Dana Barlow reviews science fiction, epic fantasy, and heavy board games, plus the occasional personal dispatch, at Barlow's Backlog.https://danabarlow.com/en-UShttps://danabarlow.com/articles/teaching-marisol-root/https://danabarlow.com/articles/teaching-marisol-root/She's usually the one who wins two-player games in our house. Root is not a two-player game and it showed, and I don't think I explained the factions fairly.Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/rulebooks-need-an-index/https://danabarlow.com/articles/rulebooks-need-an-index/I will die on this hill. If I can't find the one rule I forgot in under thirty seconds, the rulebook failed, not me.Sun, 16 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/hyperion/https://danabarlow.com/articles/hyperion/Seven pilgrims, seven tales, one monster made of blades, and a book that ends exactly where you don't want it to. I finished it in a weekend and immediately felt cheated in the best way.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTHyperionDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/why-i-still-buy-hardcovers/https://danabarlow.com/articles/why-i-still-buy-hardcovers/I know the paperback shows up used for a fraction of the price in about a year. I buy the hardcover anyway, and I've stopped apologizing for it.Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/the-lord-of-the-rings/https://danabarlow.com/articles/the-lord-of-the-rings/Yes, I read the songs. All of them. I will not be taking questions about Tom Bombadil.Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Lord of the RingsDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions/https://danabarlow.com/articles/the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions/Kuhn is the reason every tech founder now says 'paradigm shift' unironically, and reading the actual book is both more rigorous and weirder than the phrase's afterlife suggests.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Structure of Scientific RevolutionsDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/root/https://danabarlow.com/articles/root/Every faction is functionally its own separate game bolted onto the same board, which is either the best idea in modern board gaming or a teaching nightmare, and honestly it's both.Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTRootDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/summoner-wars/https://danabarlow.com/articles/summoner-wars/Fantasy chess with your own hand of cards doubling as the resource that lets you cast more units. It's a simple pitch and it works, most of the time, dice permitting.Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTSummoner WarsDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/waiting-on-the-51/https://danabarlow.com/articles/waiting-on-the-51/I know exactly why the bus was late. Knowing why doesn't make standing there for eleven minutes feel any shorter, and that gap has been bothering me for weeks.Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/slay-the-spire-board-game/https://danabarlow.com/articles/slay-the-spire-board-game/The video game never had a real co-op mode, and this board game exists almost entirely to fix that one gap. It does, and it does it well, once you get past the setup.Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTSlay the Spire: The Board GameDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/inis/https://danabarlow.com/articles/inis/The box art almost talked me out of buying this, and the drafting engine underneath it is one of the tightest area control systems I've played. Don't judge this one by its cover.Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTInisDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/tolerance-stack-for-board-games/https://danabarlow.com/articles/tolerance-stack-for-board-games/Somebody at the table said a rule was ambiguous. I said it wasn't, and then I spent twenty minutes proving it the way I'd prove a route change to a city council member.Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/gloomhaven/https://danabarlow.com/articles/gloomhaven/The box alone weighs more than some of my houseplants, and we still haven't put it away in over a year. Teaching it took a full evening. Worth every minute, mostly.Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTGloomhavenDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/star-maker/https://danabarlow.com/articles/star-maker/A man lies down on a hill in England, and then his mind leaves his body and tours the entire lifespan of the universe. There is no plot. I loved almost every page of it.Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTStar MakerDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/lotr-duel-for-middle-earth/https://danabarlow.com/articles/lotr-duel-for-middle-earth/I love 7 Wonders Duel and assumed this was just a reskin with hobbits pasted over the wonders. It's not, and now I'm not sure I'll go back.Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earthDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/the-regular-who-only-shows-up-losing/https://danabarlow.com/articles/the-regular-who-only-shows-up-losing/He's missed the last three sessions we won together and shown up for every single loss. I don't think it's an accident, and I've stopped pretending I haven't noticed.Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/seti-search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence/https://danabarlow.com/articles/seti-search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence/The rotating solar system board is genuinely clever. Everything bolted onto it is a very well produced tour through mechanics you've already played somewhere else.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTSETI: Search for Extraterrestrial IntelligenceDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/rereading-earthsea-changed-my-mind/https://danabarlow.com/articles/rereading-earthsea-changed-my-mind/I gave it a polite three stars in my twenties and moved on. Rereading it this year, I think younger me was skimming for plot and missed the actual book entirely.Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/the-information/https://danabarlow.com/articles/the-information/African talking drums to Claude Shannon to the modern internet, in one book, and about a third of it is genuinely one of the best popular science reads I've had this year. The other two thirds, less so.Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe InformationDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/sentinels-of-the-multiverse/https://danabarlow.com/articles/sentinels-of-the-multiverse/Nobody's built a Marvel or DC board game that actually feels like reading a comic the way this original-IP card game does. The bookkeeping, though, is a genuine drag.Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTSentinels of the MultiverseDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/dune-imperium/https://danabarlow.com/articles/dune-imperium/Every card you don't play still does something. That one design decision is doing more work than anything else in this box, and it's what got me hooked.Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTDune: ImperiumDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/the-stars-are-legion/https://danabarlow.com/articles/the-stars-are-legion/Organic worldships that give birth to their own machinery, an entirely female cast, and a main character who wakes up with no memory of any of it. Gross, inventive, and a little bit of a mess by the end.Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Stars Are LegionDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/spirit-island/https://danabarlow.com/articles/spirit-island/You're not settling an island, you're driving colonizers off one, and once that clicked for me I couldn't unsee how good the framing is for a cooperative game.Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTSpirit IslandDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/a-wizard-of-earthsea/https://danabarlow.com/articles/a-wizard-of-earthsea/Wizard school, a talking dragon, and a boy's true name as the whole magic system. It's slim, it's a little cold in places, and it got there decades before the books that made it famous by proxy.Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTA Wizard of EarthseaDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/the-insert-i-built-on-a-tuesday/https://danabarlow.com/articles/the-insert-i-built-on-a-tuesday/It took four hours, a craft knife, and more foamboard than I want to admit to, and it's the single best thing I've ever done for my own patience.Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/invisible-cities/https://danabarlow.com/articles/invisible-cities/It's Marco Polo describing cities to Kublai Khan that don't exist and were never going to exist, and somehow that's the whole point, not a workaround for having no plot.Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTInvisible CitiesDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/the-first-law/https://danabarlow.com/articles/the-first-law/Nobody in this trilogy is a hero and everybody keeps insisting they might become one anyway. I finished all three books in about ten days and I'm still annoyed at how it ends.Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe First LawDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/the-best-bus-stop-in-sacramento/https://danabarlow.com/articles/the-best-bus-stop-in-sacramento/There's a stop on a route I helped redesign that I'd never actually recommend to a rider, and I still go sit at it some evenings anyway, for reasons that have nothing to do with transit at all.Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/blood-meridian/https://danabarlow.com/articles/blood-meridian/This isn't really a Western, it's a nightmare wearing a Western's clothes, and Judge Holden might be the single worst person I've ever spent 300 pages with.Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBlood MeridianDana Barlowhttps://danabarlow.com/articles/the-paper-reading-log/https://danabarlow.com/articles/the-paper-reading-log/I track ridership data in spreadsheets all day. My own reading gets a beat up notebook and a pen, and I've finally figured out why that's not a contradiction.Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayDana Barlow