iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

It Ends was such a great film. Four friends in car on a road that goes on forever. One of those low budget films that relies on a tight premise and perfect execution. It only gets described as horror because genre is marketing, and "horror" is where we dump fun stuff without neat answers.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's really fun to make things. Even if it's just to make fun of the Helldivers 2 community losing its shit over trivial bullshit (tanks with casements instead of turrets).

Satirical helldivers 2 comparison between an automaton shredder tank and a helldiver maelstrom tank.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Grace Curtis - Idolfire Two young women questing for the same thing from opposite ends of the continent. Failspartans, history, class privilege and country ambition. Always a fan of good fantasy novels that know what they're about and get it done without resorting to a trilogy.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Mike Carey - Outlaw Planet Wronged woman with a magic gun learns what makes the world tick. It was like a TV series. In that a strong premise and powerful start kept me reading through an increasingly flabby middle until I finished it out of obligation.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

KJ Parker - Pulling the Wings Off Angels Petty criminal gets caught up with a plan to kidnap an angel and blackmail god. But is everything as it seems? Yes.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Claire North - Slow Gods One of my very favourite authors doing what feels like an Iain M Banks tribute. There's an evil empire that's uncomfortably similar to our own, friendly AI drones, planetary evacuation from a supernova and a firefight in a museum. It's good. It's very very good.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

KJ Parker - Prosper's Demon Exorcist runs into a difficult demon. Amoral protagonist with a cunning plan they don't share with the reader. Interesting pseudo-historical profession details. Classic Parker. But mini-sized and with a punchy ending.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Robert Jackson Bennett - Vigilance American dystopia where mass shootings are deliberately engineered and commercialised TV events. Abrupt and predictable. I guess it's hard to be subtle on this sort of topic because reality has a habit of being even dumber.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Joe Abercrombie - The Devils A Dirty Dozen of heretical misfits protect the Empress of Troy from assassinations on a travelogue of alt Papal Europe. Plays it very straight - I kept expecting twists that never came - maybe overlong for something so straightforward. Still good.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

KJ parker - Making History A group of scholars is asked to fabricate an ancient civilisation. Of course there's only one story that follows from that premise, but a KJ Parker book that's not about a war is a rare treat.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Travis Baldree - Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk Fantasy murder mystery. And talking of books that leave things unsaid, here's a story that's exactly one scene too long. Like it was stapled on to the end to explain all of the things that didn't need to be.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Grady Hendrix - The Blanks Rich happy family on a rich holiday island with one tiny problem. Lovely horror weirdness that isn't easily explained or boiled down to a simple metaphor.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Anne Leckie - The Long Game An alien discovers that humans live so much longer than its own species, and decides to do something about it. I do love when a book leaves the important things unsaid. The narrator's joy is so depressing to a reader who can see what's happening.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

John Scalzi - 3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years I'd sworn off Scalzi, but glad I gambled on this. It's good to remember that he has more than one mode. It's a time travel story, but not that sort of time travel story. Sad and peaceful.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Scott Lynch - The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious Murder! at the wizards' convention. Deliberately retro, like something from the golden age of pulp fantasy. Good solvable mystery and cute touch that an unresolved twist was itself the twist.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Robert Jackson Bennett - The Lion's Tusk Our detective narrates how they solved a historical murder from documentary evidence. Decent mystery and maintains the bio-fantasy themes of the larger series. A fun aside.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Scarlett Thomas - The Sleepwalkers Epistolary novel about a pair of Honeymooners being relentlessly awful to each other. Then things get worse. Leaves a lot unsaid.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

David Mitchell – Utopia Avenue Story of the rise of a fictional 60s pop band. Made me fall in love with every single one of those characters, warts and all. Such an evocative sense of time and place. But I bet the horology subplot would annoy people reading it as a standalone.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Artists, drop some creepy art.

Gleefully pulling tight the stitches on his twisted new arm

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals This is not a great book. But even a bad Pratchett still has nuggets of gold. And I know it's one of the books he really, really wanted to get written before he went.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Every morning this replays in my head.

Before I take a shower: I hate it in there, the wet world is a bad place
While in the shower: I remember now that this is a good place, it is the dry world that is the enemy

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

James S A Corey - The Mercy of Gods How a university research group copes (and doesn't) after invasion by an overwhelmingly powerful alien empire. Enjoyed this much more than I expected to. I was invested in the politics and relationships pre-invasion, and the aftermath was suitably dramatic.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

KJ Parker - Saevus Corax Gets Away with Murder The plot of his trilogies almost doesn't matter - it's all about the character arcs. Which is to say, seeing them all being treated like chew toys.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Robert Jackson Bennett - The Company Man Union tensions in an anachronistically advanced 1920s company town. Look, I was REALLY enjoying this. Fantastic grimy, uncanny sense of place and escalating stakes. Then bam, massive 3rd act machina ex deus lore dump and the book just slides to a stop.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Benjamin Stevenson - Everyone In This Bank Is A Thief This had some extraordinarily silly bits in it that really tested my patience. On balance I went along with it because it was a fun caper/s. But it demands that the reader suspends a lot of disbelief compared to previous entries.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

It's always fun when it suddenly becomes clear what you've been building.

End step of a subassembly build reveals that it's it's a ????

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

KJ parker - Saevus Corax Captures the Castle The plot and characters are exactly the same as every other KJ Parker book. And I'm normally on board for that. Bit of a saggy middle in this one though.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

You know it's a lovely feeling to be playing a game and realise they're using assets I made. store.steampowered.com/app/2716690/...

Timer and turtle icons by Lorc under CCBY 3.0

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

I did these so long ago. Promise to come back to it one day.

Man cheerfully sewing on a monstrous arm

Woman wielding a hook chained to shackle

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

I don't remember drawing some of these.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Terry Pratchett - The Fifth Elephant The is one of the ones that gets better with each re-read. I'd forgotten how this was the extinction burst of the "Carrot's destiny" plotline.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

I'm allowed the occasional sentence like this, as a treat.

Between linguistic drift and common pidgin, everyone's mostly intelligible to one another. Traders and offcomers have a harder time. It can be baffling to recognise a couple of words from your mother tongue in an otherwise unintelligible sentence of loanwords and slang. Strangers who can’t savvy the city slang or the Pillory patois will find parsing the prattle of the hoi-poloi a right palava.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Terry Deary - Actually I'm A Murderer Murder mystery set in 70s Newcastle, where you know the murderer from the start but not the victim. Enough other twists that it's not just a gimmick book. Very coincidence-heavy.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Robert Jackson Bennett - City of Miracles A much more conventional fantasy story than the other two Divine Cities books, and weaker for it.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Sarah Rees Brennan - Long Live Evil Woman dying of cancer transported into her favourite epic fantasy story – as the villain - for a chance to save her life. This book was a lot. Sometimes a bit much. But I can’t accuse it of lacking energy and the run up to the ending was an absolute landslide.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Realised I'd never photographed my #Turnip28 brutes so thought I'd take advantage of the sun. I never did nail painting things to look deliberately messy as opposed to looking like I just painted them messily. But still pleased with the conversions.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Austin Grossman - Fight Me Washed up middle-aged superheroes with extensive flashbacks. I enjoyed the characters and poignancy so much that I think I might have liked it with less Real Plot. But this was still a lovely gentle read. With a very fun fight metaphor about three quarters through.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Robert Jackson Bennett - City of Blades We're heading to a military outpost where, once again, a colonial agent has gone missing. Fun cast of characters, old and new. And I'll say this for it: the solution to the Big Crisis was Pratchett-worthy.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Robert Jackson Bennett - City of Stairs Colonial authority investigates a disappearance in a city that ain't been doin' so well since all its gods were killed. Very definitely a product of the same mind that wrote Drop of Corruption. I think I'll enjoy the rest of this author's bibliography.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Scott Sigler - The Starter I know nothing about American football, but this series about multi-species space gridiron is fun. Moves at pace, has enough drama going on off the pitch and doesn't let the on-field action drag or get repetitive. That said, I reckon two books of it is enough for me.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

These looked so nice they inspired me to do some pen sketching. Thanks for the inspiration.

Black lineart of various plants and fungi

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

BJ Novak - One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories I mean it as a sincere compliment when I say that none of these short stories were any longer than they had to be.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Jeffrey R. DeRego - Union Dues: Team Shikaragaki Go! An anthology following the union’s teen (public relations) hero squad. Union Dues stories all manage to walk a fine line between nihilistic and sappy to reliably deliver a kind of gravelly human poignancy.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

MJ Wassmer - Zero Stars: Do Not Recommend People stuck at an island holiday resort when the sun goes out. I’ll be honest, I mainly read this on the strength of that amazing title. There’s some tonal uncertainty but it dodged some pitfalls and stuck the landing.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

John Scalzi - When the Moon Hits Your Eye A grab bag of human interest stories in the days after the moon turns into cheese. I've enjoyed a lot of Scalzi's books, but this is the third in a row that has just been tiresome to me. Time to accept that either his writing or my tastes have changed.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

John le Carré - The Night Manager I'm always impressed by what a confident writer John le Carré is. He makes his sentences work so hard. But his books always leave me so tired.

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Lorc aka Thomas T @lorc.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

This coaster is still one of my favourite comics ever.

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