Drew Carmichael, a wind turbine service technician out of Amarillo, reviews science fiction novels and tabletop games he actually finished -- no review copies, no press schedule, just what he read and played on the road and what he thought of it.https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/en-UShttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-notebook-i-use-for-both/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-notebook-i-use-for-both/The logbook I carry for service calls and the one I use to track what I've read and played turned out, somewhere along the way, to be the same object.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/dominion/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/dominion/The game that started the deckbuilding genre, still a great three-minute teach, and still the one I hand to people who've never played anything like it.Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTDominionDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-giver/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-giver/One of the first dystopias written for young readers, and one that hits differently coming back to it as an adult who first read it in fourth grade without knowing what it was actually saying.Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe GiverDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/what-wind-actually-sounds-like-at-260-feet/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/what-wind-actually-sounds-like-at-260-feet/Nobody who hasn't climbed a turbine believes me about the sound, so here's the actual, unglamorous version of what it's like up there.Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/lost-ruins-of-arnak/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/lost-ruins-of-arnak/Worker placement and deckbuilding stitched together well enough that neither system feels like a guest in the other's game.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTLost Ruins of ArnakDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/teaching-the-new-guy-to-lose/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/teaching-the-new-guy-to-lose/Our crew hired a kid straight out of trade school this spring, and getting him through his first rained-out afternoon of Dominion in the trailer taught me more about him than a week of actual work did.Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/revelation-space/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/revelation-space/Gothic hard SF with a physicist's rigor and a horror novel's mood, big on scale and slow on the way there, with a last act that earns the patience it demands.Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTRevelation SpaceDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/a-door-into-ocean/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/a-door-into-ocean/A clash-of-cultures novel between a patriarchal planet and an all-female aquatic society built on nonviolent resistance, gripping in its politics and thinner in the people carrying them.Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTA Door Into OceanDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/children-of-time/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/children-of-time/Spider evolution as a real civilization arc, run in parallel against a dying human generation ship, and one of the best pieces of hard SF I've read in years even for someone who hates spiders.Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTChildren of TimeDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/on-marking-up-a-rulebook/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/on-marking-up-a-rulebook/I write in rulebooks the same way I write in a service manual, and it took a coworker's raised eyebrow at a game shop to make me realize that's not normal.Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-name-of-the-rose/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-name-of-the-rose/A medieval murder mystery with a theologian's brain and a detective's patience, dense enough in the Latin and doctrine stretches to lose some readers, and worth every page for the ones it doesn't.Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Name of the RoseDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/priyas-verdict/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/priyas-verdict/My partner reads every review before it goes up and has never once let a bad sentence through, which means this site owes more to her than the byline admits.Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/development-as-freedom/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/development-as-freedom/Amartya Sen's argument that development means expanding what people can actually do with their lives, not just moving a GDP number, told in prose that's heavier going than the idea itself deserves.Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTDevelopment as FreedomDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/too-like-the-lightning/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/too-like-the-lightning/A dense, philosophical far-future political thriller that asks for real patience up front and pays most of it back, though it ends on a setup rather than a resolution.Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTToo Like the LightningDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/foreigner/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/foreigner/C.J. Cherryh's isolated human translator caught between his own species and a genuinely alien one, told through internal monologue dense enough that some readers will bounce hard off the first sixty pages.Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTForeignerDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/heat-pedal-to-the-metal/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/heat-pedal-to-the-metal/A racing game that manages heat and gear cards instead of dice, light enough to teach in ten minutes and still hiding a real decision every turn.Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTHeat: Pedal to the MetalDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/twilight-imperium-fourth-edition/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/twilight-imperium-fourth-edition/A full-day galactic empire game that's really four or five games stacked in one box, and asks for a table that's willing to plan an entire Saturday around it.Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTTwilight Imperium (Fourth Edition)Drew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/mechs-vs-minions/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/mechs-vs-minions/A programming-style co-op with production values so far ahead of the actual gameplay that the box nearly oversells the game inside it.Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTMechs vs. MinionsDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/arkham-horror-the-card-game/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/arkham-horror-the-card-game/A living card game that's really a co-op RPG wearing a deckbuilder's clothes -- the core set is a fine start, but this one only really shows what it's got once the campaigns pile up.Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTArkham Horror: The Card GameDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/2312/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/2312/Kim Stanley Robinson's solar-system-spanning worldbuilding is as good as ever here, the plot and people wrapped around it just don't earn the four hundred pages the setting deserves.Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT2312Drew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/inis/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/inis/An area control game that hides most of its violence in card drafting instead of dice, and rewards a table that's paying close attention to who's one card away from winning.Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTInisDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/android-netrunner/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/android-netrunner/A two-player asymmetric card game where one side builds a maze of bluffs and the other side has to decide whether to trust their gut and run it.Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTAndroid: NetrunnerDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/four-hours-between-sites/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/four-hours-between-sites/Most of my reading happens on the road between wind farms, and audiobooks and I have a specific, slightly complicated relationship because of it.Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-rain-delay-that-started-all-this/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-rain-delay-that-started-all-this/How a wasted afternoon with nothing to do turned into seven years of a hobby I never planned on, and the beat-up copy of Dominion that's somehow still in the trailer.Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/unmatched/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/unmatched/A tactical skirmish system that's genuinely different fighter to fighter, and dangerous in the specific way that makes you want to own every set they put out.Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTUnmatchedDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/giving-foreigner-a-second-chance/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/giving-foreigner-a-second-chance/I put Cherryh's Foreigner down at page sixty the first time and called it a DNF for two years before I picked it back up on a whim during a slow week, and I was wrong the first time.Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/why-i-dont-play-games-alone/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/why-i-dont-play-games-alone/A lot of the games I review have solo modes I never touch, and I finally sat down and worked out why, since it's not the reason I used to give people.Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/star-maker/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/star-maker/A 1937 mental voyage across the entire history of the universe, philosophy dressed as fiction more than the other way around, ambitious enough that most of modern SF is quietly borrowing from it.Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTStar MakerDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/gloomhaven/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/gloomhaven/A dungeon crawler with a deck-building combat system underneath it, and a rules overhead that either earns its keep across a whole campaign or slowly wears you down.Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTGloomhavenDrew Carmichaelhttps://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-gearbox-fault-code-and-the-rules-dispute/https://drewcarmichaelhere.com/articles/the-gearbox-fault-code-and-the-rules-dispute/A rules argument over Arkham Horror in the site trailer turned out to run on the exact same instinct I use to diagnose a turbine fault code, and that surprised me more than it should have.Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDrew Carmichael