Death Dream – Graham Masterton

 

“Death Dream” is second book in a series “Night Warriors” written by Graham Masterton. Unlike with the movies, book sequels give you a good chance at having experience a creation that is at least equal (if not better at times) than the original piece.
Known to us Springer, descendant of the god Ashapol, will be assembling an army of powerful warriors, who possess the tools able to destroy evil while they are entering consciousness of sleeping humans. We’ll meet our hero’s we met in the first book but they’ll not play key roles. Their addition is a nice continuation of the series making it all click between the two titles.
This time around, we meet John, a man who is a single parent to his sin, Lenny. A young boy starts to see a horrid ghost in his dreams and with each passing day the creature becomes more real. The evil is creeping out but our characters are not her aware.
Lenny with passing time becomes a gate, that enables the demonic ghost from Lenny’s dreams to enter the world of the living to take what he wants as he pleases. During one of the brutal sessions where the world of dreams interacts and impacts the world of living John loses his new girlfriend, while he escapes the death only to be hurt and paralysed.
John’s frustration and powerlessness becomes more and more apparent to the point of John stopping believing in himself and it is then when meets Springer who explains to him that he can destroy the demon as he is one of the Night Warriors. He will need some help though but luckily there’s plenty of that available.
That’s where the problem with the book starts, at least for me, as with the addition of new warriors it becomes a bit difficult to incorporate all of them into a fluid action. Another point is, that the previous characters we met in first book become a bit faded which was a bit of shame as I expected the journey to continue with the known to me identities.
Anyway, back to book. This time around the evil is not there to destroy the whole world or at least a nation. The actions of the creature are influenced by a small group oif people making the experience of our protagonist that much personal. There is a lot pain and grief that the characters must overcome making this title a bit difficult to allow reader to get into position of the main character, but on the other hand it creates a very unique, brutal book that leaves one quite shaken up with emotions.
I enjoyed reading “Death Dream” even though I expected to “meet my friends” from the first book in the series.
As always with Masterson’s book the story holds up well and keeps you wanting more and more. At times I had wished that Graham made thus story a little big longer in order to accommodate our previously used characters better in the realms of this story.

Fallout 4 – some loose thoughts

And here we are. At that strange point of Fallout 4 save where it seems that a small break is required. I had finally decided to take the game to the end and it turned out that one of my planned options wasn’t there because, well I played through the game trying to experience as much as I can.
I should really input a big, fat spoiler alert sign because some might find my ramblings as spoiling their own personal journeys. I’m sorry but hey I did spoiler warn you!

The two choices I had were a) happily ever after with my dad…erm son and b) a bit reluctantly siding with the Minuteman. As I still had my concerns over my dad’s… Erm damn you space/time travel thing! My son’s credibility I decided to finish off the game, going against the Institute with my annoying mate Preston and our Minutemen agenda. The problem was it didn’t seem like Preston wanted to go all out and was cheering on me and the Railroad instead.
After some digging and sneaking around my resources I realised that this certain ending would be available if I didn’t involve myself too much with any faction. I could be friends with them but not too much (perhaps I’m missing a point here or there or I am simply being daft and missing something obvious), thus not really taking part in many of the game’s quests making the whole £39.99 I spent on the game not such a great deal. Well it doesn’t matter I could always start from a completely new character build and choose that boring(?) path.
Since I didn’t get on so well with Desdemona and Tinker Tom’s stuff wasn’t worth all these caps I decided to finish off with the Father happily dying of cancer knowing I’ll be the worthwhile head of Institute. The few last quests were a tad annoying at times as they mainly involved go there, speak to him, come back, let me know, so I can send you somewhere else so you can tell X about Y and come back to me…yeah lack of communication devices sucks big time in Commonwealth.
Anyway… Son as many sons can be was a bit of a spoiled brat and ordered me to finish off the Railroad which I did in rather boring fashion and I came back to him where we had a very boring, day to day, kinda “I’m dying father” talk and I expected some fireworks or some secret mission or whatever but there was none. Just this not fully thought through open end that left me kinda flat and wondering “what the heck was that all about?”.
It all came to this sudden end and all I was left with was this feeling of unfulfillment. I mean I enjoyed the game but as far as the endings go… Boy this one was to forget about, and to be honest I kinda already had.

As I had made a save in critical point, I was able to relive the dying moments by siding with the Railroad the next evening. So I did and the end was a bit better as you had to fight through most of the institute synths armies, although thanks to my charisma I got the Father to turn some of them off. And the sight of the Institute going to dust was kinda fun it still just didn’t leave me heartbroken, speechless or at least covered in goosebumps. Perhaps the open end that allows you playing after finishing main quest spoils any greatness, perhaps I’m old and just I don’t know what I want from life. I don’t know. Or maybe, since Fallout 3 was my first one, it tasted that good…. It doesn’t matter, it’s been fun but I do wish Bethesda left the Karma system in place and multiple endings to each main and side quest to paint a picture of your character like F3 did it. I’d also love the Hardcore mode from New Vegas but all in all the game was and still is going to be a great title.
I’m still yet to really get really busy with the settlements as I’d like to try to go platinum, and there’ll be some DLC but in the meantime I thought I could go about replaying the New Vegas as I couldn’t give that title my full attention due to health problems.
Oh, another point is I just don’t know how people got to 100 lvl or even more as I reached lvl 65 playing on hard, later switching to very hard (you see, I’m not great at gaming) and it seemed like it was taking very long time…
Well that’s enough of it for now but Fallout is not disappearing from here yet so be prepared for more.