What is Kalpar's Arsenal?

The Kalpar, circa 2007

Kalpar's Arsenal was launched in December of 2011 by me (The Kalpar) as a self-imposed challenge. Having graduated that spring from university but still not having full-time employment, I found myself with quite a lot of free time on my hands and doing a lot of reading to keep from going out of my mind. Eventually I noticed that I tended to read books that fell into three categories: science-fiction, fantasy, or history. Furthermore I very often had strong opinions on these books and liked sharing them with other people. So I decided that I should start a site where I wrote a book review (Or at least wrote something for people to read) once a week. Because Thursday seemed like a good day of the week, being named after Thor, I decided to update on Thursdays. And so the experiment was on!

Somehow years later I'm still doing reviews, posting updates pretty much every Thursday without fail with one or two exceptions. (Listen, Thanksgiving is a day for feasting.) In the years I've been writing here I've branched out beyond just books, although that's overwhelmingly what I talk about here, to include things like board games, television shows, movies, graphic novels, and other odds and ends that make me opinionated enough to want to talk about them. At one point I even included The Adventures of Krinsblag, a somewhat accurate chronicle of the adventures of one of my D&D characters, Krinsblag the Mighty. And of course, I have managed to stick to the three pillars of science-fiction, fantasy, and history as well.

Perhaps most importantly, this site has allowed me to write honest reviews of works, independent from any deals with authors, creators, or publishers. I had some experience in the past in getting works from those people with the expectation of a good review as a sort of payment. Quite simply that felt rather dishonest to me, plus a few works I was given were just downright terrible so I had to couch my opinion in as nice words as possible. Going off and doing my own thing eventually let me do reviews on my own terms, without being beholden to giving a glowing review if the work just didn't quite cut it. Amazingly despite now having gainful employment and the feeling of less time than ever, I still manage to find time and enjoy working on my site, as simple and unpopular as it is.