Pyramid Review
Gramercy Island (for Heroes Unlimited)
Published by Palladium Books
Written by Bill Coffin
$20.95; 224 Pages
How is it that I can read two books, by the same author, in the same setting, and enjoy one so much more than the other?
Gramercy Island is the second book in the Century Station setting for Heroes Unlimited. It describes the super-prison Gramercy Island in the Century Station setting (although Gramercy Island is generic enough that it can be slotted into any setting with minimal problems: Take one island, add a prison. Tah-dah!).
Super Prison is used literally here, because Gramercy Island is the prison where Century Station's various super-powered/paranormal felons and crooks (as well as the mundane scofflaws) are sent to serve their time.
Unfortunately, Gramercy Island doesn't quite give the same oomph that Century Station did. It feels more like a standard character catalogue than a cohesive sourcebook on the level Century Station was.
The first ten pages of the book detail prison life. It's a fairly well written description of prison life (and seems to be accurate . . . as far as I know from watching Shawshank Redemption and occasional trailers for Oz). The glossary of prison terms is also interesting, but I won't make any statements about its genuineness. Prison is a fairly surreal existence, an alien society so separate from our every day lives that I'm pretty sure it would be easy enough to use the information in here in any incarceration facility.
. . .This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 20, 2001
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