I hate to say this, but…

While I love UA and have all the books, there are a few things I feel compelled to say:

1. Why didn’t they get Richard Pace and Andrew Baker to do more of the artwork?

2. Herpemancy, from Break Today. It seems incredibly overpowered when you consider that the only taboo is letting people hurt or insult snakes.

3. Warstar 7, from the same book. Whose idea was this? The “Niamreg?” “Captain Church?” I can understand the reticence when it came to mentioning McDonald’s, but this was just silly. I feel UA gets a lot of its strength from being firmly based in the world as it is, not making up stuff like this.

4. “The Stormy Petrel of the Apocalypse” from Statosphere. I just thought this write-up of the Comte was incredibly ripe and purple. “The Universal Superintendent” was far superior. Compare:

“He finds it useful and necessary to manipulate others so that he can put people in place at smaller crises while he himself faces larger ones – or maybe he just goes to a museum.”

with

“If you see Saint-Germain look pensive, rather than pessimistic, if you see the creases at the corners of his mouth turn up in an unaccustomed, if ambivalent, gambler’s grin – well, then, it’s too late, because he’s decided you might be able to help stave off disaster one final time.”

Oh, that gambler’s grin! Sorry, but matter-of-fact and understated does it for me every time.