Natalie Harlan reads too much and plays too many board games, and writes about both here: honest reviews of speculative fiction, dense nonfiction, and the games her Thursday group keeps arguing about.https://natalieharlan.com/en-UShttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-7-wonders/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-7-wonders/A drafting game so quick and pretty I barely notice I'm not paying attention to what anyone else is building, which is either its charm or its flaw.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT7 WondersNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-dune/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-dune/Took me two failed attempts across five years to actually finish it, and I still think the head-hopping point of view is the book's real flaw, not a feature.Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTDuneNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-cthulhu-death-may-die/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-cthulhu-death-may-die/Streamlined dungeon-crawling with great minis, undercut by investigators who get so powerful the elder gods stop feeling like a threat.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTCthulhu: Death May DieNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-the-fifth-season/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-the-fifth-season/A trilogy opener that uses second person as a structural trick instead of a gimmick, and earns the cliffhanger it leaves you with.Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Fifth SeasonNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-the-extended-phenotype/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-the-extended-phenotype/The one Dawkins book that isn't really for the rest of us, and I still think it's his best one.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Extended PhenotypeNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-cyclades/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-cyclades/Gorgeous components, a clever bidding mechanism for the gods, and an endgame that turns into everyone ganging up on whoever's ahead.Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTCycladesNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-his-dark-materials/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-his-dark-materials/A trilogy that gets talkier and more openly furious as it goes, which is either a feature or a flaw depending on what you came for.Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTHis Dark MaterialsNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-sky-team/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-sky-team/A tight two-player dice game about landing a plane with almost no talking allowed, which is either the best idea in the box or the one thing keeping it from greatness, depending which scenario you're on.Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTSky TeamNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-what-a-bloomington-winter-does-to-the-hold-queue/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-what-a-bloomington-winter-does-to-the-hold-queue/Every January the hold requests at my branch triple, and every January I forget that this is a pattern and not a surprise.Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-discipline-and-punish/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-discipline-and-punish/The opening chapter is the most viscerally memorable thing I've read all year, and the rest of the book spends its credibility unevenly after that.Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTDiscipline and PunishNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-what-the-reference-desk-teaches-you-about-recommending-a-game/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-what-the-reference-desk-teaches-you-about-recommending-a-game/The same three questions I ask a patron looking for a book turn out to work almost exactly as well on someone asking what game to buy their family for the holidays.Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-book-i-recommended-for-years-without-rereading/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-book-i-recommended-for-years-without-rereading/I'd been pointing patrons toward The Handmaid's Tale off a nineteen-year-old memory of reading it, and this year I finally sat down and checked whether that memory still held up.Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/Nobody in my building has heard of this one, which is a shame, because the central idea in it is the kind that changes how you look out a window.Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTA Foray into the Worlds of Animals and HumansNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-sentinels-of-the-multiverse/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-sentinels-of-the-multiverse/A cooperative card game where the rulebook is doing more work than it should, but the comic-book flavor almost makes up for it.Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTSentinels of the MultiverseNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-marginalia-i-leave-myself/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-marginalia-i-leave-myself/Nine years of pencil notes in the margins of my own books, and the oldest ones read like they were left by a stranger I used to be.Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-arcs/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-arcs/A trick-taking action system bolted onto area control that ran my first session from 1 AM to 6 AM without anyone wanting to stop.Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTArcsNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-spirit-island/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-spirit-island/The steepest rulebook I own, and the only one I've kept rereading a full year after learning it, because it keeps teaching me something new.Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTSpirit IslandNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-dune-imperium/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-dune-imperium/A worker-placement deckbuilder hybrid that shouldn't work as well as it does, and needs one specific expansion to feel finished.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTDune: ImperiumNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-the-rings-of-saturn/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-the-rings-of-saturn/A walking tour of the Suffolk coast that keeps wandering into silk manufacturing, herring fisheries, and the death of empires, and somehow all of it connects.Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Rings of SaturnNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-1984/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-1984/My third time through this one, and the book-within-the-book still drags exactly as much as it did the first time.Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT1984Natalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-game-i-evangelized-that-flopped/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-game-i-evangelized-that-flopped/I talked Cyclades up for months before I finally got it to the table, and watching it actually land was a genuinely humbling experience.Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-teaching-my-nephew-spirit-island-was-a-mistake/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-teaching-my-nephew-spirit-island-was-a-mistake/He's twelve, he loves the theme, and I completely misjudged how much rules explanation a first cooperative game session can actually hold.Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-book-group-book-nobody-finished/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-book-group-book-nobody-finished/I picked Discipline and Punish for book group thinking it would spark good conversation. It did, just not the kind I expected, mostly about whether anyone had actually read it.Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-secondhand-time/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-secondhand-time/An oral history of the end of the USSR that I had to put on hold twice at my own library before I finished it, which tells you something about its weight, not its quality.Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTSecondhand TimeNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-the-cyberiad/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/book-the-cyberiad/A short story collection about two constructor robots that reads like Borges wrote fairy tales for the era of computers, and the translation is doing half the heavy lifting.Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe CyberiadNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-brass-birmingham/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-brass-birmingham/A dense, dark-toned economic engine that rewards a hard first learning session with one of the best mid-weight strategy games I own.Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBrass: BirminghamNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-moon-colony-bloodbath/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/game-moon-colony-bloodbath/A shared-deck card game from the Dominion designer where the whole point is watching a colony slowly poison itself, and the least-dead player wins.Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTMoon Colony BloodbathNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-i-alphabetize-my-board-games-and-i-wont-apologize/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-i-alphabetize-my-board-games-and-i-wont-apologize/My game shelf is alphabetized by title, not sorted by weight or color or how often I play something, and I've stopped being embarrassed about it.Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-cart-i-never-stop-shelving/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-the-cart-i-never-stop-shelving/There is always another cart. Nine years in and that's still the single truest thing I can tell you about working in a library.Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlanhttps://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-why-i-will-never-own-an-ereader/https://natalieharlan.com/articles/essay-why-i-will-never-own-an-ereader/It's not a preservation instinct or a snob thing. It's that I can't remember anything I read on a screen the way I remember something I read on paper.Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayNatalie Harlan