Elise Vaughn reviews speculative fiction and tabletop games, and writes about what got her hooked on both, on a small personal blog with a warm burnt-orange, secondhand-hardcover feel.https://elisesidebar.com/en-UShttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-mage-knight/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-mage-knight/The highs are genuinely high and the lows are genuinely low, and I'd tell anyone considering this to try before buying if you possibly can.Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTMage Knight Board GameElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-how-i-became-the-rules-lawyer-of-the-group/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-how-i-became-the-rules-lawyer-of-the-group/Nobody assigned me the job of holding the rulebook. I just kept being the one who could find the right clause fastest, and eventually that became my whole identity at the table.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-what-changed-the-second-time-through-new-sun/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-what-changed-the-second-time-through-new-sun/I reread The Book of the New Sun eighteen months after the first pass, mostly to see if it would hold up. It didn't just hold up. It turned into an almost different book.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-blood-rage/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-blood-rage/Ragnarok as a card-drafting area control game where dying gloriously sometimes scores you more than surviving. I expected pure combat and got something puzzlier than that.Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBlood RageElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-why-i-dont-trust-a-rating-i-give-too-soon/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-why-i-dont-trust-a-rating-i-give-too-soon/I gave a book five stars the night I finished it, on a real high, and quietly downgraded it in my head about ten days later once the high wore off. I've never trusted my own immediate reaction the same way since.Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-forbidden-stars/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-forbidden-stars/A card-driven 4X built on the Warhammer 40K skeleton, more abstract than the theme suggests, and I mean that as a real compliment for anyone burned out on dice-heavy conquest games.Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTForbidden StarsElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-annihilation/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-annihilation/The closest a book has come to giving me the actual sensation of a dream turning into a nightmare, page by page, without a single jump scare doing the work.Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTAnnihilationElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-always-coming-home/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-always-coming-home/Barely a novel and more of an invented ethnography with a girl's life folded into the middle of it. It asked more patience than I had some nights and rewarded it on the ones I gave.Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTAlways Coming HomeElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-townsfolk-tussle/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-townsfolk-tussle/A boss battler light enough to hand someone who'd never touch Kingdom Death Monster, and my least board-game-inclined friend actually asked to play it again.Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTTownsfolk TussleElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-nemesis/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-nemesis/Every session plays out like the actual movie it's clearly channeling, and losing here happens more often than winning, which is exactly correct for the theme it's chasing.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTNemesisElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-the-information/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-the-information/African talking drums to quantum computing in one book, and I was sorry to finish it even with whole chapters of cryptography going over my head.Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe InformationElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-cloudspire/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-cloudspire/Gorgeous production, a real MOBA feel on the table, and I'd steer most groups toward the solo or two-player mode rather than the full four-player chaos it also offers.Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTCloudspireElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-the-extended-phenotype/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-the-extended-phenotype/Dawkins's own pick for his best and most original book, and the only one of his I've read where I actually felt out of my depth rather than just informed. Worth the struggle.Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Extended PhenotypeElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-i-pushed-ancillary-justice-on-the-wrong-person/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-i-pushed-ancillary-justice-on-the-wrong-person/Dana likes clean, fast, plot-forward books, and I handed her a novel about pronoun confusion and a distributed AI consciousness anyway because I was too excited about it to think that through.Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/A ninety year old biology monograph about ticks and sea urchins that quietly rearranged how I think about every animal I've ever owned or read about. Short, strange, and I mean quirky as a genuine compliment.Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTA Foray into the Worlds of Animals and HumansElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-ancillary-justice/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-ancillary-justice/A murder mystery, a revenge plot, and a meditation on identity, all narrated by what used to be a troop transport ship's distributed consciousness split across thousands of bodies. I did not expect to love hard space opera this much.Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTAncillary JusticeElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-blood-meridian/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-blood-meridian/A nightmare odyssey through red dead purgatory that I could not put down and did not enjoy in any comfortable sense of the word. The Judge is going to be in my head for years.Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBlood MeridianElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-what-a-bad-deposition-day-does-to-my-reading/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-what-a-bad-deposition-day-does-to-my-reading/Eight hours of a hostile witness talking over the attorney and I came home wanting Blood Meridian's unpunctuated run-on sentences instead of something easier. That surprised me more than it should have.Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-the-book-of-the-new-sun/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-the-book-of-the-new-sun/Wolfe feeds you clues for four books that only detonate on you afterward, sometimes years afterward. I finished this and immediately wanted to start it over.Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Book of the New SunElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-never-let-me-go/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-never-let-me-go/The most action-less science fiction novel I own, and it wrecked me slower and more thoroughly than anything with an actual plot has in years.Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTNever Let Me GoElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-marvel-champions-lcg/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-marvel-champions-lcg/Fast, cooperative, and genuinely shines once you stop using the pre-built decks and start building your own hero from scratch.Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTMarvel Champions: The Card GameElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-we-have-never-been-modern/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/book-we-have-never-been-modern/The whole argument fits in about two sentences and the implications are genuinely staggering. Getting there took me three tries and I'm still not sure I have all of it.Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTWe Have Never Been ModernElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-twilight-imperium/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-twilight-imperium/A full day commitment that I've only managed to schedule a handful of times, and every single one of them has been worth clearing an entire Saturday for.Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTTwilight ImperiumElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-clank/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-clank/Deckbuilding with a board and a dragon that wakes up if you're too loud. Simple to teach, tense in exactly the way it should be, and it earns a permanent spot on the shelf.Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTClank!Elise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-the-one-genre-i-still-cant-get-into/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-the-one-genre-i-still-cant-get-into/I've tried straightforward high fantasy maybe six separate times over the years, on other people's strong recommendations, and I keep bouncing off it for reasons I'm still not sure I fully understand.Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-guards-of-atlantis-ii/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/game-guards-of-atlantis-ii/A MOBA reduced to five cards in your hand and it works, no dice, no randomness bailing you out of a bad decision, just you and the champion you picked.Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTGuards of Atlantis IIElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-i-named-my-cat-after-a-mccarthy-villain/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-i-named-my-cat-after-a-mccarthy-villain/Judge is a fourteen pound orange cat who knocks things off shelves with unsettling deliberateness, and I named him after the most terrifying character I've ever read. I stand by it, mostly.Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-the-co-op-bargain-bin-habit/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-the-co-op-bargain-bin-habit/There's a cart of one-dollar paperbacks by the entrance of my grocery co-op that I check every single visit, and about a third of what I've read in the last two years started in that cart.Sun, 09 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-the-twilight-imperium-night-that-ended-at-1am/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-the-twilight-imperium-night-that-ended-at-1am/We told ourselves six hours was enough time. It was not enough time. Dana's face when we called it unfinished at 1 A.M. is going to stay with me.Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughnhttps://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-ithaca-winters-and-the-books-that-survive-them/https://elisesidebar.com/articles/essay-ithaca-winters-and-the-books-that-survive-them/Gray, gorge-fog, four months of it, and I've noticed I only reach for the truly demanding books once the snow actually settles in. There's a reason and it took me a few winters to name it.Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayElise Vaughn