Clearing some dust
Mar. 13th, 2017 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bjornwildeEntering into week three of being sick and I am so ready to be over it. I did go into an Accute Care clinic on Friday but the doctor said it seems like I am mostly over it and there really wasn't much to be done but treat the symptoms.
Somehow this is also making my wanting to thread or do creative things practically nonexistent. Like I remember what fun it is and all, but I am disconnected from it. Blah.
Tried reading Tanith Lee's Faces Underwater but gave up after 4 chapters. I can't complain about the writing, which was good, I just didn't have any connection to the main character and I couldn't see a plot happening. I felt more connected with the city in the book than anything else, and I just don't read fast enough to bother.
I am most of the way through Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, which is so much better. This has got to be the best portrayal of middle schoolers I've read in some time. They read as honest and true peeps rather than half remembered personas of middle schoolers.
I finished Four Roads Cross this weekend and I really cannot wait until the next Craft Sequence book. I may have made an account for Elayne Kevarian (*cough*carpe_deos *cough*). Someday I will have to tag someone in a sandbox when I'm feeling up to threading.
I also continue to work my way through the Vlad Taltos series and am up to book 08 of the series. Still very tempted by a Vlad voice, but a journal name hasn't yet occurred to me and I would need two slots open to play him since I can't see him being anywhere without Loiosh, his smart ass, telepathic mini-wyvern type familiar. I think I've given up on the idea of finding an Eastern European actor with a handlebar mustache to use as a PB and will just use this fabulous fan art...assuming I ever get to play him.
ETA: I am about half-way convinced the writers of The Magicians have no idea what they are doing this season. I feel like each episode is only loosely connected to the previous and is wandering lost, with no idea where it is going.
Somehow this is also making my wanting to thread or do creative things practically nonexistent. Like I remember what fun it is and all, but I am disconnected from it. Blah.
Tried reading Tanith Lee's Faces Underwater but gave up after 4 chapters. I can't complain about the writing, which was good, I just didn't have any connection to the main character and I couldn't see a plot happening. I felt more connected with the city in the book than anything else, and I just don't read fast enough to bother.
I am most of the way through Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, which is so much better. This has got to be the best portrayal of middle schoolers I've read in some time. They read as honest and true peeps rather than half remembered personas of middle schoolers.
I finished Four Roads Cross this weekend and I really cannot wait until the next Craft Sequence book. I may have made an account for Elayne Kevarian (*cough*
carpe_deos *cough*). Someday I will have to tag someone in a sandbox when I'm feeling up to threading.I also continue to work my way through the Vlad Taltos series and am up to book 08 of the series. Still very tempted by a Vlad voice, but a journal name hasn't yet occurred to me and I would need two slots open to play him since I can't see him being anywhere without Loiosh, his smart ass, telepathic mini-wyvern type familiar. I think I've given up on the idea of finding an Eastern European actor with a handlebar mustache to use as a PB and will just use this fabulous fan art...assuming I ever get to play him.
ETA: I am about half-way convinced the writers of The Magicians have no idea what they are doing this season. I feel like each episode is only loosely connected to the previous and is wandering lost, with no idea where it is going.
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Date: 2017-08-31 06:42 am (UTC)If you don't mind a totally random drive-by comment on an old entry from a total stranger (but at least a neighborly-ish one; I'm in California too) -- see, I periodically do content searches for "Dragaera" and "Vlad Taltos", because I'm a sad, sad person:
I read this paragraph and it occurred to me that apparently I've subconsciously had a fancast for Vlad all along -- at least a young Vlad. You may have considered and discarded him already, but just in case: Mikhail Boyarsky (aka D'Artagnan in the glorious Soviet musical adaptation)
*slinks off into the depths of the internet*
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Date: 2017-08-31 03:16 pm (UTC)Not sure if I'll actually play him anywhere as life has been very pushy. I also need to get back to the books. I'm up to book 09 at this point.
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Date: 2017-08-31 04:57 pm (UTC)I'm up to book 09 at this point.
Ooh, Issola! It's one of my favorites! "Up to" as in, about to start it, or have read it?
Also, completely unrelatedly, I love your DW's color scheme. Is it a preset one (in which case, do you mind telling me which one) or did you build it yourself? (I'm still on LJ for the most part, but one of the reasons is that none of the DW journal styles have appealed to me till now, but yours looks really lovely.)
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Date: 2017-08-31 05:52 pm (UTC)I've read it and holy shit, did I not see Kiera's identity coming (which I think came out in book 08?). Sorry, it's been a few months and I've been mainlining the Codex Alera books in the mean time.
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Date: 2017-08-31 07:04 pm (UTC)I've read it and holy shit, did I not see Kiera's identity coming (which I think came out in book 08?)
#7, I think (Orca). Which, hilariously, I read out of order, much later than it comes in either publication or chronological order, and the glorious thing is, the later books DON'T SPOIL IT.
And, ditto, and I don't know anyone who figured it out, although in retrospect it's, well, not exactly foreshadowed, but the clues are there.And then when I reread the earlier books, there is so much hidden goodness once you know the Kiera spoiler, including this gem from Jhereg:
Kiera re: Vlad getting greedy and getting in over his head (by taking the contract on Mellar): "The last time that , happened, you found yourself fighting an Athyra wizard, right in his own castle, as I recall. That kind of thing isn't healthy, Vlad."
And, cool, re: Alera! I've read the books (though I do prefer the Dresden Files, of Butcher's stuff). I'm a big fan of the worldbuilding and especially the elemental magic/furies in that series.
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Date: 2017-08-31 10:13 pm (UTC)I just finished Alera this morning, like the last book, and boy was that a ride. I loved how things circled back to the first book. Amazing world building and I loved that the carnim weren't just wolf humans, the marat weren't just human barbarians, an dwish we could've gotten more of the Icemen. I also loved how even the villains, well, except Kallus, had hints of humanity to them. Or at least were fleshed out enough we could feel a measure of sympathy for them.
If you enjoy good world building, let me suggest the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone. It is amazing.
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Date: 2017-08-31 11:59 pm (UTC)In Alera, I do like the way the "bad guys"/scary Other is gradually revealed and humanized in subsequent books -- the Marat from the first book becoming allies, then the Canem, then the Icemen (though I agree, we don't get that much time with them). And the Vord never become allies, of course, but we do get an inside and almost compassionate look at them by the end.
If you enjoy good world building, let me suggest the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone. It is amazing.
I *do* enjoy good worldbuilding, and would agree that the Craft Sequence is pretty amazing at it :D I'm a couple of books behind (I need to go back to Last First Snow), but I really enjoyed the three that I read. Besides the extremely creative worldbuilding, my favorite book is Full Fathom Five and my favorite character is Temoc. (I'm guessing from this post that yours is Elayne :)
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Date: 2017-09-01 05:10 pm (UTC)I loved the two main character if 5 Fathoms! And I just love how he's turned magic and faith into a unique sort of world economy, instead of just replacing technology with magic.
New book comes out this month!
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Date: 2017-09-01 08:18 pm (UTC)New book comes out this month!
I have it on pre-order! Which you'd think would motivate me to catch up on 1 Snow and 4 Roads, both of which I have sitting on my Kindle... but I find Gladstone's books really dense, intense reading, so it's harder for me to 'schedule' them than random fluff.
And I just love how he's turned magic and faith into a unique sort of world economy
Definitely some of the most interesting magical worldbuilding out there!