Monica

Spells of War by Gary McGath

Sun, 08 May 2022 22:51:37 GMT

It's the middle of the 16th century in Europe. Magic exists, but is regulated and restricted to Christian men. Then Thomas Lorenz, a curious nerd trying to solve an interesting magical-scientific problem, figured out how to store magic. He had in mind practical applications like lights without fire; others had...other applications in mind. Nobody understands where magical power comes from, why some have it and some don't -- it comes from the World Behind, they know, but what that is is a mystery.

Martin Luther's reformation has upended Christendom from within, and the expanding Ottoman empire threatens it from without. Thomas is summoned from his university by the emperor -- one of Thomas's students is now making magical weapons for the other side, and he'd better get to work on countering that. Not only that, but they seem to have developed a weapon that can strip mages of their power, an existential threat to mages beyond the broader threat.

Spells of War by Gary McGath tells this story from several points of view. We follow Thomas and his associates as they try to understand the threat and develop counter-measures. We follow Petros, the student, and his associates who are pressed into service to the sultan. We follow soldiers who are plunged into new ways of waging war. And we follow Thomas's wife, Frieda, who pursues her curiosity about the World Behind while Thomas is away, while also caring for their two young children.

Spells of War is the sequel to The Magic Battery but stands alone. The Magic Battery starts with Thomas's apprenticeship and follows his explorations into stored magic and the ire of the church it attracts. I read and enjoyed both.

Spells of War tells an interesting story with characters I cared about. In both books, the author made me care about, and understand the inner struggles of, people who are on the "other side" -- the inquisitor in the first book and Petros and his peers in the second. Spells of War shows the devastation that war causes on all involved. I don't want to say too much about the Frieda arc for fear of spoilers, but it's engaging and gives us a very different perspective.

The world of The Magic Battery and Spells of War holds together logically. There's magic but it's not "oh, we have magic so we can do anything!"; magic has limitations, both technical and societal, and 16th-century Europe is plausibly altered to make room for magic but is still 16th-century Europe. But you can't just add magic and expect nothing else to change, either; adding magic changes society, and these two books show that well.

The Magic Battery has a satisfying ending that raises broader questions. Spells of War has a satisfying ending that raises more questions. I don't think a third book is coming (or not soon, anyway), but there's room for side stories, and one is linked from the author's web site.

I was a beta reader for both books in exchange for free copies with no expectations of reviews.

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Fae Shifter Knights (Zoe Chant)

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 02:28:37 GMT

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, someone shared a link to a blog post from Zoe Chant, who -- because we were all suddenly in lockdown and dealing with extra stress -- offered a free e-book of hers to anyone who asked. I asked, she described a few options, and I chose Dragon of Glass, the first book in what would be the Fae Shifter Knights series. I loved it and got each of the following books as they came out. The fourth and final book just came out a few weeks ago, so I'm finally getting around to writing about them.

As implied by "fae", the knights (one per book) are from another world or realm. They're transported, one at a time, into modern-day Earth, and have to learn about magical cooling boxes and lights without flames and smartphones and television -- and social conventions. I enjoyed the fish-out-of-water aspect, laughing not infrequently. It would be easy for this to be overdone, but it's not.

The knights were one fighting band on the other side, where their world fell to evil magical beings. Somehow, during their final battle, they were frozen in glass and sent into our world. (That's explained, but it would be a spoiler.) Each knight has a corresponding person in our world, a "key", who can help unlock that knight's magic (which is greatly diminished in our world). Each of the four books focuses on one of the knights while contributing to the overall story. When I started reading Dragon of Glass I thought I was getting some light-hearted fluff, but there's more depth to the series and I found the larger story engaging.

As implied by "shifter", each knight has an alternate, magical form -- dragon, unicorn, gryphon, firebird. (When they were frozen in glass, it was in those forms, at the size of tree ornaments. The set got broken up; part of the quest for the knights and keys already here is to find the other ornaments.)

Aside: There is a whole genre of "shifter romance" that I was largely unaware of two years ago. These books, and many of Zoe Chant's other books, are in this genre. There are definitely romantic elements (and some sex scenes), but as someone who's not really into romances, I didn't find it overdone or intrusive. It was just part of the story -- not the reason for the story like (as I understand it) with some mainstream romances.

The knights have a leader and mentor, a "fable" -- not a fairy, as the character keeps insisting. (At a foot tall and with wings, you can understand the confusion.) As a reader I had more trouble connecting with this character than with the knights and keys, though the fable does get some funny, snarky lines. (Part of my problem is a personal one: the number mismatch of singular "they" trips me up as a reader, every time, even when I know who the referent is. My brain treats it as a runtime exception or something. I've tried to overcome it, but have not yet succeeded.)

The final book, Firebird of Glass, was heavier than the others (as was the end of the third book). The series has been building toward a final confrontation (the forces that took over the knights' world want ours too), and at times the book is sombre and grim. When I started the book I had predictions, expectations, of how this final confrontation was going to end; partway through the book I developed different predictions -- and in the end the author surprised me with something I never saw coming but that felt right.

I enjoyed the series, and I think some of you would, too.

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Survivors: new chapters

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 21:01:13 GMT

In the late 1970s there was a BBC series, created by Terry Nation, called Survivors. A devastating plague has ravaged the world, killing almost everybody; the show follows small groups of people who survived that only to have to cope with the new state of the world. I enjoyed the show (much later, when I came across it on Netflix), though it started to meander as time went on. (I later learned that Terry Nation had left the show after the first season -- probably related.) Later there was a remake of sorts, with some significantly different plot points. Both versions ended before being resolved.

Terry Nation wrote a novel, presumably the story he had intended to tell. I read the book during this current pandemic, and yes, it's a much tighter story than the TV show. I enjoyed it. It has an ending. I will not spoil it in this post (no promises about comments).

A few months ago I learned that there was a sequel to that novel, not written by Terry Nation. Genesis of a Hero, by John Eyers, logically follows Survivors and shows other parts of this post-apocalyptic world. I thought some things in it happened too quickly and too tidily, that real people are more complex than some of the ones we saw in the novel, but it was worth reading -- I enjoyed spending time as an observer in the world it portrays. It ended in a good place.

Forty years passed. And then John Eyers wrote a sequel to that, called Salvation, published a few months ago. If you liked Survivors, and if you read Genesis of a Hero, then, I implore you in the strongest possible way, stop there.

I don't know what led the author to return to the series after such a long time. I don't know why he decided to, essentially, tell a related-seeming story in a different world -- a problem which did not become apparent until after the halfway point. Much of this latest book deviates far too much from the baseline, some key plot points just do not make sense, and the story, characters, and writing are nowhere near compelling enough for me to overcome those faults.

He should have stopped at one sequel. Since he didn't, I should have stopped reading this one at the first improbable left turn instead of reading on to see how he would resolve it because surely he would, right? Uh... if you do start reading this book (or if you already have), when you get to that left turn, I urge you to close the book and do something you'll find more rewarding, like scrubbing your kitchen floor.

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odds and ends

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 03:45:37 GMT

I haven't been posting regularly. Oops.

I've been baking bread about once a week. This past week I finally scored some rye flour (that was not exorbitantly priced), so I made a rye sourdough for the first time. I think I prefer less molasses than this recipe called for, so I'll adjust that next time or try a different recipe. The bread is tasty, aside from the molasses overwhelming the caraway. Most "rye bread" recipes I've seen use rye for only one third of the flour, which sent me searching for "all rye" rye bread, which apparently works and tastes good but might not rise as much? I'll probably try it at some point, especially since I had to buy four (small) bags of rye flour to get it.

Dani and I play board games every Shabbat now, and occasionally we have two other friends (who are also careful, and I guess this is a "pod"?) over to play. We play Pandemic in every session because, well, pandemic. Yesterday we pulled out Kings and Things, a game we all had vague memories of, and by the end had concluded that while it's appealing it's also kind of tedious and maybe sort of a shorter Titan, a game I like in principle but dislike actually playing. Ok, now we've refreshed our memories...

A friend has a game called McMulti, which is an economic game (oil/gas theme)... in German. There are lots of places where text matters, so when we've played we've used cheat sheets since none of us read German. We recently became aware of an English-language derivative, called Crude, and got it recently. They've changed some of the mechanics and made one really annoying change to how the board is laid out, but other changes are positive and the game's a little faster. I like it, but am tempted to figure out how to print my own board. The game is really strongly designed for four players, but there are rules for a two-player version, which Dani and I have played once, which seen to work ok.

Codidact, the project that consumes most of my spare time, is in the process of incorporating as a non-profit. We've got our lawyer on our Discord server and having conversations about incorporation documents via Google Docs comments. It looks like we will be able to clear an important hurdle soon. Neat!

On the project front, I'm not writing code -- I keep feeling like I should learn Ruby and the dev environment so I can help, then concluding that I probably won't be helping because I'd be taking time and attention from the developers who are actually being productive. But I've taken over bug-wrangling -- some analysis and testing, clarifying vague reports, and, especially, triaging. I was surprised to find that GitHub counts filing issues as contributions. I think that's new?

We just had our first birthday, counting from when the project founder set up a Discord server to talk about maybe building an alternative to Somewhere Else. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us, both technical and community development, but I'm pleased with where we are.

I've been reading a lot of fiction, a mix of short stories, novellas, and novels, many through the BookFunnel network (and also StoryBundle). I'm "meeting" a lot of authors I didn't previously know. I should really write a separate post about that.

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quarantine rambles

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 02:11:50 GMT

Working from home seems to be mostly going ok for my company. We have several standing "coffee break" video chats each week for the human connection and are using video more for other meetings. We have learned how to add custom background images to Microsoft Teams and this is a source of amusement. (I would like to find some from Babylon 5, particularly images from (a) Minbar and (b) inside the station, but have had no luck so far.) My team has a new person who started a few weeks ago, so he started in quarantine and hasn't yet been to the office. I'm his mentor, so I'm trying to make sure he's getting all the support and human connection he needs. The situation seems roughest on the people who live alone, though the ones with small children at home have challenges too. I'm fortunate to have Dani and the cat.

I have read a little more fiction than usual, some of it made available for free by authors because of the quarantine. Thank you! One that I just finished is Dragon of Glass by Zoe Chant, a delightful, lightweight novel about a transplant from another world and the woman who released him; watching him try to fit into our world is a lot of fun. Tor is making the Murderbot novellas available this week for free (leading up to a novel release next month); I'd read the first a while back but hadn't read the others yet, so this is good timing. I also have a gift waiting from a Kickstarter for a different book (while you're waiting and stuck at home, here...). I also just read (not free) The Body in the Building, a novella by a friend and fellow SE refugee. The point-of-view character is an architect who discovers problems with a major project, and then discovers that those problems were only the tip of an iceberg of bigger problems... I figured out the mystery before the reveal but also fell for some misdirection, so neither too easy nor too hard.

I have been spending more time in the kitchen. Yes I'm cooking all our meals at home aside from very occasional takeout from local restaurants, but also: with the food supply being sometimes erratic, I've upped the produce deliveries and am doing some low-key preserving. I've never canned and don't have the equipment, but I'm pickling things (to refrigerate, not shelf-stable). So far I've pickled eggs, beets, cauliflower, and jalapenos, and will do some carrots next. I also plan to dry some fruit, dried fruit not requiring refrigeration. (I'm trying to keep the fridge full.) I haven't been able to get bread flour since Pesach ended, so I guess I'll try making bread with all-purpose flour. (Also haven't been able to get rye flour.) I would like to get some more seedlings for container gardening, but I don't know if I want to go to Home Depot for them and nobody delivers. (Insert rant about how Home Depot gets to sell plants because they sell stuff for home repair, but local nurseries had to close.)

Someone I know indirectly from Mi Yodeya suggested a book and a series of videos on Reb Nachman that look very personally relevant. (I've read one chapter of the book and seen one of the videos so far; more soon.) I joined an online talmud class (by R' Ethan Tucker of Hadar). A friend pointed out to me that since we're all stuck at home anyway, synagogues in other cities are just as available to me as my local ones. There's one in DC that seems like a good fit for me. Closer to home, my synagogue's two rabbis and cantor each hold a weekly open chat on Zoom, so I'll get to see my rabbi that way tomorrow.

Our choir director sends out daily music selections with accompanying (short) history essays. I'm enjoying these.

I have barely watched any TV.

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I don't think that's how consciousness works

Sun, 19 May 2019 04:19:08 GMT

I recently read Corey Doctorow's novel Walkaway. It's set in a post-scarcity world where the super-rich (zota rich, or just zotas) hold their power by stomping everyone else down. There's enough to go around, but people have to work (at crap jobs for crap wages) anyway, while the zotas sit back. Some people hate this and decide to opt out by walking away and forming their own communities off the grid. The book follows some of these walkaways, as they're called. (And no, the zotas are not cool with this.)

Another theme of the book is conquering death -- that's how the characters view it. More specifically, their goal is to be able to back up a human's essence, at which point if you get killed you can be restored from backup (initially as a digital simulation, eventually into a new body). This is an attractive idea in SF and this book is hardly the first to explore it, but I always get tripped up by the same issue, including in this book.

That issue is: sure, it'd be nice if I could back up my brain so that "Monica" would never have to cease to exist, but that doesn't mean that backup is me. It would think so, of course; it would have all my memories. But from my perspective, my body dies -- I die. If I'm dead, do I really care if there's a simulation of me running out there somewhere?

This is not conquering death. At best it's mitigating it. Which makes it hard for me to relate to stories where people say "great, ditch the meat body and come back digitally or in a robot or a perfect body or whatever". Would people really do that? I find that hard to swallow.

Despite this point, I mostly enjoyed the book. There's one place where there's a jump in time that I found rather abrupt, and the story is far more dialogue-heavy than I'm used to, with a lot of philosophy in that dialogue. (In other words, large blocks of philosophy-dialogue or exposition-dialogue, as opposed to short, interactive dialogue.) But many of the characters are engaging and walkaway-land sounds like a cool place to live, when the zotas aren't trying to quash it.

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Magic 2.0 seems to have jumped the shark

Sun, 07 Apr 2019 20:49:02 GMT

A couple years ago somebody recommended Scott Meyer's Off to Be the Wizard, the first book in the "Magic 2.0" series. The premise is geek-fantasy: the point-of-view character, Martin, is a hacker who discovers a file (out there somewhere) that, when you edit it, changes reality. In other words, it's the file that defines the world and everything in it. After experimenting a bit (always meant to drop 20 pounds, that kind of thing), he decides to improve his quality of life by altering his bank balance. That's fine because he's creating money, not actually stealing it from anybody, right? No, not such a bright move, and soon he finds himself making a temporal change to escape the feds. His plan is to flee to medieval England and pretend to be a wizard. He's not the first person to think of that, or the last -- the other wizards put him through trials to decide if he can join the guild or if they'll revoke his access and send him back to his time to deal with the feds. It's a fun read.

I also enjoyed the sequel, Spell or High Water, in which we find out more about where female wizards (sorceresses) go, medieval England not being so great for them. We see more interactions among the main characters, and of course some problems they need to solve together. Another fun read.

The third book, An Unwelcome Quest, was less fun, in large part because of the setting. This is the first book where we don't see much of the world the wizards are in; an enemy wizard has caught the gang in a trap and most of the book is spent trying to escape it. Because my reaction to this one was solidly mediocre, and also because the next one existed only as an audiobook for a long time, I didn't go further. Recently I noticed that two more books were available on Kindle.

The fourth, Fight and Flight, starts with the wizards making a stupid mistake with consequences, which they spend the rest of the book cleaning up. The humor (including some actual laughing out loud) of the first book was back, and the resolution of the problem seemed to start down a good character-development path. On the basis of that, I read the fifth.

Out of Spite, Out of Mind was a major disappointment. Many of the characters' actions are just stupid, and in a not-fun way. That growth suggested at the end of the previous book is nowhere in evidence. The plot also revolves around some time-travel paradoxes that have been there since book 2 and always been a little annoying, but now they've taken over. In book 2 we met Brit the Younger and Brit the Elder, who are really the same person at different points in their personal timeline because bad things happen when you time-travel and meet yourself. They don't agree that they're the same person, by the way, and arguments about predestination break out. In this book that all ramps up, and we meet Brit the Much Elder and Angry Brit and Brit the One Hour Older and I think there's one more running around in there... and y'know what? I never liked Brit all that much to begin with. And in the process of messing with the Brits, the author messes with some characters I like and then ends with a very obvious setup for a sequel at the expense of resolving a major thread. I kind of feel like the author broke the contract with the reader here, especially since the earlier books all at least resolved even while leaving openings.

I see the sixth book is coming soon. I won't be reading it.

(By the way, I've read two other books, not in this series, by this author that were fun. Perhaps he does better with one-offs?)

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