Recent reviews by Kalinskald

It is 2007, and I am reading a Gene Wolfe novel for the first time. I grip the great volume with both hands and place it on the stand. The androgyne asks if I have seen it previously, and I tell him I have not. I am 30 years old.

It is 1982, and I am staring at a monochrome screen playing Aztec on an Apple II. My father has brought the machine home from work for the weekend, and I am enthralled. I am 5 years old.

It is 2024, and I am writing a review for Caves of Qud. I am struggling to explain the profound and eerie sense that this game was made *specifically for me*, as though it has reached into moments from my past, present, and future, and blended them into this miraculous concoction. I am 47 years old.

It is 1986, and I have discovered a game called Rogue. I have long since mastered the art of parsing these glyphs when I encounter them *linearly*, but these once-familiar symbols are undergoing some strange semiosis in my mind as I decipher their new meanings and portents. I tap, tap, tap the keyboard. I am 9 years old.

It is 2015, and I am playing Caves of Qud for the first time. The theatre of my mind is unfurling, and I sense neither space nor time beyond the bounds of the saltmarsh, and the teeming layers of history that lurk beneath its surface. I prefer the stillness here among the kaleidoscopic bonnets of the Rainbow Wood. I am tired of Earth. I tap, tap, tap the keyboard. I am 38 years old.