While I'm here, and before it falls out of my email trash (no, I've still not fixed, or had fixed by IT, certain mailing list emails going straight to trash, so still trying to keep up via the archives), I finished Splintered Suns a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, it's very Travelleresque with a nice light touch humour that I enjoyed (not as dour as the Expanse books). However, like that last series I had a particular problem with it that i'll mention below some spoiler space.

I think it would make a great convention adventure, although I might steer clear of running it myself because it involves 'nested' realities and a couple of years someone ran into difficulties at TravCon with such an adventure because one of the players found his mental health wasn't up to the experience. Or if I did run it, I'd add warnings.

The characters were great and really did feel like a pretty typical Traveller crew, the plot (in general) worked for me and had some interesting points. Overall I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to readers of this list. (I find it hard to imagine that the author hasn't, at some point, played Traveller). If nothing else it can easily be mined for descriptions, atmosphere and ideas.

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My main complaint was the grimness of having almost all the "PCs" killed, 'on screen' in quite a gruesome visceral way. Yes I know they 'live' on in a virtual reality and I know the last moment of the book suggests that maybe there'll be a followup novel which 'rescues' them (or at the very least explores their new life)... but I found that particular - fairly critical bit of the story - rather unsatisfying. Aside from that, I quite enjoyed the split in the novel between the 'main' story and the characters in the virtual reality also making a difference.

On Wed, 16 Jan 2019 at 16:06, Timothy Collinson <xxxxxx@port.ac.uk> wrote:

Afternoon all,

Picked up _Splintered Suns_ by Michael Cobley at Christmas and started reading it on the bus this morning. Very Travelleresque so far. The main characters (as far as I've got) read like a typical Traveller merchant crew and the novel starts with a museum heist which could be straight out of the first chapter of The Traveller Adventure!

But I was particularly struck by this quote on p.55 of my paperback:

"Pyke [the captain, negotiating with a patron] managed to avoid laughing out loud. So there is a catch!
One of the regular hazards for trader-smugglers like Pyke was the client whose job offer started off as something fairly innocuous, then somewhere along the line turned into a proposal to go in search of legendary treasures, lost alien worlds, buried temples, or underground caches of ancient mechs/devastating weapons/mechs armed with devastating weapons. Close questioning nearly always revealed that these locations lay within the territory of some ruthless regime, or criminal organisation, or beneath the sacred monument of a homicidal cult, or floating somewhere in an asteroid field, being fought over by rival scavenger squads..."

If that's not either a summary of past Traveller adventures or a blueprint for the next, I don't know what it is.

Anyway, it's a fun read so far so you might want to check it out. I'll report back if there's more to like (or not to like...)

tc