Garrett Holloway reviews science fiction and fantasy novels and tabletop games he actually finished -- no review copies, no press schedule, just what he read and played and what he thought of it.https://garrettshideout.com/en-UShttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/gloomhaven-buttons-and-bugs/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/gloomhaven-buttons-and-bugs/A wannabe hero walks into the Crooked Bone and gets shrunk to button size, and somehow that's the most charming part of the whole box.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTGloomhaven: Buttons & BugsGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/7-wonders/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/7-wonders/What can be said about this one that hasn't already been said, and yet I'm still not entirely sure it's earned the reputation it has.Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT7 WondersGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/gauge-doesnt-care-what-im-reading/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/gauge-doesnt-care-what-im-reading/I named my cat after the instruments I stare at all night, and she has developed a very specific opinion about which books are acceptable to hold open on my chest.Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/sky-team/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/sky-team/You aren't allowed to talk to your co-pilot about what you're about to do, and that one restriction is where the entire game lives.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTSky TeamGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/blood-meridian/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/blood-meridian/Like watching a car crash, you can't look away, and by the end you're not entirely sure you were supposed to be able to.Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBlood MeridianGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/ankh-gods-of-egypt/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/ankh-gods-of-egypt/No dice, no draft, close to pure area control, and it took me longer than I expected to see all the paths to actually winning.Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTAnkh: Gods of EgyptGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-logbook-i-keep-for-books-and-games/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-logbook-i-keep-for-books-and-games/It's the same style of bound logbook the plant uses for shift records, and I didn't realize how deliberate that choice was until someone pointed it out.Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-social-conquest-of-earth/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-social-conquest-of-earth/Why are human societies so much like ant colonies, and why did we get so cooperative when being selfish pays off better for the individual, big questions, mixed answers.Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Social Conquest of EarthGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-hunger-games/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-hunger-games/A society that murders its own children for sport as the premise, and the book earns the discomfort instead of just trading on it.Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Hunger GamesGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/why-i-wont-back-a-kickstarter-anymore/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/why-i-wont-back-a-kickstarter-anymore/I backed exactly one campaign, waited fourteen months, and decided the wait itself was the part I wasn't willing to keep doing.Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/elder-scrolls-betrayal/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/elder-scrolls-betrayal/I've watched enough Kickstarter pledge logs cross my feed to be skeptical of hype by default. This one earned it after the fact, not before.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second EraGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-master-and-his-emissary/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-master-and-his-emissary/It will change the way you think by showing you how you think, and then it keeps going for four hundred more pages than it strictly needed to.Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Master and His EmissaryGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/what-lake-erie-winters-do-to-a-reading-chair/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/what-lake-erie-winters-do-to-a-reading-chair/Lake effect snow does something to how I read, and I didn't notice it until a stretch of three straight closures broke my whole rhythm.Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-insert-i-built-out-of-scrap-acrylic/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-insert-i-built-out-of-scrap-acrylic/The maintenance shop at the plant throws away more offcut acrylic in a month than I'd ever need for a hobby, so eventually I just started asking to keep it.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/snow-crash/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/snow-crash/A protagonist named Hiro Protagonist who delivers pizza and wields a katana in the Metaverse, and somehow the book earns it for two thirds of its length.Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTSnow CrashGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/a-game-of-thrones/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/a-game-of-thrones/Winter is coming, and by the last chapter you understand exactly how much that line was going to cost the people you'd gotten attached to.Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTA Game of ThronesGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-new-guy-on-nights/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-new-guy-on-nights/Marcus showed up in March, sat through his first four shifts barely talking, and then I saw a die-cut foam insert sticking out of his backpack.Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/townsfolk-tussle/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/townsfolk-tussle/I expected wonderful art and not much underneath. Instead it's a boss battler that punches well above its weight.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTTownsfolk TussleGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/how-denny-got-me-into-this/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/how-denny-got-me-into-this/He brought a two-player game to a slow shift because his usual partner had quit, and six years later I own more games than I have shelf space for.Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-information/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-information/Talking drums to the telegraph to Claude Shannon, and somehow it all reads like one continuous train of thought instead of a stack of separate histories.Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe InformationGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-first-law/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-first-law/Disgusting, bloody, gritty, and it shows no mercy to anyone, and yet somehow it's the funniest fantasy trilogy on my shelf.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe First LawGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/harmonies/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/harmonies/You take three discs, stack them with no clue how it'll turn out, and hope the shape you're building lines up with a contract before someone else gets there.Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTHarmoniesGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/castles-of-burgundy-special-edition/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/castles-of-burgundy-special-edition/The dice decide what's available, you decide what actually matters, and that split is the whole reason this design has lasted this long.Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Castles of Burgundy: Special EditionGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/oathsworn-into-the-deepwood/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/oathsworn-into-the-deepwood/I skim story text in most crawlers to get back to the dice. This is the first one where I found myself doing the opposite.Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTOathsworn: Into the DeepwoodGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/weapons-of-math-destruction/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/weapons-of-math-destruction/A book about models mistaken for reality, which is a problem I run into on shift every single week, just with turbidity readings instead of credit scores.Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTWeapons of Math DestructionGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/reading-a-rulebook-like-a-log-sheet/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/reading-a-rulebook-like-a-log-sheet/Eleven years of writing down instrument readings will ruin you for vague instructions in every other part of your life, including board games.Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/teaching-dennys-daughter-to-lose/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/teaching-dennys-daughter-to-lose/Eight years old, sharp as anything, and completely unwilling to accept that losing a round of Sky Team wasn't secretly my fault.Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/cyclades/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/cyclades/You're not fighting over territory directly, you're bidding for the gods who let you fight over territory, and that one layer of indirection makes the whole game click.Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTCycladesGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/a-wizard-of-earthsea/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/a-wizard-of-earthsea/Under two hundred pages and it doesn't feel short or unfinished, it's exactly as long as it needs to be, which is rarer than it should be in this genre.Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTA Wizard of EarthseaGarrett Hollowayhttps://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-cyclades-night-that-ended-in-nine-minutes/https://garrettshideout.com/articles/the-cyclades-night-that-ended-in-nine-minutes/I sold three people on a game based on a great first play, then watched a single early battle decide the second one before anybody had really settled in.Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayGarrett Holloway