Lathany

I've never really been into New Year's resolutions. However, I have been thinking about 2017 and what I plan to do and hope to do.

First up, I want to edit the book I've finished. Plus I will be thinking about possible ideas for the next one. Secondly, my holiday plans are rather less ambitious than for last year, but I am looking forward to going to the Peak District this year. Then there's work. It's really about time that I moved jobs. None of that is particularly ambitious, but is plenty for me to be going on with.

Then there's the various releases - books, tv, games, films - I'm hoping for in 2017.

The first few of which are left over from 2016:

• Blackenrock - This is the second installment of the Lost Crown adventure horror game series. Still pending, still possible for 2017.
• Syberia III - Now expected in the first quarter of 2017.
• Pathologic reboot - Now scheduled for "Autumn 2017".
• The Last Crown - Probably not 2017 given that Blackenrock isn't out yet, but hey.

Also, I may actually get around to watching Heroes Reborn (which I have less interest in since having seen reviews).

There are also some more things I want from this year:

• Want You Gone (Jack Parlabane 8) - I liked the last one, but found it mildly disappointing in terms of moving the overall "Jack" arc forward. I have hopes of this one doing more.
• Twin Peaks - I believe this is still expected in 2017.
• Beyond Good and Evil 2 - Frankly, I'd be amazed if this made 2017. However, it is in development.

I may come back and add to this list if I think of anything else.

During the summer, bateleur passed me the graphic novel Nimona by Noelle Stevenson and said he thought I'd like it. Turns out that I do - it's set in a land of fantasy and science with a large corporation, a hero, a villain and a side kick. Except, none of them turn out to be quite what they are advertised to be. It's funny, it has some lovely twists whilst pretending to follow genre and I'd read more about these characters (or anything else by Noelle Stevenson).

We also got around to seeing the last of the Hunger Games films - Mockingjay part 2. By this point I'd read the trilogy, so knew what was coming. The film was remarkably close to the book, I thought Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson (Haymitch) and Jena Malone (Johanna) were good, but I didn't like the film much. I didn't like the book very much either, for much the same reasons, and felt the series was rather repetitive and very grim (the first one was good and then it deteriorates). However, by seeing all four films I got to be completist about it.

Today I gave blood. I'm now feeling rather tired and a bit fragile.

Today has been something of a rush. Yesterday evening, Ryan came back from school with a birthday invite for today. It's for one of his closest three friends (Khalid) and, because of cancellations, we happen to be free. More specifically, bateleur happens to be free. So bateleur has sacrificed his spare time and taken our first born to Woking. We rustled a card up out of the cupboard and an Amazon voucher for a present.

This week marked the start of my work Visits season which means visits to armed forces bases and prisons, hotels across the country (Rutland Water this week) and lots of reading time on trains. The last of these meant that I read the last of my birthday books - Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud (the Bartimaeus author). It's awesome - lovely concept, good characters and a plot (or several). I loved every minute of it. It also left me keen to set a one-off in the world he had created (although, I think I'll run my other one-off first)!

Last weekend featured 100 Secrets. The session went something like this:

• We left our guards and travelled back south to Gods Passage. There we spent our time trying to get into the prison. Eventually we (Aeryn (quisalan)) succeeded.
• The place inside was as strange as promised and seemed stuck somewhat in time. Rat (leathellin) found a rat who knew what humans were. Neddra (me) found a piece (a keystone) from a building that wasn't in there. There were no bones anywhere. Aeryn discovered that if she flew high enough she could see mountains high enough to touch the clouds.
• Then Rat found the well, with the steps. We went down the steps and met two living creatures. Sadly, hostile ones. One of them could create chains and the other had some sort of poisoned blade. We then had an epic round of rolling 100s. The eventually upshot was that we killed them, the last stroke being using their poisoned knife and growing a tree in one of them. We then got to explore the rest of the room - it was full of statues of kings and queens and stranger things. We also found a door leading to a tomb. However, we were unable to shift the tombstone. At this point we realised we (Rat) could no longer hear the river and we might be becoming trapped. So - using the river - we left.
• We stayed by Gods Passage during the day and then had another attempt at getting into the prison at nightfall. This was successful and this time we were able to bring Carlos (shadowjon). We got back to the tomb and opened it. Inside was a skeleton in strange armour which was not quite human (it had claws). Despite the picture on the top, it did not have a sword. We also found the door into the actual well area. Eventually we left.
• Travelling south again there was one incident that I remember. We had our stores pilfered by a lone child on the road. We're not sure why the child was alone (we have a number of bad ideas).
• Finally we reached just north of Gobal Palace. There we met a merchant caravan with a VIP. After a miscommunication and some fighting we lost them but discovered at the camping place that it was a travelling priest. By this point we sort of had a plan - we needed more of the Dashi charms and we needed to see what happened to supplicants. Aeryn managed the latter - they were taken at sunset for a ritual and fed worms when the pause moment occurred. The priests were not frozen and we theorised that they had charms. Also Rat made contact with the rebels and we started passing messages. Apparently there were two dozen priests. Finally, Rat explored underground. The Dashi area seemed to be west.
• Our plan to catch priests? A tiger, a portal and some back-up. It worked twice, but was hairy for the third time around. However, we finally got three more charms and then ran away.
• For the next session - we need to wipe out all the worms in the city. This may be a tall order.

I'm glad it's a bank holiday weekend - I'm very sleepy after my trip this week.

Yesterday afternoon, we drove to my parents to belatedly celebrate birthdays (a rather yummy Thai meal at Thai Rack which I've raved about before), exchange presents and collect twins (after staying overnight).

Whilst there, we asked about the hedge as it was still full of dead leaves - rather an odd thing for spring. My father explained that it's a beech hedge and beech gets upset when pruned and then doesn't shed its leaves until the new set come in. He also explained that the leaves colour in the autumn as that's where the toxins go to be expelled from the tree (I suspect some of my F-list already knew this...).



We watched Spectre that evening. I liked it better than I was expecting, having heard bad reviews. I think I see what they mean - scenes and plot were cinematic rather than rational. That said, it's Bond (and there was a tiny bit from Judi Dench :-) ).

I've seen two other films recently:

• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - This was rather disappointing as it didn't follow the story properly and seemed more as though Jackson (and his co-writers) had produced some Hobbit-based fanfic.
• Mad Max: Fury Road - As has often been said, this was one long car chase. However, it was an enjoyable and epic one!

I've also finished the first of my list of Things I hope arrive in 2016, namely Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre. I have mixed views on this. It's a good story, nice to see Jack in action and a decent plot concept. Where it falls down is that I found one of the characters remarkably similar to one in the previous book and also, I've read enough Brookmyre that I'm now spotting early plot points.

The next of my 2016 things is likely to be either Dreamfall Chapters part five or Blackenrock. All the evidence suggests that they're going to appear at about the same time (late this month or early May). Actually, Heroes Reborn is already out, but the reviews are sufficiently poor that I'm going to leave it until the price drops (and I'm less interested than I expected to be).

I have finally started using my Kindle. chrestomancy bought it for me a while back (my last birthday), but I still had some unread physical books and also, when a book belongs to a series I already have, I like continuing with paper books. However, Amazon was offering a free book at about the time I finally ran out of paperbacks to read, I chose Divergent and that got me started.

I had already seen the film version of Divergent (but not any of the others), so the plot was not much of a surprise. The book is described as a "young-adult dystopian novel" (by Wikipedia), which I would agree with. I'd add it is a fairly easy read, a bit predictable (although, to be fair, this is a bit hard to judge given I had seen the film) and the main character (Tris) is a little bit of a Mary Sue. That said, I liked it enough to get the rest of the trilogy.

On the subject of young-adult dystopia, we saw Mockingjay part 1 last night. I'm not much of a fan of the film-world's craze for dividing the last book in a series into two films (the other one I've seen is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). Having watched this, I'm even less of a fan. It really did not work as a self-contained story and was instead mostly set-up with little to recommend it in itself, relying on people already being hooked on the series.

I've now played Dreamfall Chapters Books two, three and four, but I'll wait until I've played five (the last - but not out) before writing a review.

Yesterday was the fourth (I think) 100 Secrets game of the second season. We had reached the Capital of Evil Gobal Palace, so were ready to go in and try and find out why everyone had warned us against coming here.

The actual population, at first, seemed quite small and somewhat childless. However, we quickly learned (or at least Rat (leathellin) did) that this was because the majority of the population worked (and lived?) underground. The typical day began at sunrise, and within half a hour was peak time at the market with many goods going underground. Then it eased off quickly, but remained somewhat open across the course of the day. Other elements of the city were:

• The palace proper - The old Palace itself seemed somewhat abandoned (apart from the guard orgies), but there was a new palace building that I don't think we got into. It also had a garden we didn't get into.
• The Divine Court - We learned that the ruler of the city was here, a certain Judge Porogan, the latest of a long line of judges (and he worked for the previous judge). Apparently it had been this way since the gods had given advice to the King and the Queen resulting in the King going after the Sun and the Queen going after the Moon (Neddra immediately had ideas that she had met both around Eyestone Hill). Apparently, both King and Queen are supposed to come back when the world ends (... a bit late to do anything really). This place was heavily guarded and we never went in.
• Chambers of Devotion - This was Priest Central. Apparently people (Supplicants) would come here to send messages to the gods and answers (or not) would arrive in the morning. If there was no answer then the supplicant in question would be sent to meet the gods. (We had nasty ideas about what happened next - we think they were turned into the general population.) Whilst in the city, we discovered there was some sort of twenty second pause that happened at sunrise and sunset (discovered because anyone holding the Dashi amulet was immune) which was probably to do with the messages. We later learned that the priests never left or went underground.
• Old Tower - Some sort of former town hall, I think. Certainly a place which had the remains of furniture, cooking facilities, records and writing equipment. This place had been gutted with fire.
• Underground - Dark and with worm guards at the bottom of the stairs (I think they are called Dashi).
• The West Gate - This had existed but was now bricked up, we're not sure why (but have theories).

The population was mostly wrong. By which I mean that they moved according to the same pattern, as though they were pre-programmed. Not everyone was like this - our barwoman was not and the boy that Rat found, Guwit, was not. Aryn (quisalan) managed to get one of them to talk to her and she was able to help her out of that state (a woman at the market) and she apparently had come here from the north when she was very young.

(Note: I remember that one of the buildings has "something on top" that Aryn had seen, but I don't know which one.)

Once we felt we had seen enough - and did not fancy waiting for someone to attack us or take us underground - we left with Guwit. We travelled north along the road and back to the north east fort. We were followed by a mercenary sent by the priests that Aryn caught and Carlos (shadowjon) sent away. Then we travelled north again and found a burned village. There, at night, Carlos observed Guwit perform a ritual that was supposed to stop him being summoned underground. We are trying to learn this. Also, I saw an animal with a diamond that Aryn befriended to briefly see a creature in a cavern also with a diamond. It led her to the murdered villagers. There were no children and we think those were taken to the capital.

We travelled north again and arrived at Relgen Tower. From there we learned that Gods Passage is a bridge over the Mezzochaine to Pharenis. Relgen Tower seems normal, although fortified against attacks (and they'd heard children were taken). We plan to go north again.

(bateleur - spelling corrections?)

I finished another of my Christmas books this week - Day Watch by Sergey Lukyanenko and Vladimir Vasilyev. This is the second in the Night Watch series (which was a trilogy, but apparently there are now two more). I liked Day Watch, although perhaps not as much as the first one (which was called Night Watch). The series is about two sides which are sort of "good" and "evil" having a battle of magic and wits around a set of rules established to try and prevent complete war. The style is characterised by the protagonists not being the most powerful of their factions and forever trying to figure out what their bosses are actually scheming to do.

I've also replayed Recettear back up to the end of the debt (sort of official game end).

Finally, there was snow this morning.



I like snow. Particularly when I don't have to walk to work in it.

Last weekend I finished the computer game Technobabylon. It's set in about seventy years from now and involves AIs, genetics, the internet (now called Trance) and murders. I enjoyed it, I thought it had some decent puzzles and a good story. I've put a fuller review up on GameFAQs.

For the train, I have mostly been re-reading Cadfael. However, I also bought and read the newest Frances Hardinge - The Lie Tree. I always feel a little awkward about reviewing books of people I have met, but I'll give it a go. Trying not to give too many spoilers, it's set in the Victorian era (I think!) and the protangonist is a girl named Faith who wants to be a scientist, despite the expectations of society. The book opens with the family running away from some sort of scandal connected to her father's work and, as Faith learns, his obsession. It's a book about expectations, appearances, lies and murder. I really enjoyed it and it is on the longlist for this year's Guardian award.

There's been a certain amount of roleplaying in recent weeks:

• Warhammer 40K - The Atlanor party (chrisvenus, quisalan and Alistair) continued to try to track down the origins of heretical statues, whilst dealing with mutated hyenas, a dishonest port official and pirates. Now they've some scientists to track down who may or may not be related to the missing Tyranid organs.
• 100 Secrets - Season two and we're off to the East (starting with Sunset Market). The party has lost Rose and Loy and gained waif-thief Abigail (with Bat her rat) and shapechanger Erin. So far we've found some well-guarded towers, the movement of a prisoner in robes and set off on a long journey across land to find a city (seven towers?) that has chosen to remain hidden.
• Carriage 5 (bateleur's one-off set) - I played in the first of these with verlaine, chrisvenus, the_alchemist and borusa. It was surreal and very good. Unfortunately, I think that is all I can say.

bateleur and I have started watched Orphan Black. We're three episodes in - and so far, so good. No spoilers please!

Outside it is definitely looking Septemberish. Also Reeve has voted that it's getting colder as he's on the bed rather than his box.

I'll shortly be off to Northern Ireland for a visit (via Heathrow). I'll just miss the duo as they're coming home today from Cambridge. Instead I'll see them around bedtime tomorrow when I get back. I'm not particularly keen to go this time, I've had my fill of airports already this year, but it's part of my job.

The last couple of weekends have seen roleplaying sessions:

• Star Wars - This session divided into two halves both of which moved slowly because of the six-people-doing-combat issue. The first was finishing our mission from Darth Atrium (who the GM firmly named Lord Slithe to stop us calling him that) and recovering the crystal-held former Sith Emperor. Whereupon our party Sith started up a series of private mind-communicated conversations. The second half of the session was spent dealing with a religious war on a planet as we were drafted in to "help" by one side (both sides being controlled by Sith Lords). We actually got out of that one quite well - we got paid and everything.
• Warhammer 40K - This was the Vibius group of Tech Priest Roth (chrestomancy), Imperial Guard Tiberius Locke (ao_lai) and pious assassin Urlban (bateleur). They investigated a shuttle that had come down in the southern half of the planet. This involved visiting an estate of the Church run by a rather mad old lady and wandering through an underground/underwater Armada of ships that should have been in orbit. There's definitely heresy going on; the only question appears to be who to arrest/shoot first.

Over the last couple of weeks of commuting, I have re-read my first six Keys to the Kingdom books and then read Lord Sunday for the first time. I found I needed the re-reading in order to remind myself what was going on as I first read the books over several years. Overall, I enjoyed the series and felt it had a fitting ending. I did not like it as much as the Old Kingdom though which was my introduction to Garth Nix. I found Keys to the Kingdom was rather more concept-y and had some clever references in it (such as to the seven deadly sins), but I found it less engrossing as a series. That said, it's still a lovely piece of work, but it has heavy competition from his earlier series.

It's been about a month since I posted reviews of things, so this seems like a good time to catch-up.

On books: Just the one new book - Absolute Midnight, the third book in the Abarat fantasy series by Clive Barker. Very interesting, a complete turnaround from the first two books and totally incomprehensible if you haven't read them.

On films:

• Kingsman - For Christmas, my parents-in-law had bought bateleur and I a couple of cinema trips. So, on venta's recommendation we went to see this. It was very good, a James Bond spoof based on a comic book. Excellent turns from all the leads (I loved Colin Firth), some lovely action pieces and clever writing. You do have to been able cope with gore though and the pre-credits ending was slightly disappointing. However, really good overall.
• Ender's Game - I haven't read the book, so really liked the film. Nice piece of sci-fi humans vs aliens. The lead (Asa Butterfield who was also Hugo) was excellent. The special effects were great and the game playing and tactics were very good.
• Near Dark - This was the first big film directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker) in 1987. It's an American vampire Western horror film starring Adrian Pasdar (Nathan from Heroes). It was a flop on release, but gained more credit as a "cult" film afterwards. It's quite good, but works better if you haven't played Vampire the Masquerade.

On computer games:

• Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches - I've written a full review over on GameFAQs. The short version is a nicely creepy point-and-click adventure game with a good story, but easy to get stuck on.
• XCom: Enemy Unknown - A turn-based strategy game where you control the operations against an alien invasion (mainly running a squad through scenarios). It's a good piece of work with some decent enemy actions and moves. It also has some nice mechanics. However it needs a frequent save, has a very odd save file ordering and doesn't prompt the player enough about what their next step should be (or perhaps does, but only if you don't play with long gaps).

On roleplaying:

• Star Wars - Right, what happened? Someone attacked the ship we were on to steal a cryo-frozen doctor. We escaped with the doctor and got blamed for Just About Everything. So we're fugitives, we're being hunted and we're not sure what's going on. Except it involves Maraber the Hutt.
• 100 Secrets - We began in Eyestone Hill where we were attacked firstly by troops (and we now have a converted one - Estin Rafe) and then by summoned shadow monsters. We moved on, back to the Klome, the tunnels and the desert where we rescued and finally separated Ingenuity Tevis from his centipede mirror-self. As ever, the question is what to do next.

What else?

Well, I went to the Buffy quiz with verlaine, miss_newham and Ewan. Given that we did not watch all 144 episodes beforehand (and, in particular did not watch Once More With Feeling which was the double-scoring round of the six), we did respectably. I came away with a Mutant Enemy badge and was very pleased verlaine had invited me.

Last week, bateleur and Bea's friend Paladin was over for a few days. This involved chatting, board gaming, computer gaming and cheese. It was good to meet him and he was a pleasant, undemanding guest to have.

Last Friday I finally attended a performance at the Bridewell Theatre. This was a "lunchbox" performance of Romeo and Juliet (ie. 45 minutes and you can bring your own sandwiches although no-one did). I enjoyed it. They did manage to get all the main bits into the time allocated (with things like the balcony scene barely being cut). Also, they turned out to be more accurate than some of the audience believed (the girl two rows in front of me was complaining that they'd added Romeo killing Paris; I don't know the play well, but went back and checked - they hadn't, it's in the original). They also had a nice little bar and whilst I bought myself a bitter lemon it also sold alcohol (not well stocked, but all the basics). So recommended. I might post the next time something interesting comes up.

My first week of work was busy but it's over and I managed to finish the things I needed to do. It was helped along by my train reading: Flesh Wounds - Chris Brookmyre. Flesh Wounds is the third book of his detective sequence (the others are Where the Bodies are Buried and When the Devil Drives). As for the previous two, I liked the plot and I liked the continued development of Jasmine, Catherine and Glen. Also - the reveal was good if not unexpected. I don't know whether he'll write any more of these as this third book does tie up many loose ends. As a trilogy I recommend it.

It's also been a fairly busy week for me socially (well, by my standards anyway). On Monday night we have an unexpected visitor in the form of bateleur's friend Gavin. He turned up because he was travelling from Dublin to Seattle and his first flight was so late that he missed the connection. So he came for dinner and overnight before he travelled back (he works at Wizards of the Coast and stayed with us over Xmas/New Year two years ago when we visited Windsor Castle if that rings any bells for anyone). On Wednesday there was the usual The Secret World. As Alistair complained about the screenshot on Gplus, here's another with all the characters clearly in it outside Dracula's tomb.



Thursday was Writers' Triangle with the second half of an Xmas story from chrestomancy, the first half of a new story from venta and my latest chapter. Then yesterday I ran Warhammer 40K - the last part of the Itazen arc involving both parties. The group saved the planet and also saved the third Inquisitor that they didn't like very much. They saw a battle between Space Marines (Sons of Orar - I've declared Itazen as their original home planet in slight contradiction to other sources) and Chaos Space Marines (Sons of Cyclops - although raising questions about where their non-Pyskers came from) - plus a Daemon possessing a Terminator Librarian. They killed the corrupt Governor and saw two corrupted ships destroyed. There are a few outstanding issues to take forward though:

• Who corrupted a black ship and how?
• Did the Governor bring chaos from his home planet?
• What is in the history of the Sons of Orar?
• What does the holy symbol do?
• What does the corrupted black ship mean for Marcus (Alistair's character) as he travelled in it himself?

I expect the next sessions to be separate again and following different threads of these.

I've also been playing more The Longest Journey. Here's a screenshot of the evil mage's castle.



Today bateleur has gone to Cambridge for a concert being held in his sister's memory. I'm at home to look after the duo and do the school run.