The Art of Theft

Another game by that bloke wot does the Zero Punctuation. This one is slicker, more stylish and just as free as the last ones.
Despite the lo-res The Art of Theft is an excellent game. You play as Trilby, a recurring character in his work and you get to sneak around and earn upgrades so that you can sneak around even more.

The Art of Theft

Sons of Heaven

This book is currently being passed around here at The OverDrone. It is a sad day as this looks to be the last of Kage Baker's Company novels. I can't think of another series that I have actually stuck with from beginning to end, usually the plot starts to grind down after the third or fourth installment, but not this time.
IF you haven't read this series yet I'd recommend starting with The Garden of Iden or Sky Coyote and then reading upwards time-wise, This definitely isn't a standalone novel. Baker manages to wrap up the loose ends which dangled so temptingly throughout the series. I'll keep this review short as I'm still mourning the end of a great series but I give it Infinity out of Ten stars.

The Slacker You Love to HATE!

The OverDrone presents another review of a book that has been out for some time. Not only that but this is a compilation of material originally published in the nineties. Why did I wait so long to review this? Well, I read Hate through out the nineties, not to mention Bagge's first series, Neat Stuff starring Girly Girl and Chucky Boy, thus I felt no need to purchase this volume immediately. My mistake...
Seeing all of these stories together illustrates Bagge's brilliance. Buddy, the New Jerseyite slackster develops into a real person in these issues. Lisa's later importance is deftly foreshadowed here, although I doubt even Bagge knew it at the time, and George, is it just me or does he seem way more interesting when presented en masse like this? If you don't know what I'm talking about you ought to purchase this fine book from Fantagraphics or you can buy it used from Amazon below.
Buddy Does Seattle

Love Is...

Here at The OverDrone we try not to publish too many bad reviews. There is just not enough time in the day to pan the huge amount of crap out there but today I finished a book that really does need this bad review.
Usually if a book is crap I just put it down. It is so much easier than slogging through bruised purple prose but there is something about the manure created by music journalists that keeps me reading despite my misgivings. I call it the Klosterman Effect, after music journalist Chuck Klosterman. You remember him don't you? He wrote Fargo, Rock City and then some other shite. Fargo was readable, even enjoyable in it's defense of Heavy Metal and the personal stuff was easy enough to dismiss but then in his next book (whose name I will not mention here) I guess he ran out of music to write about and started writing about his personal life. It's not really a life, more like a desperate attempt to fool himself for another day. I imagine many music journalists suffer from this syndrome, I mean how many times can you give a Stevie Winwood or Michael Bolton album a positive review and still look yourself in the face every day?
Anyway, Rob Sheffield's Love Is a Mix Tape is a heartfelt paen to his dear departed wife rendered overly cute by the faux cassette song lists which they apparently made at that time.
At first I thought Sheffield would adhere to the song list prefacing each chapter, using each song as a bridge to a memory but no, instead he rambles on in that way that only music journalists do. Dude, if you were capable of poetic imagery and catchy lyricism you would be in a band, not writing about bands.
Some other problems I have;

• Nobody listened to Sugar Ray unless they had no choice so stop trying to change history Rob Sheffield.
• Mourning your wife by watching Audrey Hepburn and Liz Taylor movies is not sweet, it's just gay Rob Sheffield.
• Finally Rob Sheffield, you should know that you are a better writer than Klosterman and if you can shake off the deleterious effects of writing for Spin (poor, sad bastard) you should give it another go.

To sum up, better than Klosterman but still lite.
Love is a Mix Tape | By Rob Sheffield