one of the most tragic outcomes possible for a dwarf, since it means that you're cut off from your kin and clan, dying without being part of the dwarf community. So, Durlag tried to oppose his fear of dying alone. He settled down, got married, started a family. He devoted all of his resources to trying to keep them as safe as possible. But his generosity was driven by a fear, fear that something bad would happen to him.

Well, as he dug, his fear piqued the interest of the illithid, mindflayers who also lived deep underground. They smelled prey. They sent their servants, the doppelgangers, to attack and clear the way; after Durlag fell, the mindflayers would be able to claim his great creation for their own. They succeeded in ruining Durlag's life, but couldn't quite get rid of him. A sort of stalemate settled over the tower; even after Durlag died (of grief or of old age), his original intent in protecting the tower prevented anyone else from coming in and getting rid of the doppelgangers that remained; at the same time, the mindflayers couldn't use the tower either while all the traps remained.

Anyways - I just thought that was interesting, and another example of Bioware's excellent devotion to story. In order to beat the quest, you don't just kill everyone in your way, you also need to display good reading comprehension skills!

The very final fight was... good, but honestly a little bit of a letdown; it wasn't nearly as hard as the chess board fight, and wasn't as interesting as the riddling. The final boss you fight is a Demon Knight, who has apparently been orchestrating everything. Before facing him, you learn that he has access to a special mirrior that he uses to create copies of you; those copies then kill you, and he doesn't need to lift a finger.

So, once I got down there, I turned Imoen invisible and had her scout ahead. There was the demon - who didn't see me yet, but was already marked as hostile. I figured that I needed to get the mirror away from him, so I moved Imoen into position behind him and had her try to pickpocket him. Heh - it was the first time in the whole game that I'd tried to pickpocket anything, and I had completely forgotten that you can't pickpocket hostile characters. Imoen was losing her invisibility. Whoops - I realized that I had left Part AI on, and so she was starting to swing at the demon. We can't have that. As she retreated, I suddenly realized that there was a big, full-length mirror near the demon. Well.. maybe that's it? I had Imoen target the mirror. Crack! It shattered. The demon knight freaked out, yelling about how I'd ruined it. Monsters appeared, but they were highly deformed, not copies of me, just creatures like an ogre, xvarts, and other baddies. Minsc and Yeslick hammered the demon knight mercilessly while Sebrina, Kivan, and Imoen fired their respective missiles at him. Several of the minor enemies had picked up Dynaheir's tail, so she used Dimension Door and then her own two feet to lead them on a chase around the room. The battle was exciting, but not too hard, and soon the demon knight fell.

It felt good, but also a bit anticlimactic. There were tons of great items throughout all of Durlag's Tower - I'd had to leave several times just to sell off the loot I'd acquired from previous floors - but all I got from this was the Soultaker's Dagger. It does, um, 1d4 damage. Period. Okaaaaaay...

I said my farewells to the ghosts, made one last stop at the shopkeeper to unload the items I couldn't use, dumped the large number of quest-related objects I'd been carting around, and finally headed back to Ulgoth's Beard. Here I encountered the coda of the whole Durlag's Tower mission: a fanatical cult was desperately seeking the dagger. I said "no." They stole it, and then another quite pitched battle took off. The cult was quite well-rounded, with "guards" (warriors), "assassins" (thieves, with good stealth and backstabbing - which seems to be a huge rarity in BG1, I don't recall being backstabbed at any other point in the game), spellcasters, and archers. We were tired from the road, and I couldn't indulge in my recently rediscovered love of fireballs, thanks to all the Ulgoth's Beard civilians in the vicinity.

After dispatching the crew (but failing to recover the dagger), we headed back for the inn. I spoke with Durlag's relative again, who filled me in on what was happening: the knife is an artifact associated with a demon, and the cult was planning to call him into existence. This demon would probably destroy the world if he was freed. Time to get busy!

Well... okay. Maybe THIS was the hardest fight of the game.

The demon is released, and is extremely powerful. He seems capable of casting at least two spells per round. One of these is Silence. He also can Hold you pretty easily. The creepiest attack is something called Death Gaze. This holds you, and puts a little "dying" indicator on your portrait. Some sort of timer kicks off, and when it's done - poof - you're dead. A shambling ghoul emerges from your body, seeking to kill your friends.

Unlike the chessboard fight, which was tough because of the sheer number of enemies, here there's really only the demon to fear. There's also a cult member spellcaster, but she goes down fairly easily. However, there are also about six or so silent cult members organized around the pentagram. They never attack you, but I think you need to kill them before you can really start to damage the demon.

I kept running into a wall on this fight. I had all of my magic-capable users memorize at least one Dispel Magic, and had Yeslick memorize Free Action; between these I could hopefully unstick at least one or two Held party members. I brought back out the Wands of Flame; Imoen would shoot fire at them while Dynaheir would use Cloudkill to much the same effect. Meanwhile, Minsc and (when free) Yeslick would desperately try to get hits in on the demon. Sebrina would try to support everyone who needed assistance, or use Magic Missile to take down distant cult members. In most of my tries, I could eventually kill all the cult members, but by then at least one of my magic-users would have been killed, and then the other party members would start Dying, and everything would fall apart very quickly. Even my buffs weren't helping, though I was going all-out with Haste, Chant, Bless, Call on Divine Strength, Mirror Image, Stoneskin, and whatever else I could get my hands on.

I finally gave up on doing a straight-forward honorable fight and went for a cheap victory. I turned Imoen invisible and sent her down alone. She snuck around the cult leader, and once out of sight, turned visible and started killing off the cult members, one by one. It took a while, but I had all the time I wanted. Finally, only the leader was left (and no doubt confused about the noise made by Imoen's hundreds of missed thrown daggers over the previous ten minutes). Imoen hopped back up the stairs. I re-buffed, and this time (since I was so sick of the fight) I decided to go all-out, and had Yeslick and Minsc drink not only the Potions of Heroism that the cult had been stockpiling, but also the Potions of Storm Giant Strength that I had been hoarding.

We charged downstairs, swiftly slew the cult leader, then the magic-users and Kivan widely spread out (to minimize the spillover effects of Silence and the other un-buffs) while Yeslick and Minsc charged forward. Wow. Those potions really work! I had thought that the important change would be the dumb invisible-killing strategem, but with Yeslick and Minsc all 'roided up, the demon was quickly faltering. I almost choked when I read in the status bar that Yeslick had dealt a critical hit (yay!) that did 50 damage (whaaaaa?!).  Somehow, I was able to finish killing the demon when he had only managed to put Death Gaze on Kivan. One Dispel Magic later, and even that threat was gone. Hooray!

Having finally exhausted all of the TotSC content, I returned back to Baldur's Gate for the final chapter. I wrapped up Imoen's thief quests first, burglarizing the Hall of Wonders and getting to know the Thieves Guild. Navigating through the city is a bit tricky at this stage; since your party is wanted for murder, the Flaming Fist is likely to find you and try to take you in. As I found out, fighting back against the Fist isn't a good idea; you can win, but it kills your reputation. I think that in my first game, I had gotten around this by moving through the sewers under Baldur's Gate; once you map it out, you can emerge from a sewer grate that's within running distance of pretty much any building that you might want to visit. For this game, I wasn't in the mood for some reason, so instead I would travel to the correct map location, then have my party quickly visit the nearest inn or other building where they could hide out. Imoen, back in the mood for some thievery, would hide in shadows, then head over to do whatever needed doing.

Once all the various side-quests were out of the way, I headed into the end game. I rescued Duke Entar from his deathbed, attended the coronation of Sarevok, defended the other Grand Dukes, then pursued Sarevok into the Undercity. There was some nice extra dialog around this part, which I think may have been added by the BG1 NPC project.

The very very final battle was a good challenge - not as frustrating as the chess board or demon fights had been, but I still needed a few tries to get it right. I'd forgotten that the sigil in the middle of the room was trapped (of COURSE it's trapped!), so my first attack went very poorly. Later on, I started making use of a Demon Summoning scroll that I'd found in the maze above, and was pretty disappointed by how little time it took Sarevok to defeat.

I think that it eventually came down to luck. I just focused on taking out the spellcasters first, then concentrating everything I had on Sarevok, keeping my bruisers up close and personal so the rest of us could do our thing from a safe distance. He took our Minsc and Yeslick (it's hard hard to heal properly in the middle of a fight), but then he was finally defeated. The end - hooray!

The final video was cool; I didn't remember having seen it before. You see this enormous statue crumbling. At first I figured that it was probably the statue of Bhaal from above the temple. Then, the camera pans out, and you can see that there are more statues to either side... and more statues above and below, too. I realized that the statue must have been of Sarevok, not Bhaal. The camera keeps panning out, then tilts down as it slowly zooms out. You realize that you're in a well, and there are... hundreds, possibly even as many as a thousand, of those statues around. Other than Sarevok's nearly all of them are intact. Finally, you have a good view of the very bottom of the pit. It's filled with fire, and inside you can see Bhaal's grinning skull. So... I'm pretty sure that each of those statues represent one of the Bhaalspawn. Wow. There sure are an awful lot of us left!

Speaking of which, I think I'm about to meet a few more of them (at least one of whom is a reveal of someone I already know). I'll probably be hopping directly into BG2. I'd already done at least a few mods in my initial play; I vaguely remember installing Baldurdash, but it looks like the community has come a long way in the decade since. I imagine I'll toss in a few minor quest additions or something, and possibly look into adding a new NPC or two. The stuff I've seen in BG1 has already impressed me, and I know that BG2 is what most modders are really passionate about, so I can hardly wait to see what's in store.

Just for fun

Here's a link to the results of NPR's survey of the best-loved fantasy and Sci-Fi books. (Series count as a single book.) It's a very good list, and makes me believe in the good taste of my fellow nerds.

Of course, nobody would exactly match this list, but there are only a few oddities. I'm not at all surprised to see Wheel of Time on there, but I am shocked that it's still in the #12 spot.

Because I have time and am a bit bored, here's my experience with all these books. Books in italics are ones I've read. Books in bold are those I've read and recommend. (Note: italics doesn't necessarily mean I dislike them, but I wouldn't go out of my way to read them again.) Where necessary, I've included comments below the titles (I've tried to keep these to a minimum). Happy geeking!


1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Just the book, not the series.
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
Stop after the first one.
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
Woohoo! Delighted to see this one on here.
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys
39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
"Recommended" in the sense that I like it, but odds are slim that you will.
47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
I can't believe that I still haven't read this.
49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
It seems a bit strange that they don't have "Discworld" as a single series in here.
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
How about "Inferno"? That was a great book.
62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
Prediction: A generation from now, this will be in the top 5.
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
The Riftwar Saga is good, but don't be tempted to continue into the Riftwar Cycle.
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
I'm torn on this one - I remember loving it at the time, but it's likely that 30-year-old-Chris wouldn't enjoy it as much as 13-year-old Chris did. I'll err on the side of recommending.
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
I haven't read this one yet, but where's the love for McKinley's earlier books?
93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

Vote for Lindbergh or Vote for War

I'm in awe of Philip Roth. I can't truthfully say that he's my favorite American author, but he may be the most talented living American author who I've read. He has such a quiet yet thorough command of the language, the ability to create vividly realistic scenarios with a few murmured words.

I read his "American Pastoral" in college, and in my mind, that's one of the few books in the running for the Great American Novel. I tend to think of the GAN as being the book that captures the transitory essence of living in America. The most famous example is probably The Great Gatsby, which, in a surprisingly brief length, managed to convey the most crucial features of the American character: our drive for self-improvement, our eagerness to impress, our resilience and capacity for re-invention, the way we tell stories about ourselves and start to believe them. American Pastoral is a longer book, and you could say that it covers an even greater range: it focuses on family, the core building block of American society, and all that flows from it: generation gaps, the way children reject the teachings of their parents, the mixture of comfort and anxiety that comes from being closely bound with others' lives. It also gives a frank (and never boring) look into the role of business in America: how we shape our businesses and derive pride from them, and also how we fight against them. It shows the poisonous impact of politics on personal relationships, and the powerful effect religion (particularly religious conversion) can exert on relationships. I'm not saying that AP is BETTER than GG... but it's darn good, and it paints a very broad canvas.

My latest Roth book, "The Plot Against America," doesn't shoot for another home-run like AP, but it manages to keep exploring some of Roth's same concerns while operating in a very different mode. AP was nominally one of the "Zuckerman" novels, a loosely connected fictional world created by Roth that include Nathan Zuckerman, a Jewish character and often narrator. TPAA isn't a Zuckerman novel; instead, it's set in an alternate history (!) and features a young narrator named "Philip Roth".

MINI SPOILERS

Alternate history novels seem like genre fiction, but this is anything but. TPAA does get a lot of great mileage out of its historical conceit, but as is always the case with the Roth novels I've read, the core of the novel doesn't come from the plot; instead, it comes from the relationships between its characters and the thoughts of its protagonists. (Think of a highly readable version of "Ulysses" and you have a great idea of what to expect: humanism, compassion, sorrow.)

That said, I'm a sucker for genre fiction, and the alternate history aspect was one of my favorite parts of the book. The timeline diverges at the 1940 Republican convention: instead of Wendell Wilkie being nominated in the fifth ballot, the convention stays deadlocked until after midnight, when Charles Lindbergh (in the novel as in real life, an isolationist anti-Semite) makes a dramatic entrance and wins the nomination by acclimation. He carries out a maverick campaign, flying to states throughout the country and driving home a single-issue campaign theme: "Vote for Lindbergh or vote for the war." He defeats FDR, then withdraws American support for the British, signs a treaty with the Germans and Japanese recognizing their respective rights to Europe and the Pacific (in the latter case protecting existing US island possessions), and starts rolling back New Deal programs and replacing them with proto-fascist anti-Jewish policies.

It's all rather nightmarish, and quite gripping. I think we all like to tell ourselves "It couldn't happen here" when we hear about genocides, pogroms, and martial law. Still, in any society there will be at least a small number of people who support hateful actions like those. We're fortunate in the US to have a government that (for all its faults) loudly preaches the religion of tolerance, and surely that helps keep our worst tendencies in check. But what if we suddenly woke up under a government that just as loudly proclaimed the necessity of separating undesirable elements? For our own protection, you understand?

That led to the other creepy aspect of the story. All the action takes place from about 1939-1942, narrated from some point past that (likely the late 1960s or early 1970s). Yet, I couldn't help continually thinking back to our own time. So much of that book's actions seemed to echo my own concerns from the time when it was published in 2004: a showy President who wore plainspun unsophistication as armor and spurned the advice of "intellectuals" and "experts"; a widespread cultural trend towards demonizing a subset of American citizens; the abrogation of civil liberties in the name of national emergency.

I think that's more me than Roth, though. The biggest difference is that Lindbergh was trying to keep America out of a war, while Bush was trying to push us into one. (Although, in the most chilling climax of the story, Acting President Wheeler comes within days of declaring war on Canada, in effect aligning America with the Axis powers.) Bush, for all his faults, never supported the xenophobia directed against Arab citizens, even though parts of the country were certainly ripe for such support. And the first term Bush presidency tackled civil liberties incrementally, not overreaching in one swoop like Wheeler does in the novel.

So, I think it would be a mistake to read this book as a kind of retro-historical-allegory of the first G W Bush term. Instead, it's a book that taps into a persistent concern that we should always have as a country: never getting too self-assured in our righteousness, and remaining aware that the price of liberty is constant vigilance. When we slip (as happens fictionally in the book, and as happened in the real world a decade ago), all of our traditions do virtually nothing to protect us. It's our actions now that will determine our future, not the two hundred plus years of democratic history.

As fascinating as all this is, again, it really isn't the main thrust of the book. Roth creates this rich background, then sets about his main concern, looking at how this stressful situation affects a single family, the Roth family, third-generation Jews living in a Newark suburb. The father and mother have created a safe mental space for their children, free from the persecution that they encountered in their own childhoods. That safety begins unraveling, even in small ways. The election of an anti-Semite emboldens ordinary citizens to disparage them during a trip to Washington, D.C., when otherwise they might have remained quiet (still racist, but only internally so). The Lindbergh administration starts a new program to disperse urban Jewish youth into the countryside, and the eldest son leaves; when he comes back, he is not only full of enthusiasm for the farm life, but full of disparagement for his own family, who he now derides as "You Jews."

That splintering of community is one of the most painful aspects of this book. Most of the Jewish people remain faithful to FDR and his liberal policies, but a voluble minority align themselves with Lindbergh. They denounce intervening in Hitler's policies, promote the breakup and dispersal of Jewish communities, and "kosher" Lindbergh to absolve middle-American Christians to vote for him with a clean conscience. This splintering tears apart families (well, the family we care about, the Roth family), and that small tragedy is the emotional centerpiece of the novel.

I'm not sure if Roth always write about Jewish people - but every one of his novels that I've read has featured them as the main characters. Earlier in this post I'd mentioned that Roth has written the Great American Novel. It might seem like it's hard to write the Great American Novel if your characters belong to a minority within America. I don't think that's true. This might sound a little cheesy, but "the outsider who lives among us" can see the majority more clearly than the majority themselves can. TPAA primarily focuses on the predominantly Jewish community around Newark, but when its gaze does expand elsewhere (to the Capital, to the heartland, to the broken country of West Virginia), it sees with a directness and clarity that I don't think you would get from someone who had grown up in that environment among those people. At the same time, the characters are so steeped in American culture that they can navigate all of its social situations and understand what's happening around them.

Back to the alternate history:

MEGA SPOILERS

One interesting aspect is how resilient Roth makes the timeline. Often, in alternate histories, you get small changes in the past that magnify into bigger and bigger changes the farther you get into the future. That could easily have happened in this book; I'm sure many other people have written other books where America's neutrality in WW2 leads to Axis domination over the world, or a world without Communism, or a world filled with Communists, or some other grand realignment. Instead, Roth gently sets the timeline back on track after just a few years' detour.

That isn't clear from the beginning. However, perhaps about two-thirds through the book, when Walter Winchell is assassinated, Roth makes the off-hand comment that this was the first time a candidate for the Presidency had been assassinated, and the next wouldn't come until Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 after winning the California primary. Immediately, the "future" starts to shift back into view. Germany can't have won (or at least not won a total war), or else there wouldn't have even been an election in 1968. Furthermore, if Bobby was running in 1968, it seems likely that Jack had won in 1960. So, just how do we get past Lindbergh?

The chaotic passage near the end of the book describes the madness that unfolds after the Winchell assassination late in 1942. Lindbergh mysteriously disappears when returning from one of his many impromptu flights out to the heartland. Vice-President Wheeler assumes power, and with astonishing swiftness sets a series of plots into motion. He blames the British and then the Canadians for Lindbergh's disappearance; fans the flames of anti-Semitic fury that Winchell had gleefully provoked, which in turn spurs pogroms throughout the Midwest; sends the National Guard in amongst the chaos to shoot and kill Jewish civilians; and then declares a state of national emergency, imposes martial law, imprisons his political opponents, and puts the country on a war footing... for war against undesirable elements within, and against Canada from without.

At this point, despite the promised glimpse of RFK, the situation seems utterly bleak. The day is saved when Anne Lindbergh, the wife and possible widow of the President, escapes from her confinement in Walter Reed's psychiatric ward, connects with sympathetic elements who give her access to a radio broadcast tower, and urges the armed forces and National Guard to reverse their actions, release the politicians they hold captive, remove Wheeler from office, and install the Secretary of State as the new acting President until elections can be held in November. They follow her lead, Wheeler is disgraced, and the day is saved. A "National Unity" ticket of FDR and Fiorello LaGuardia - and, seriously, how SWEET would that have been?! - sweeps the election.

After that, events unfurl as you would expect, just about one year later. Instead of Pearl Harbor occurring in December 1941, it happens in December 1942; the US declares war on Japan, then the Axis declares war on the US, and the war is truly joined. We don't get many details of the war - I imagine that it would be even harder than the real one, if Britain hadn't had access to our armaments and we hadn't ramped up war production - but it seems to follow more or less on track. Germany surrenders in 1945, a few weeks after FDR dies in office.

It is fun to imagine just what happened next. I kind of think that by then everything was back on track. In the real world, Roosevelt replaced the liberal and divisive Henry Wallace as the VP with the centrist and pragmatic Harry Truman; it seems likely that in the alternate world, he would have replaced the liberal and controversial (though totally awesome) LaGuardia with Truman. So the bomb would still have fallen on Japan, and the war would end as it did.

END SPOILERS

Much as I enjoy Roth, his books are too weighty for me to devour with the same glee that I devote to, say, Terry Pratchett or Christopher Moore. I think that one of his books every few years should be just about right. It feels like it takes that long for me to mentally process everything in the last Roth novel I read.

Not that I can say everything is a slam-dunk. Earlier this year, I tried reading "Portnoy's Complaint," which might be the most famous book Roth has written (even more so than American Pastoral). Well... I usually don't think of myself as a prude, but that subject matter combined with that talented of a writer combined to make the most singularly uncomfortable reading experience of the past few years. I squirmed my way through about two dozen pages before setting it aside forever.

That said, I would like to go back and read some early Roth next - so far, everything I've read from him has come from the last two decades. He's been writing since the 1950's, and it would be nice to read through some of his stuff in sequence - say, the Zuckerman books. We'll see what the future brings!

3???

Well, I think that someone doesn't think it's healthy for me to be all data-nerdy about my cycling. As previously noted, I semi-recently passed 3000 miles on my bike. 3000 miles since when, you might ask? Um, since the pretty random start date of "sometime around February 2008." I was all proud of myself for documenting when I rolled over the 3000 mile marker, since that would set a good milestone for tracking future progress, given my new cycling habits.

'twas not to be. The battery on my cyclocomputer died; I've replaced it, but lost the odometer. It's possible to manually set it, but since I'm not sure what it was, it wouldn't be at all accurate. (I THINK that last I checked it was somewhere around 3600 or 3800 or something like that... but could easily be wrong.)

The bright side is that I replaced it immediately before participating in the Tour de Peninsula, which seems like a pretty great random occasion to start measuring my miles. The TdP is the first organized ride that I've participated in, and while I'm sure that organized rides won't be a very significant part of my bicycling experience, it is a convenient milestone.

The TdP is a fundraiser for the San Mateo County Parks system, and the TdP route has been an important resource for me as I've started exploring the bike routes in the area. I registered early for the ride, and have used that as extra motivation to push myself to try out the route - specifically, tackling my first hard climb (King Mountain Road in Woodside) and my first very fast, long descents (Skyline and La Honda). That alone was worth the price of admission, but fortunately, I was able to take part in the ride itself.

They offer a variety of lengths to riders, ranging from 20 miles to 63 (a metric century). Now, even the 20-mile ride is pretty intense, climbing from sea level all the way up to Sawyer Camp Trail at Skyline (up Crystal Spring Road). One of the things that most attracted me to TdP was the great, laid-back attitude they have about the event. Their mantra is "it's a ride, not a race;" they let you change your mind and take a longer or shorter route on the day of the ride; and they endorse the use of shortcuts (or, as they call it, "distance conservation.")

The longer rides start at 7AM at Coyote Point Park. That's pretty close to where I live, so I set an early-ish alarm for 5:45, had breakfast and got ready, then headed out on my bike around 6:30 and arrived 5-10 minutes before the start. Signage in the park was pretty good, and once I got close it was easy to find the corral. Folks kept trickling in as the emcee repeated a set of announcements. Most important was an admonition to obey the rules of the road - stop at all stop signs and red lights. He also warned of the construction on Old La Honda Road (which I had encountered on my earlier outings), and said to look out for tacks on Kings Mountain Road (!).

Soon 7 o'clock rolled around and we rolled out. They released us in waves; I think I was near the end of the second group. The first section of the ride was quite slow - but again, this was totally fine, since everyone was just there for a good time. I was extra-observant of the people riding close to me, being very careful not to overlap wheels or stop too suddenly.

We rode out through the southern edge of Coyote Point Park, then through downtown San Mateo. The police had closed down the street for us, but not the cross streets, so we had to stop periodically at traffic lights. Again, it was fine, as people were just enjoying the ride.

The group stayed pretty tight as we exited downtown and started the easy climb up Crystal Springs. It started to break up once we hit Polhemus (which I've heard is a Category 4, though I'm not sure how much stock to put in that). I actually passed a decent number of folks, resisted the urge to chase down some others, and kept pedaling.

It was a surprisingly damp day out. I think it might have been very low clouds, or perhaps a bunch of fog, but whatever the reason, my sunglasses were coated in water by the time I hit Polhemus. I was quite wet, but despite being in shorts and a vest, I wasn't too chilly.

At the top of Polhemus, we hit our first rest stop. Because I'm a food nerd, I'll recount the food that each one had. This first one was just fruit - nectarines, bananas, and oranges, along with bottled water. I was pleased to see that, at this rest stop and every one I'd encounter later on, most people stopped, and nobody seemed in too much of a rush - they'd stand around chatting for a while before hitting the road again. Me, I'd select the one piece of food that looked the most tasty (here, it was a banana), eat it, toss the trash, then move on.

I'd been concerned about the descent of the Ralston Bike Trail - it's very narrow, in poor repair, and can't really handle a large volume of riders. However, this early on all the traffic was going in one direction, and despite a few riders passing me on the (very steep) descent, it felt safe.

The weather started to clear up once we hit Canada, which was weird - Canada was nice, Woodside was nice, and the entire ascent of Kings Mountain Road was nice. It seems like we had two cloud layers this day - a lower one on the bay side, and a higher one on the ocean side. In any case, I enjoyed the chance to warm up.

Canada was gorgeous, as always. By now the riders were thoroughly broken up, and it didn't feel any busier than a typical weekend morning on Canada. I enjoyed the ride past the reservoir, watching the blue sky approach and then envelop me.

The second rest station, at Pulgas Water Temple, was hosted by Buck's of Woodside. In addition to the fruit, they had trail mix and cereal bars; and, more impressively, some coffee cake! I had a piece. It was delicious.

On my way into Woodside, I has to suppress muscle memory to stick on Canada all the way to Woodside, instead of turning onto Olive Hill Road, which has become my favorite way to start the mountainous ascent. Traffic started getting heavier here, but (judging by a few furtive glances for wristbands) I don't think most of the riders were part of the TdP.

The climb up Kings Mountain was a lot of fun. Partly because I've done it so many times now that it isn't too challenging. (Not that I'm awesome or anything - I do the whole thing in one of my lowest gears - I'm just used to it and can anticipate how hard I'll need to work.) I also appreciated it because, though I hate to admit it, it's actually gotten a little boring - it's a very slow climb of about 45 minutes. Now, though, with a lot more riders around, and phenomenally clear weather, I felt like I was experiencing it afresh. This was also the section where I kept the best pace with other riders, sometimes sticking within sight of them for twenty or thirty minutes. Oh, and this is also where I spotted the funniest racing jersey of the day - "Old Guys Who Get Fat In Winter Racing Team."

Another rest stop at the top of King's Mountain (at Tularcitas and Skyline) was hosted by Alice's Restaurant from Woodside. In addition to the standard items featured at the last stop, they were also serving peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, along with grilled potato wedges. I had some of both. Oh, and some Gatorade; I think this was the only rest stop to have that.

Skyline was fun; again, this didn't seem any more or less crowded than a typical weekend. It did have the weird weather that you often get up there, where it will rain for, like, three feet of the road. You can see the damp patch up again, you'll ride through it, get wet, and then be in the clear again.

At the intersection with 84 was the turn-off for people who decided that 50 miles would be enough. They were good at indicating that you should turn left for the shorter route, but were not as good at explaining that you had to keep going straight in order to do the metric century. I would later run across a rider who had mistakenly turned right on 84 - which, as he pointed out, IS easier than the posted route.

After crossing 84, the weather turned more persistently drizzly. This is often the case on the ocean side, but I think it was probably more so today than for any of my earlier test rides. It would be interesting to try this route in the winter, or really any time of the year other than summer, which is when we tend to get the most coastal fog.

The intersection with Old La Honda was another place where, if you'd done the ride before or studied the map, you would be fine, but otherwise, you wouldn't get a whole lot of help. The person standing there with the orange flag seems to be indicating that you should do something... but what?

Since I'd taken Old La Honda before, I was prepared for the condition of the road (which certainly isn't bad, but, as the man at the start had put it, it isn't where you want to make up time). However, I wasn't as prepared for the very poor visibility. The thick fog made it hard to see anyways, but worse than that, my glasses had once again completely filled with water. Needless to say, I took this descent very cautiously and quite slowly. I was even more glad than usual at how little traffic this road gets.

At 84, I took a minute to wipe down my spectacles and turn on my rear blinker. The climb up went well - I'm always pleasantly surprised at how quickly this ascent goes, which I'm guessing is partly due to the great pavement and partly due to the stiff wind that we usually get from the west. A small rest stop here had some more fruit; this time I helped myself to a peach. It tasted utterly delicious.

By the time I reached Skyline, the sky was clear again, and my descent on the east side of 84 was breathtaking as always. (The most gorgeous panoramic views I've seen of the middle of the Bay Area, screaming past as I fly down at thirty miles an hour.) The rest of the ride down and my return on Canada went smoothly. And, yes, I did make another stop at the Buck's station for another slice of that coffee cake.

I was a little nonplussed to see that the clouds were still in full force from the northern end of Canada - usually that stuff burns off fairly early. On the plus side, the bike trail continued to be fine - I think that most of the 8-o'clockers had already been down, so everyone was going in the opposite direction. The rest stop at the other end was out of food by now, but I did refill my water bottle here.

Descending Polhemus is thrilling - you can build up a good head of steam, like on Skyline and La Honda, but unlike those roads, there are very few turns, plus there's a good bike lane. (After you've ridden it the first time, you know the two parts where you don't want to be in the bike line, and can safely move out of it while maintaining your speed.) I felt the naughty thrill that I usually get when I manage to activate the speed limit sign.

A left turn on Crystal Spring had me climbing back up again. I usually do this ride on a Saturday; it looks like the construction workers have Sundays off, so it was a bit quieter around the dam than usual. At the entrance to Sawyer Camp Trail, I grabbed an orange from the penultimate rest stop.

It took me a few seconds to realize that something was weird - there were no people here! Oh, there were cyclists, sure, but when I ride SCT, I usually hardly see any of them. Instead, it's usually teeming with walkers, and runners, and kids on tricycles, and elderly couples, and young families pushing strollers... all sorts of stuff that I enjoy and that keeps my pace fairly sedate. It seems like they actually close down the trail for this event, though, which is... I guess awesome? Like I said, it felt a little weird, but once I got used to it, it felt GREAT to be able to cruise along this beautiful six-mile stretch between woods and water.

Waiting for me on the other side was the final rest stop. I first swung by the "first aid" station to pick up a band-aid (a cut on my finger had re-opened). The food section was out of everything but oranges, but I guess they re-stock, since  car pulled up and they unloaded some boxes of stuff. I grabbed a nut and berry cereal bar, ate it, and then headed into the final stretch.

On my typical ride, I'm almost done at this point. Here, though, I got to go through the "Millbrae Maze": a right turn on Skyline, left on Millbrae, an immediate right on the first street, and then a series of (very clearly marked) turns that fairly gently bring you back down, through quiet residential streets, while you're picking up another set of gorgeous views of the area (San Bruno Mountain, Millbrae, the airport, the Bay, Coyote Point, Oyster Point, etc.).

We eventually rejoined Millbrae. Here's where it started to get bunched up again, probably due to the reintroduction of stop lights after a VERY long absence. I'd been curious/concerned about exactly how they were planning on taking us over the freeway on Millbrae. Well, they do it perfectly - the police separate out the far-left lane with a fairly solid line of orange cones, and we ride in that all the way across El Camino Real, Rollins, and the various ramps. At the end came a pretty easy merge back into the right line for our trip down Airport.

After a few more frustrating red lights, the road opened up and the pack broke apart once more. Oh, I forgot to mention it before, but there was a STRONG northerly wind this day. Crazy as it sounds, it felt like the return on Canada was more challenging than the climb up Kings Mountain! But on Airport, all that wind purely benefited me. I was riding in my very highest gear, on flat terrain, on good pavement, with nice long stretches between lights, just flying down to Coyote Point.

The traffic got a little crowded at one point where the road narrows down to one lane, but overall this was a great route, with very few cars. (I typically ride the Bay Trail when I'm in the area, so it was nice to get some exposure to the alternate route. The Bay Trail does have much nicer views since it's right on the water, but it's also pretty narrow and you have to contend with the majority walkers. Airport usually doesn't have a bike lane, but traffic is pretty light and you usually have two lanes to share.)

After re-entering the park, I got my picture taken, then pedaled along the very good bike path to the finish. Hooray! The kids' race was just getting started when I pulled in, about a quarter after noon, for a total ride time of over five hours.

They had the standard set of booths that you see at all athletic events these days, but it was a smaller and more manageable collection than, say, a marathon would have. I picked up my "dirty shirt" from the (very well concealed) booth, then got in line to order lunch. (I think most people bring picnic stuff with them, but since I cycled to the park, I didn't exactly want to bring food along with me.) I picked up a barbecue tri-tip sandwich, which also has lettuce and tomato, and came with a small cup of pasta salad and a bag of chips. It was pretty good, though I think it would be more accurate to call it a "grilled tri-tip smeared with barbecue sauce" sandwich. Nothing wrong with that, but tri-tip is a tough enough cut that it really benefits enormously from the long cooking you get in a true barbecue.

Be that as it may: I'd just finished a long bike ride, and anything would have tasted delicious. I chilled out on a picnic bench for a while, listening to the progress of the kids' bike race, then the upbeat band that started playing. With all the variable weather we'd had that day, I hadn't been sure what to expect at the point. I lucked out - it was clear, sunny, warm, and bright. I contentedly finished my sandwich, pulled on my dirty shirt, and rolled out back home.

The ride was phenomenal - extremely well organized, well supported, and well designed. And, best of all, their attitude was just as cheerful and laid-back as I'd hoped. I'm sure that I'll try it again sometime. I don't know yet if I'll do it next year or not - I'm tempted to pick another ride that I can use as my next goal/practice. Since finding out about the TdP I've learned about several other intriguing rides (Giro di Peninsula, Tour de Cure) that I might want to take a crack at. I keep hearing about these "century" things and am curious to see what that's all about...

Und now is zhe time on Sprockets vhen ve dahnce!

I had pre-ordered a copy of A Dance with Dragons from Kepler's, an awesome independent bookstore in Menlo Park. I swung by after work on July 12th, picked up a northbound Caltrain, and cracked open the book. I took my time getting into it - after all, these books don't come out too often, and I wanted to savor it. I read Martin's foreward, lingered over the maps (which include some new territory), and started in on the prologue. A fellow passenger noticed what I was reading. "I have to ask, who is the first point-of-view from?" he queried. I flipped ahead past the prologue, saw the name, smiled, and told him. Good to be back on that ground again.

Everything I want to say about this book is spoilery, so before I get into that: this book isn't as crazily mindblowing as A Storm of Swords, but I enjoyed it a lot, and would definitely rank it above A Feast for Crows. Martin famously took a long time writing this, and it has paid off with high quality. Some of the plot points may annoy me a little, but the storytelling is very strong, which, after all, should be the purpose.

Okay, let's kick off the

SUPER ULTRA MEGA SPOILERS

Tyrion. That's the first POV chapter. This made me happy, since Tyrion is my favorite character, and I had missed him since he shot Tywin in the gut at the end of A Storm of Swords.

I've also greatly enjoyed the new HBO series, and Tyrion is my favorite character there, too. I've come to realize, though, that the two Tyrions are fairly different. I'd forgotten that in the books, Tyrion always waddles everywhere. Peter Dinklage never waddles: he strides. Like many other characters from the books, some of Tyrion's rougher edges were sanded away. I'm glad that they kept his whoring and his strong instinct for self-preservation, but I never really wonder whether the TV Tyrion is a bad man. In contrast, in the books, even while I'm fascinated by him and cheer him on, I still keep wondering just what evil he's willing to do.

I have two minor stylistic gripes with the book (and maybe the series) that I want to get out of the way. First, Martin has an annoying habit of ending a chapter with the POV character POSSIBLY dead, but not DEFINITELY dead. Granted, he's earned this right: unlike with other series, there's always a chance that Martin has actually killed off this person. That usually leads to a re-reading of the last page or two, to try and look for key phrases that will show whether we need to worry. I've grown somewhat inured to this, and so when Martin did it to Tyrion (he falls off a boat and apparently drowns), I just yawned. Yeah, it sounded like he was dead, but it just made no dramatic sense to kill off such a major character in such a pointless way. Sure enough, a few chapters yet he was back, healthy as ever (though the same could not be said for the Griffin).

The other minor gripe: the same details are re-presented over and over again. Tyrion always waddles; Varys always titters and has powdered hands; Stannis is gaunt and stern. A bit more variety would be nice. That said, I've come to accept that, with the series now running north of five thousand pages, it's probably impossible for many casual readers to keep even major characters straight, and every bit of personal detail probably helps.

On the other hand, while repeated characterization details can annoy me, repeated thoughts do not. I thought this was done very effectively in this book: the POV characters have lived through so much, and experienced such trauma, that their minds have started to seize on and worry over details and thoughts that they can't get past. Tyrion has a parcel of good ones now. He re-lives the slaying of his father over and over again. He asks of everyone he meets, "Where do whores go?" His mind drifts back to Tysha and her ordeal. Tyrion is brilliant (is it just me, or did he just pick up cyvasse in this book? And become a grandmaster?), but a large portion of his brain is devoted to digging these ruts deeper and deeper.

Arya is similarly scarred. Her list of revenge subjects sounds like a rosary. Ser Gregor, Raff the Sweetling, Queen Cersei. She is trying to push this cycle out of her head with a new creed: "I am nobody."

Jon Snow knows nothing.

Theon has to remember his name.

You get the idea. There's a cool cumulative effect from this sort of repetition, and I think it really drives home the things that these characters are obsessing over.

Oh, another thing I liked: Martin still uses the POV names to separate his chapters, but for some characters whose identity has become particularly fragmented or damaged, the POV title changes as well. The biggest example of this is Theon, who probably goes through four or five names from Reek on the way to eventually reclaiming the name Theon. Also, we don't get any POV from "Arya", but we do meet "The Blind Girl", and instantly know it's her. It's interesting that Barristan doesn't use his name, nor any of Dany's suitors; they all go by their titles or roles instead.

Let's have some fun with speculation!

Jon sure seems dead, doesn't he? Even if he isn't, he's for sure out of the Watch. I kind of think he might be dead for real, though... those men mean to kill him, and he doesn't have many friends nearby.

I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, I do like Jon a lot as a character. Because he's so major, it would be a huge, Ned-esque blow to have him die, which would almost make it worth it. Stepping back from it a bit, though, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I mean... in all honesty, we've now had five books (well, four with Jon) where he's being tempted to abandon the Wall. He always leans toward it, and always pulls back. I just don't get why he would finally abandon it now. Granted, Ramsay is a great manipulator, but really... if Jon didn't leave for Ned, and didn't leave for Robb, and didn't leave for Bran, then why would he leave now? WHO would he leave for? He seems to like Mance, but Mance was supposed to be dead already, and in any case isn't crucial to his plans. He knows from Ramsay's letter that Theon and "Arya" are gone; it's not like he has any realistic chance of finding them. Jon might be out for revenge... but again, if he hasn't revenged himself before, what's so much worse about now?

I've re-read the end of that chapter a few times, and will be curious to see where that plot thread goes. The book says that he and Tormund talk for two hours before they descend to the dining hall. What, exactly, did they talk about? Just the splitting of forces, or something else? I kind of wonder and hope that there may be some other scheme at play, something that will further involve the wildlings in whatever's going on.

While I'm sad that Jon is apparently dead, I also totally understand it. He's preaching desertion. He's abandoning his Watch. He swore an oath, and is breaking that oath. It's wrenching when Bowen Marsh stabs him, but I'm sure Bowen felt just as pained at what his Lord Commander was doing.

Oh, and one more thing: it would be kinda perfect if Jon is dead, because so many fan theories revolve around Jon: who he is, who is parents are, and what role he may have to play in the Ice and Fire to come. This is a series where so many prophecies have proven false, where so many interpretations have failed, and I love the idea that we as readers are no more or less skilled at predicting the future than Melisandre is from looking into the flames. I feel like we have a broader perspective than anyone within the series (well, except maybe Bran, now), but not a terribly deep perspective, and can easily miss things, and base our plans for the future on what we want to be true.

Moving farther south... I'm also very curious to find out just what happened (or is happening) at Winterfell; I was sure that we'd get at least one more chapter out of there. I strongly suspect that Ramsay is lying in his letter. Well, he's almost certainly unmasked Mance, and may have flayed the spearwives as well. But I kind of doubt that Stannis and his host are dead just yet. Ramsay is probably provoking Jon, and might even have predicted what he'd do and how the Watch would react. Anyways, there's a lot of ways that could go down. Winter could win, destroying both armies, within a few days' walk of each other.

So, yeah. Just who WAS that blowing the horns outside Winterfell? It seems like it couldn't have been Stannis.  Is there some other force coming into play now?

The Feast for Crows POVs start popping back in near the end of the book, although we don't get much there; I think there's a single chapter for Jaime (a good one), and maybe two or three for Cersei. The south is a mess; the Lannisters are consolidating their hold on power, but they have lost so many forces, and have made so many high-priced allies, that they only tenuously rule.

I was pretty bummed about Dany's storyline in the book. Not because it was bad, just because it didn't seem to go very far. I guess that's part of the point - she's gotten bogged down in ruling a city, and dealing with the drudgery and pain of governing an unruly populace - but it isn't all that fun to read. I enjoyed getting Barristan's POV too, although he's stuck in the same slow-moving plot. Dany does eventually fly, which is pretty darn cool, but still, it seems like we could easily have gotten where we needed to in just a few chapters. I kind of thought that Martin was trying to synchronize his storylines: he needed Dany to spin her wheels for a while so he could bring Tyrion over from Westeros and join the two of them up. I'm no longer sure if that'll happen, though... after all, Dany is now in the Dothraki Sea, and Tyrion is rallying forces outside the city wall. Will we see yet ANOTHER Battle for Meereen? If so, what will be the point? I don't see Dany spending the next twenty years of her life serving as Mother Queen or whatever... it makes more sense for her to use Victarion's ships and head back to Westeros. Which is exactly what everyone's been asking her to do since the beginning of the book.

I'm not sure yet how I feel about Aegon. It felt a bit cheap for him to still be alive; the series has gotten SUCH great dramatic mileage out of the Sack of King's Landing, and Ser Gregor bashing in the babies' heads, that for him to just show up, seemingly out of nowhere, tends a little too much towards the deus ex machina for me. That said... it does put another fascinating wheel into motion. We'll see where it goes.

Eh. I'm probably failing to anticipate something really cool that'll happen in the next book which will only be possible thanks to the time we've spent in Meereen so far.

Okay, random thought time!
* Favorite POV character: Tyrion, still
* Least favorite POV character: Cersei
* Most agonizing POV character: Reek/Theon. I never thought I'd feel sorry for this guy, and remember feeling glad that he was going to get punished. Well, I take it back. I'm not glad to have learned how he was punished.
* Favorite plot thread: The bank foreclosing on Westeros. I'm not even joking. This is AWESOME!
* Coolest character evolution: Bran. C'mon, we've all been expecting something like this since A Game of Thrones, right? I love how Martin does magic, though. It isn't tricks or arcane flash like in other fantasy series. I thought Bran had a magical destiny, but I never imagined it looking like this.
* Favorite death: Hmmm. Books 1 and 3 had the best, it'll be hard for anything to top those. Here... I probably cheered hardest for Janos Slynt's; it wasn't particularly crazy, but it felt so right, and like a kind of justice.
* Favorite new character: Maybe Wun-Wun?
* Hodor: Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor!
* Places we didn't see in this book that I'm most curious about: The Eyrie and Oldtown. Something big is happening in both places, and I can't tell what.

I can't even begin to predict what'll happen next. I really hope that Dany heads westward - but, wouldn't it be cool if it turned out that the climax won't be in Westeros after all? The civil war in Westeros seems set to become even more confused, as Varys has untangled the Lannister/Tyrell alliance, Aegon begins his conquest (how, exactly, do they plan to take Storm's End?), and Dorne seems poised to enter the fray. Still, sooner or later the Walkers will cross the Wall, and so it seems like all of that needs to be sorted out quickly, or else it will be sorted for them.

END MEGA ULTRA SUPER SPOILERS


That's all I've got for now! This is a meaty book, and I'm still chewing over it mentally, so I may drop an updated post later on. If anyone has thoughts of their own, I'd love to hear 'em, just mark spoilers appropriately.