Ikselam/ABEarthReview
Ikselam's Aspect Book: Earth Mini-Review
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The characters were pretty fun, and that's good, because the characters are the part of Exalted splatbooks about which I actually care. Crunch is all well and good, but it takes something really extraordinary to actually get me excited about crunch -- and the crunch here, although quite solid, was not extraordinary.
I liked Crow very much. Her story, while melodramatic, contained more actual emotion than just about any other splatbook writeup I've read. I would feel sad if there were not a happy ending for this shy, acrophobic Earth Aspect with a heart of steel. It's cool that she gets carried through by her spirit, as opposed to script immunity. (Nitpick, though: Compassion 1? Intelligence 1? I must have missed the part where she's a heartless monster who doesn't like thinking because it makes her head hurt.)
Speaking of script immunity... Mnemon was well-written, but didn't strike me as particularly remarkable. She does all the requisite "look, ma, I'm a massive badass" stuff: beating up on other Exalted, being all cold and calculating, killing people like she doesn't even care, and whatnot. But really, I've seen her mindset dozens of times in my Vampire days, and seeing it again in this setting didn't make it any fresher. She behaves like an elder vamp, and that's not really a positive thing for me to say. My opinion is that Exalted characters, no matter how old, should be vibrant and dynamic. They shouldn't ever get to the point where their entire raison d'etre can be summed up by single sentences like, "She will do anything to get the throne."
To be perfectly honest, the aforementioned script immunity thing probably worked against Mnemon, too; I generally can't stand characters who are made out to be cooler than everyone else. Plus, she's an unrepentant egotist -- strike two. Strike three is that she's conspiring with Mask of Winters, the most egregious Exalted golden boy there is. As a result, my impression of Mnemon wasn't, "Hey, she's uniquely badass and capable," it was, "Hey, she's a spoiled princess who thinks she's uniquely badass and capable, but in fact got where she is almost solely because she was Mom's favorite." (And nitpick: She uses Sense-Riding Technique virtually every other page; why isn't it on her character sheet?)
Jasir was fun. I read through his story, got to his character sheet at the end, saw that he had Compassion 1, and thought, "Yeah, I can see how that works." He was a good example of a very genial, very likeable character who just happens to be incapable of thinking of people as anything other than pieces on a playing field.
Moias' story was mildly confusing in places -- I was never totally clear on why her sworn brotherhood was marked for death. Clearly it was some kind of political thing (she says as much), and the business with Vertouche was used as an excuse, but kangaroo court and summary execution seems pretty extreme for routine House politicking. I would have been more comfortable with that particular plot twist if more explanation had been offered. As for the rest of the story, it was solid. Moias doesn't really stand out, but she's got a personality.
Ditto for Takgana. His backstory is spiced up by his excruciating Exaltation scenario, but once you get past the whole "castrated with a dull knife" thing, he's fairly unremarkable. He's angsty, his ex-girlfriend's a Solar, his mom doesn't love him, and so on. I wonder if there are any Immaculate monks who aren't angsty? I would be really entertained if there were a monk in either Wood or Fire (I'm sure Water's going to be Deled) who was a completely well-adjusted niceguy, whose mission in life is to travel here and there dispensing wisdom, fighting evil spirits, and helping the unfortunate. And, like, his parents could love him and he could get along with his siblings. No one would see that coming!
The history stuff was decent. I'm still not totally sold on this Shogunate magitek stuff; the overtechnologization of artifacts really killed my enjoyment of Lookshy, and I'd rather it didn't kill my enjoyment of other stuff as well.
Moving on to the crunch, the least essential part of the book (for me). The Charms were mostly decent -- with the glaring exception of Breaking the Dragon's Heart, which sucks harder than Charybdis. The new MA style was likewise decent -- it was redundant to note the "only while touching the ground" requirement for every single Charm, and the shapeshifting aspect of the form rubbed me the wrong way, but aside from those nitpicks, it was fine.
No artifacts or hearthstones jumped out at me, for good or ill. The one exception was the Crystal Venom Jewel, which I thought was really great. It's a really great example of how to make a pretty banal power (immunity to poison) into something nifty, by adding a simple special effect.
Overall, I think I liked this one better than AB: Air. I liked Crow as much as I liked Kes, and even at their blandest, none of the Earths compared to the sheer un-memorability of Cathak Meladus. The crunch and history chapters of both books hit me about the same, so Earth's superior cast of characters garners it the win.
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