Black Ballad by Rick Heinz

This is an interesting new RPG (Role Playing Game) that can take place in virtually any setting or campaign. How is that possible, you may wonder? Well, as an explanation, have you ever been in a campaign where the entire party was killed? That’s where this campaign comes in. It takes place in the realm between life and a character’s final death. In a realm where the dead are awaiting their passage into either being resurrected or they are ready to pass into their eternal rest.

I read a review copy of this book, and it sounds like a well defined and easily adaptable adventure for players to explore if their characters have died, but they aren’t ready to give up and create new characters and would like to continue playing to see what might happen in the afterworld. It is easily adaptable to be used with whatever campaign or game system you and your group happened to be already playing.

It’s been a few years since I’ve played AD&D, but reading this rules system and adventure, it seemed very well explained and I can see how it can be adapted to other RPG systems. The adventure really sounded like a fun one to me, and there were multiple side quests and options for different outcomes depending on what choices the players make. There is no intended ending for this one. It is entirely up to the players as to who they choose to interact with and what they choose to do or not do. And there are outcomes that are well thought out and planned no matter which path your party chooses to take. There’s even an outcome for if they choose to do nothing at all and simply enjoy their afterlife in this realm that exists between life and death.

All in all, I was impressed by how well thought out it all was by the creators of this adventure/realm. It sounds like a very fun idea, and one that I could see quite a few people enjoying, no matter what types of players are in the group. I’ve played in adventures where everything went according to plan, as well as ones where it feels like the group “took a left turn in Albuquerque” and have gone so far “off-script” from what was planned for them that the Game Master had no idea how to get them back on track. But so far as I could tell, this one allows for that to happen and lets the players determine when and where the story will go.

All in all, if you enjoy playing RPGs, then this is one that I think you should consider giving a try. It definitely sounds like fun to me. Recommended.

https://amzn.to/3VD6BUw (Amazon Link)

https://4horsemenpublications.com/product/the-black-ballad-a-metal-infused-rpg-campaign-and-setting-perfect-after-a-tpk-chronicles-of-the-crossing/ (Link to the book on Publisher's website)

https://books2read.com/u/3yMZWv  (Books2Read link to other Vendors)

Amazon requires me to state that I have an Amazon Associates account that I use to generate the links to the books on their website. Purchasing something after following those links will earn a few pennies for me off the sale, though as of yet I have not earned anything from my Amazon Associate links.

Elixir of Life by Andrew Dulay

This was a  medical thriller dealing with life and death, involving the medical staff in a Saudi Arabian hospital, their patients, the people of the town, a group of men who arrange for the illegal buying and selling of human organs for transplant, as well as those who decide to sell one of their own kidneys.  This book deals with some tough issues, including alcohol addiction, rape, poverty, adultery, accidental death, and murder. For many very obvious reasons, this is not a happy tale, though it ends on a more positive note for some of the characters than it does for others.

I read a review copy of this book, and while I did enjoy parts of the story a great deal, there were other aspects that I had some problems with. It is a complex tale with what feels like four distinct, though often intertwining, plotlines going on. It is also a very, very long book--at the end of the story, my Kindle said I had read about 750 pages.

I also feel that this book could have possibly benefitted with another round of editing and definitely needed a proofreader's expertise as well. While everything was spelled correctly, there were a number of wrong words and incorrect forms of words (example: passed vs past and light casted shadows vs light cast shadows). 

One other item that I felt was a bit problematic for me (though others may feel differently) and that added to my feeling of this book being too long, was that at times it went into great detail on a transplant surgery. While I do understand that some of the plot does revolve around things that happened during surgery, the book often goes into great, specific detail involving the minutiae of the surgery. For me, it was much more detail than I felt like I, as a reader, needed or wanted to know. And in some cases, with me not having a medical background, it meant the involved items were meaningless to me. I felt that much of what I read was unnecessary and that leaving it out would have made the book easier to read and more enjoyable for me overall. 

As I mentioned, there were parts of the story I enjoyed a great deal. The characters were very interesting and their individual stories were often the parts that I truly enjoyed learning about. The author did a good job of interweaving several intertwined, but initially separate plotlines together, and those were some of what I found most enjoyable about the story. But with over 700 pages, I do feel that this book would have overall been better off had it been broken into two or three books, rather than keeping it as one extremely long novel. And as such, I feel that I must rate this one as 2.5 stars, for while I did enjoy parts of it, there was room for improvement, especially when it came to the editing/proofreading.

That being said, I do feel that those who enjoy medical thrillers that clearly contain a great deal of actual medical knowledge and expertise from the author will likely enjoy this book more than I did.

https://amzn.to/3y3V7iZ (link to book on Amazon)

https://books2read.com/u/baERqa  (Books2Read link to other vendors)

Amazon requires me to state that I have an Amazon Associates account that I use to generate the links to the books on their website. Purchasing something after following those links will earn a few pennies for me off the sale, though as of yet I have not earned anything from my Amazon Associate links.