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Recent Reading: Road to Ruin

Sep. 25th, 2025 04:18 pm
rocky41_7: (Default)
[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] books
I have a job again! \^o^/ This means I am back on the audiobook train and today I wrapped up Road to Ruin by Hana Lee, book 1 of the Magebike Courier duology. This is a low fantasy dystopian novel located in a place called the Mana Wastes, where protagonist Jin works as a courier transporting goods between protected cities. Jin runs a lot of odd jobs for various clients, but her most lucrative by far are Prince Kadrin and Princess Yi-Nereen. Jin has been ferrying love letters between them for three years--while hiding the fact that she's fallen in love with both of them. But everything changes when Yi-Nereen decides to run away and asks Jin to help her.

First, don't let the hokey title put you off. I started this one a bit warily, but it turned out to be quite a lot of fun! The worldbuilding is pretty light, but the novel seems aware of that and doesn't overpromise on that front. What is there serves its purpose well. It's not anything particularly novel, but not every book needs to be.

Jin, Yi-Nereen, and Kadrin are all wonderful protagonists; each of them has a distinct personality, perspective, and motivations, and I really enjoyed all of them. I was rooting for them the whole book and it was great to watch their various interpersonal dynamics unfold. If you're a fan of stories about mutual pining, this one is definitely worth checking out. However, if that's not really your speed, I didn't feel like the book spent too much time harping on about feelings we all suspect or know are requited. The romance element is definitely there, and it's a significant motivator for all three of them, but there's plenty else going on in the book too. 

The book avoids falling prey either to the Charybdis of black-and-white morality where everyone who stands in the way of the protagonists is evil, or to the Scylla of "everyone is friends if we just talk things out," which is a relief after some recent reads. There's definitely a sliding scale of antagonism here, with some characters who are obstacles but not necessarily bad people, and others who run much darker. 

I also enjoyed the presence of the "Road Builders." Jin and her peers inhabit the Mana Wastes, a treacherous desert wasteland where little survives and almost none of it without human intervention. They sustain themselves with "talent"--magical abilities common among humans, but becoming less common by the day--and travel along ravaged roads built by some culture who came before, about which Jin and her peers know very little. These are the "Road Builders" and are, I believe, strongly hinted at to be us. Lee keeps them a pleasant mystery humming in the background of everything else going on.

There were a couple contrivances near the end to aid a dramatic conclusion, but nothing so egregious I wasn't willing to continue to play ball with the book. Similarly, I'm on the fence about where this book leaves the relationship between the main trio, because it feels a little too much like Lee felt it was a necessary hook into book 2, but I'll reserve judgement until I've actually read book 2. And perhaps it's better that everything doesn't wrap up too neatly here. 

On the whole, I had a lot of fun with this book and I will definitely read the next one. 
petra: Barbara Gordon smiling knowingly (Default)
[personal profile] petra
BBC article.

Bring tissues if you, like me, are susceptible to Really Good News.
full_metal_ox: A gold Chinese Metal Ox zodiac charm. (Default)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans; Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Duc Jean des Essientes, Gray Mouser
Rating: General Audiences (although most of the beverages might be deemed Mature, depending on your country.)
Length: 542
Creator Links: Idlewild Designs (archived); I’ve not succeeded in recovering a name for the site owner.
Theme: Food & Cooking, Book Fandoms, Meta, Pre-AO3 Works, Research, Old Fandoms, Small Fandoms

Summary: The two literary passages cited serve that purpose:

Dining off black-bordered plates, the company had enjoyed turtle soup, Russian rye bread, ripe olives from Turkey, caviare, mullet botargo, black puddings from Frankfurt, game served in sauces the color of liquorice and boot-polish, truffle jellies, chocolate creams, plum-puddings, nectarines, pears in grape-juice syrup, mulberries and black heart cherries. From dark-tinted glasses they had drunk the wines of Limagne and Roussillon, of Tenedos, Valdepeñas and Oporto. And after coffee and walnut cordial, they had rounded off the evening with kvass, porter and stout.

— a black feast held to mourn the loss of the Duc des Esseintes's virility in A Rebours, by Huysman

The collation on the little ebony table beyond the coffin consisted entirely of black foods. By sight and then by nibbling and sipping the Mouser discovered their nature: thin slices of a very dark rye bread crusted with poppy seeds and dripped with black butter; slivers of charcoal-seared steak; similarly broiled tiny thin slices of calf's liver sprinkled with dark spices and liberally pricked with capers; the darkest grape jellies; truffles cut paper thin and mushrooms fried black; pickled chestnuts; and of course, ripe olives and black fish eggs—caviar. The black drink, which foamed when he poured it, turned out to be stout laced with the bubbly wine of Ilthmar.

— Fritz Leiber, "Bazaar of the Bizarre"


Reccer's Notes: With Halloween impending, this seemed an apropos topic.

Idlewild Designs was a 2000’s Geocities purveyor of Gothic, fantasy, literary, occult, rustic, Art Nouveau, and otherwise Bohemian aesthetic living tips; here they expand and elaborate upon the two feasts described, with potential ingredients listed by category and outlinks to recipes. (The site was still very much under construction by the time Geocities shut down; I’m assuming the business, at least in that stage, is by now as dead as Bela Lugosi and that this post doesn’t violate the OTW’s advertising ban.)

Literary_context. )

So what items might you add to the list? Some suggestions of my own:

Continue. )

Fanwork Links: Black Feasts, by Idlewild Designs (archived.)

Jeeves and the Tie That Binds

Sep. 25th, 2025 03:36 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
Jeeves and the Tie That Binds by P.G. Wodehouse

The continuing adventures. Spoilers for the earlier works ahead.

Read more... )
stonepicnicking_okapi: otherwords (otherwords)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

--

So that end September's Poems I learned in school. October's theme will be: SPOOKY POEMS. So please comment some spooky poems!
asher553: (Default)
[personal profile] asher553
I spent the first evening (Monday) of Rosh HaShana at dinner with some friends from the shul. I stayed home yesterday - the first day of the two-day holiday - because I was tired and needed some alone time, but I went to services today. I stayed for the whole affair - prayers, Torah reading, shofar blowing, priestly blessing - and tarried for a short while at the kiddush refreshment afterward.

I'm starting the new year with a fresh IT certification - I passed the second of the two required exams last Monday, and I'm now able to download a PDF of my official certificate.

We shall probably see the last of this season's warm weather this weekend, and it's a good time to focus on getting my living quarters in better shape. I have, by slow degrees, installed a few pieces of furniture in my parlor and started clearing out years of accumulated junk and clutter. Within another month or two, I hope to have the place fit for company. [166]
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
Sanders' Rhetorical, or Union Sixth Reader by Charles Walton Sanders

An advanced work of elocution.

Perhaps chiefly useful now for its selections and the light they cast on the era. It has several on the importance of the Union. It boasts of a wide variety, to fit young readers, and it does feature both prose and poetry on many different topics, fiction and non-fiction. I think it has more biographical essays than the earlier books in the series.

(Though it was amusing to read the side note that people used to eat a dish of fried dough known as a doughnut.)

Happier Birthdays to [personal profile] puppetmaker!

Sep. 24th, 2025 07:40 pm
dewline: Exclamation: "Hear, Hear!" (celebration)
[personal profile] dewline
I am grateful that you are still with us among the living.

Putin is testing NATO's limits

Sep. 24th, 2025 10:24 pm
fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi
Russia has repeatedly tested NATO's resolve with drone flights over Poland, fighter jet incursions into Estonian airspace, and surveillance activities in the Baltic Sea, including the most recent incident - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/21/german-jets-scrambled-after-russian-military-plane-flies-over-baltic-sea

NATO's recent consultations under Article 4 show that these provocations are no longer being treated as routine incidents...

Putin is testing NATO's limits

Sep. 24th, 2025 10:23 pm
fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi posting in [community profile] talkpolitics
Russia has repeatedly tested NATO's resolve with drone flights over Poland, fighter jet incursions into Estonian airspace, and surveillance activities in the Baltic Sea, including the most recent incident - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/21/german-jets-scrambled-after-russian-military-plane-flies-over-baltic-sea

NATO's recent consultations under Article 4 show that these provocations are no longer being treated as routine incidents. Estonia has even raised the issue at the UN Security Council.

The central question is how Europe should respond. Some argue that Russian aircraft violating NATO airspace should, if necessary, be shot down. This would not be an act of escalation, but a defensive measure, similar to Turkey's downing of a Russian jet in 2015, which effectively deterred further incursions into its territory.

The risk today, however, is higher. With the war in Ukraine ongoing and US foreign policy shifting under Trump, Europe cannot rely on America to manage the crisis. Russia is probing NATO to see how far it can push without facing real consequences.

Europe needs both deterrence and diplomacy. Re-armament programs are a step toward self-defense, but they must be matched by serious diplomatic initiatives to prevent escalation. Without this balance, the cycle of provocation and retaliation could spiral into open conflict (which might not go well, by the way) - https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/nato-would-lose-a-war-against-russia

As the BBC noted in its coverage of NATO airspace violations, Moscow's actions are deliberate tests of Western resolve - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yg921rjrko
Europe must show that its borders are not negotiable, while also keeping channels open to avoid sliding into a war no one wants.
evil_plotbunny: (hallie)
[personal profile] evil_plotbunny
My final five were:

Pennington Wise - Carolyn Wells
Girl Scouts Series - Margaret Vandercook
The Four Corners Series - Amy Ella Blanchard
Brooklyn Dodgers Series - John R. Tunis
Callendar Family Series - John Verney

So three from the long list and 2 that I thought of after. But I have nommed and placed these in the spreadsheet so I would have to make changes in several places if I change my mind.

Fun fact about my noms, the number of books in each series goes as follows:
8,5,8,8,5 (hey, at least I avoided the 20+ book series I'm prone to nominate).

Also L'shana tova | Happy New Year to all who celebrate. I'm going to try to get a general update post up sometime in the next week (new year's resolution).

drive by post

Sep. 24th, 2025 10:31 pm
fred_mouse: screen cap of google translate with pun 'owl you need is love'. (owl)
[personal profile] fred_mouse

I keep thinking about making a happy post, and then there are too many moving parts and argh. Instead, you get a possible insight into my mind you didn't need. I keep reading

it also predates genAI

in the verb form related to predator, rather than date and time. I'm not sure what is eating the genAI, and I'm not sure I want to (is it silverfish? it absolutely would not surprise me if it were silverfish).

(note also that I get a giggle out of un-ionised vs union-ised)

Word: Greensward

Sep. 24th, 2025 09:45 am
stonepicnicking_okapi: letters (letters)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Wednesday's word is...

...greensward. [green-swawrd]

noun

green, grassy turf

---

I found it in the new Dee and Lao Mystery I am reading #2 in the series called The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan:

Our errand had not brought us very far into that greensward [referring to Richmond Park clearing in London], certainly not far enough to encounter the King's deer, with or without great sharp horns.

Wednesday Icons

Sep. 24th, 2025 06:06 am
magicrubbish: Wednesday (Wednesday)
[personal profile] magicrubbish posting in [community profile] iconic
  Preview
      

  See the icons here @ [personal profile] magicrubbish 
stonepicnicking_okapi: ChopSuey (chopsuey)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
1. I had planned for a long work day because I was going to accompany my client to a doctor's appointment and it would be 3 hours longer than usual.

Then I got a call this morning that my client went to the hospital last night. So I had a very, very short day.

I didn't quite know what to do with myself! And I have to prepare myself for the fact they may give me a new client to replace this one if it is a long hospital stay.

The boys are home today (school is off) so I came home and worked on a craft project and did a few ficlets, but it was discombobulating.

2. Apparently, you have to ask a girl to the homecoming dance in Minor's high school culture so he is making a poster to do so. !!!

3. I started working on my Halloween cards.

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