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A review by courland
Keyforge: Tales from the Crucible: A Keyforge Anthology by Tristan Palmgren, Robbie MacNiven
4.0
Thank you to Aconyte Books for providing me with an advance review copy
Tales From the Crucible is an anthology based in the universe of the succesful collectible card game: Keyforge. The Crucible is an ever-growing patchwork of random planets, where uncountable cultures and species have (mostly) learned to live together without descending into anarchy. On top of that there are the Archons, powerful beings who duel each other to stake their claim over one of the many vaults scattered across the crucible.
Functionally, what this means for the setting is that you could see a barbarian in a loincloth line dancing with a slime blob, and it wouldn't be out of place. While it never goes that far, I can happily confirm that this potential has been put to excellent use in Tales From the Crucible. From a bug person and an elf doing a research project on martians, to a librarian hoarding books to save her daughter who is trapped in the walls of her library; every single story in this anthology is incredibly creative and has surprisingly compelling characters.
With the decidedly lighter tone of Keyforge, I was expecting this anthology to be a fun romp through the setting. While that's mostly true, there are still a couple of emotional moments that make this a much more fulfilling experience than I was initially expecting.
While all of the stories are excellent, I can't help but highlight a story that really stood out to me. Useful Parasites by MK Hutchins is a much darker and profound take on the world about a tree person learning to cope with grief, and took me on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster; which is a sentence I never expected to write to be honest.
The one thing that disappointed me about Tales From the Crucible is that we never get to see a story from the perspective of an Archon. Sure there are a couple of stories about Archons and we even get to meet a few, but it still feels like a missed opportunity.
Tales From the Crucible is overall a very enjoyable collection of stories and I'm certainly interested to see some of these stories contiue, be sure to pick this one up if the setting sounds interesting!
A solid 4.5/5
Tales From the Crucible is an anthology based in the universe of the succesful collectible card game: Keyforge. The Crucible is an ever-growing patchwork of random planets, where uncountable cultures and species have (mostly) learned to live together without descending into anarchy. On top of that there are the Archons, powerful beings who duel each other to stake their claim over one of the many vaults scattered across the crucible.
Functionally, what this means for the setting is that you could see a barbarian in a loincloth line dancing with a slime blob, and it wouldn't be out of place. While it never goes that far, I can happily confirm that this potential has been put to excellent use in Tales From the Crucible. From a bug person and an elf doing a research project on martians, to a librarian hoarding books to save her daughter who is trapped in the walls of her library; every single story in this anthology is incredibly creative and has surprisingly compelling characters.
With the decidedly lighter tone of Keyforge, I was expecting this anthology to be a fun romp through the setting. While that's mostly true, there are still a couple of emotional moments that make this a much more fulfilling experience than I was initially expecting.
While all of the stories are excellent, I can't help but highlight a story that really stood out to me. Useful Parasites by MK Hutchins is a much darker and profound take on the world about a tree person learning to cope with grief, and took me on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster; which is a sentence I never expected to write to be honest.
The one thing that disappointed me about Tales From the Crucible is that we never get to see a story from the perspective of an Archon. Sure there are a couple of stories about Archons and we even get to meet a few, but it still feels like a missed opportunity.
Tales From the Crucible is overall a very enjoyable collection of stories and I'm certainly interested to see some of these stories contiue, be sure to pick this one up if the setting sounds interesting!
A solid 4.5/5