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Message: <blockquote data-quote="cignus_pfaccari" data-source="post: 2708630" data-attributes="member: 14557">I've read several of his books.  He's quite fun, and I typically enjoy reading him.  On the whole, he writes entertainingly, especially if you like travelogues; really, that's what most of his books are.  Also, he's not an Ancient Astronut; he's not *that* kind of loony.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />In The Sign and the Seal, he hunts for the Ark in Ethiopia.  There are two very amusing parts to this; first, when he realizes that, hey, being associated with the previous Communist regime is going to make his attempts to get back into the country to go Ark-hunting...difficult, and then when he meets the priest whose job it is to watch over the alleged Ark.  The latter part is amusing mostly in that he asks some boneheaded questions...like, several times, "Can I see it?"  Oy.  While not directly related to gaming, of course, it gives ideas on how to direct PCs after ancient artifacts.  Plus, it gives you an excuse to have lightsabers in ancient Egypt.Underworld is a more recent work, and quite fun.  Basically, he's realized that Antarctica is not a viable place for the Antedeluvians to have lived.  So, where else to look?  On the now-submerged continental shelves!  That's actually not nearly as ludicrous as it sounds; remember, sea levels are much lower than they are now in periods of glaciation, and he posits that those would've been where most of any ancient civilization's population would live.  He gets somebody to come up with sea level maps for him, and spends a good deal of time in India and Japan diving on submerged ruins between the subcontinent and Sri Lanka.  Unfortunately, as he admits, submerged ruins are REALLY HARD to date in any meaningful manner, and the sea-level maps he has specifically do not take into account any sort of tectonic disturbance.*This* is gaming gold, here.  For my upcoming Shadowrun game, I'm using it to remodel the prehistory represented by Earthdawn.I started on Talisman, which is about secret societies, but never finished it.  It got boring after a while, but the nice history of the Cathars came in really handy with Glen Cook's new novel.Brad</blockquote>

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