James D. Long (4) (1948–)

I enjoyed this Battletech book much more than I initially thought I would. I'm not sure why - possibly the very strange cover. I have to say, too, I found myself throughout the novel asking "what does the cover have to do with any of this?" Spoiler - it happens in like the last 10 pages of the book. At any rate, the Black Thorns are a favorite of mine and I think Long did a great job with the characters. This book sort of has it all - aerospace conflict, character development and, of course, Battlemech combat. A fun, quick read if you need a Battletech fix.… (plus d'informations)

Count me grossly unimpressed, so much so that I sold it back to the store. It might have helped if I were a Cyberspace player, but I was looking for a book on an arcology, and this one was completely unimpressive. The arcology had 24,000 citizens and was a basic company town. There's a reason why there's no RPG books on Poughkeepsie; it's because towns of 24,000 are boring as heck. There's a large section on the mall, if you ever really cared which stores the teenage girls hang out in in your cyberspace game. There was a lengthy section in the front about the history of the company, which is possibly interesting to Cyberspace people, and a bunch of short entries gangs, many of which needed more detail about greater Chicago to be useful. (And how many really interesting gangs does a city of 24,000 really have? Especially with how tightly controlled they describe the arcology as being.)… (plus d'informations)