This review contains spoilers. To read it with spoilers blanked out see my review on The StoryGraph or Goodreads

Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire

The more entries I read in the Wayward Children series, the more intrigued I get. This book takes us back to Nancy - our original protagonist and our introduction to the world of the Wayward Children. Back when I read the first book, I thought each book would be a standalone book about a kid or kids who experienced a portal fantasy and ended up back in the real world. Instead McGuire gave us an intricate web of books. They go forward, backwards, and sideways in time. Sometimes they are prequels to the original book and other times they move the overall story along. Death is not a constant and, apparently with this book, neither is getting to stay in your door if/one you are re-admitted. The plots are getting very entwined and it’s getting more and more essential to have read (and remembered) the old ones to get the full understanding of what’s going on. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just different from where the series seemed to start out.

I chose to go with Kargoth Stormcleaver, Orc Battlemaster. It was a tough choice, but I liked the idea of the guy who looks like a brute, but actually hones his mind.

Story

8 Jan

I fight along with many goblins. The little ones around me are fierce, one should not underestimate them. The wall falls and arrows rain upon us. I use my training and naturally avoid the arrows. They are as harmful to me as the rain itself.

Since we choose a new character on 8 Jan, I chose to have this post cover my remaining days as Severin Mortis.

Story

Day 05

My master the high mage directs me to prepare the spell for the Overlord. He explains that the Soul Crystal was imbued with power by devouring souls when the Dark Overlord activated it. Now we will reverse the operation and give that power to the Dark Lord. My master is perhaps a bit nastier to me than usual because I betrayed him in front of the Dark Lord. I assume he has not tried to kill me because we are both necessary for the spell.

Gameplay

As the city bells go off, the heroes arrive at the town square. They see a rare sight - elven folk - surrounded by the Ironguard and an unruly crowd forming. The town hasn’t seen elves in decades and is scared this might be an invasion. Tris stops the riot and calms the townfolk. She speaks with the elves and finds out that they are under attack by giant spiders. Their pact not to harm forest life means they can’t do anything about this. The group agrees to help the elves.

Trends

Just like last year, I spent a lot of time listening to the Chillhop seasonal albums. They provided an easy soundtrack to work without any distracting lyrics. That said, there were a few exceptions to that. In February I used Spotify to listen to Bad Bunny’s New Album “Debi tirar más fotos”. In March I made a Cover Songs playlist and spent a good chunk of the month listening to it. I also listened to a lot of Kill Lincoln while prepping for their September concert. When I wasn’t listening to chillhop or those albums, I mostly listened to random music while at work. For some reason, the random radio doesn’t work on the phone app for me, so if I wanted to listen to random music while on my phone, I would listen to my favorites radio. I have a decent amount of tracks so it’s not too repetitious, but it does tend to concentrate the songs I listen to. Also, when I was at work, if I wanted to listen to a whole album, the design of funkwhale biases me towards more recent additions as those appear right on the home screen.

Since I started making my end of the year posts this is the year in which I did the least amount of programming. This was actually slightly done on purpose. When 2024 was ending and 2025 was starting I looked around and realized that I only have a few years until Scarlett is an adult and a handful after that before the twins are adults. I don’t want to get all Cat’s in the Cradle about it, but looking at my own life, I know that even if we maintain the best relationship, the kids will never have as much time to hang as they do now. So I prioritized playing with them - mostly TTRPGs, but also video games and whatever else they wanted to play. Programming is often a solitary pursuit and most of my utilities do what I need them to do anyway. I also spent of a lot of my weekends cooking and baking - again providing for the family.

Last year I backed the Kickstarter for the Quest Calendar by Sundial Games. This year is called Souls of Saraku. It’s a Solo TTRPG played as a daily calendar. This year the player chooses to play as a minion for a Dark Overlord (my first year, so I don’t know if it’s always like this). I’ll be blogging about it here as I do with all my TTRPG campaigns. The first 3 weeks of the calendar are a tutorial that allow the player to play with 3 of the minions so that the player is making an informed choice. For week 1 I chose to go with Severin Mortis, a Human Deathweaver.

When 2025 started, I had 2 goals - to get caught up with the October Daye series and to read my Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines more regularly. I was able to finish October Daye, but things fell off a give on the magazine front. I read many, many more October Daye short stories than are listed here. Many of them were not on Goodreads, so I couldn’t track them. As I got to the second half of the year, my reading fell off as I spent a lot of my free time planning for various TTRPG campaigns that I was running. I did just about finish my re-read of my Discworld books. I just have Snuff and Unseen Academicals left, but I wasn’t a huge fan of them so I don’t think I’ll read those.

I previously reviewed the first half of Dungeon in a Box as two separate blog posts. (Q1 and Q2). Since I fell behind with the other two quarters, I’ll review the rest all at once.

Important highlights from the first two posts:

• I get the physical subscription. It also comes with digital assets for each box as well as access to their Wonderous One-Shot digital assets.
• The digital assets include a Pathfinder 2e conversion
• each box comes with a gridded map for the dungeon portion of the adventure, skinny minis, and 1 or 2 3D printed minis.

This post is intended for dungeon masters. There are story spoilers below.

Gameplay

As Grumpy, Tris, and Sasha were at the local tavern getting some cinnamon rolls, they noticed a goblin nailing something to the notice board. It turns out to be one of the kids of the owners of the Pits of Perild, an amusement park and beginner dungeon. They agree to help him. On the way to the park they fight some vampire bats while camping.

When they arrive they learn from the matriarch that Troglodytes are not honoring their agreement. They were supposed to stay in the lower levels (away from the starter dungeon first level) and only eat any unlucky adventurers that went in deep. Now they have infiltrated the first level and are attacking the guests. The team decides they will help figure out what’s going on. Also, they are to keep an eye out for her husband.