Jonathan Carroll novels are things that I look forward to the way some people look forward to meals at their favorite restaurants or concerts by a favorite musician.  I like to savor it, take it slow, let it breathe, take it all in.  Carroll has a singular talent for establishing an utterly attractive and believable world — usually with plots revolving around relationships, the good kind and the bad kind –- and then, when the reader is content and safe to live in that world, he brings the weird.  And in that sense, The Ghost in Love is somewhat different from his other work.  Carroll brings the weird from page one.

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I made sure to pre-order Player’s Handbook 2 so that I could review it for MEGATONik as soon as I came back from spring break.  Today, I had plenty of time to peruse the information in its pages, and I now think that Wizards was justified in producing this second volume.  If Wizards of the Coast had instead packed all of the content in the Player’s Handbook 2 into the original Player’s Handbook, the authors and designers would have had to ship sub-standard content in a terrible rush, and the titanic tome would have been daunting to new players–a result totally not in keeping with the mission of 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.

Instead, we have two books filled with well thought out and interesting material, some of which you have likely heard about.  Perhaps the biggest reasons to shell out twenty-some dollars for the Player’s Handbook 2 are the return of fan-favorite races and classes not present in the 4th Edition Player’s Handbook, like the gnome race and sorcerer, bard, and barbarian classes.

These are excellent reasons to purchase the book.  However, I would like to highlight some of my personal favorite content that hasn’t received much publicity, but will nonetheless be high on my priority list for incorporation into my character designs.  In this way, this article is not so much a review as an examination of several elements found inside the cover.

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As an avid reader, I have read all sorts of novels: books that made me laugh, cry, hide under the covers and put the book in the freezer, and inevitably cringe at how terrible the writing is. I’ve read plenty of excellent books, books I wanted to read over and over. The Harry Potter series, despite its atrocious epilogue, I’ve adored beyond belief.  I never thought I would find a book that would surpase the HP as #1 in my heart.

Then I read Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind, and my preconceived notions of good literature were blown out of the water.

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