Lathany

Last week I finished Too Like the Lightning: Book One of Terra Ignota by Ada Palmer. It was the author's debut novel so, needless to say I hadn't come across her before. It had received a Hugo nomination and various good reviews so I was expecting to enjoy it. Instead I was disappointed as I felt it had a number of flaws. Firstly - it introduced too many characters too quickly. I was barely keeping track of who was who, let alone finding the time to care about them. Which brings me to point two - I didn't really care about any of them by the end. Granted, the protagonist is supposed to be a git (as they tell you, themselves, repeatedly) but I felt I should have cared about someone, somewhere in it. Third up - the book turns out to be about the twenty - or maybe fifty - most important people in the world. However, it explains that they are important by constantly telling you this rather than showing them as important. And onto the fourth (mild spoilers, but I'll try not to be too specific) - the whole brothel scene. This felt very much something the author was desperate to include, but left me feeling that it ruined the careful construction of politics up to that point (although, perhaps that was intended). Finally(!) the book doesn't conclude, it stops. Yes, I know it's the first of a series, but I feel it should have been somewhat self-contained and answered at least one of the threads it began in its first couple of chapters.

Having piled on the criticism, it did have some good points. There are some nice ideas in there and one or two characters that might have promise if they weren't struggling for stage space against forty-eight or so others. I remember someone once telling me that the rule of thumb with authors is that once they've written a million words, they'll be ready to write their best work. I feel this author is still making her way through her million words and maybe I should come back in a few books' time.

Last weekend, Alistair started the rerun of The Magnificent Sven which he originally ran last year in Derbyshire. The players this time are me, Dom, Martin and Leon. I haven't seen Leon for ages - possibly twenty years - and it was really good to meet him again. I've been asked not to say anything about the game until we're done (another two sessions, probably) - but it's going well so far (and it's Warhammer, although not 40K).

This week, I'm on leave. So this means glitter tattoos. I've done two: moon and stars.



And also a dreamcatcher.



Leave also means a fair amount of FFXIV, a bit of housework, a certain amount of washing, an outing planned with Bea tomorrow and some new cooking. Or, to put it another way, I made gnocchi for the first time yesterday. I can't say that they had any artistic merit (I really couldn't get them to look like anything other than blobs, let alone like their picture), but they did taste nice - so I may try again.

This is for half-term.



I had a lot of trouble photographing it.

Hopefully this will survive on my leg for this afternoon. I decided to mix the glitters more as this worked well for Bea.



It's Elle and Andy's wedding celebration and I hope to get a set of decent photos.

Having finished the main work on my report, I decided to celebrate with another go at a glitter tattoo.



I quite like this one, but don't think silver is a great choice for a pale skin. Or, at least, not unless it's surrounded with other glitter.

The other thing we finished this weekend was season one of Jessica Jones. It's another Marvel Universe production and it is quite well done. Both Krysten Ritter (as the title character) and David Tennant as her adversary are excellent. However, there's a really unlikely coincidence in there and the sex depicted in the first few episodes seems rather endless and unrealistic. Overall though, recommended.

Wednesday started with another morning walk, this time up the steps behind the house and onto the path there. bateleur came with me.



That afternoon was the Star Wars: Con Wars game. Eva (myself) who was a medic, Gannics (shadowjon) who was a retired soldier, Rin (chrisvenus) a (former) Padawan and Kal (davefish) a mining engineer were passengers on a shuttle that crashed into the Hydra 4 station in the middle of a local war. There were three factions - the bling gang, the war droids and teenagers and the Corellian (Republic) forces. We initially allied with the last of the three only - of course - to discover that they were actually working for a slave trader and looking to defect to the Empire. Over the rest of the game we determined that the bling gang was a pirate crew known as The Red Claw and the droids/teenagers group was the Free Sapients League. We spoke to the league secretly and agreed to help them free the slaves on the station and generally take out the other two factions. There then followed a certain amount of covert fighting including Kal taking control of various gunnery stations, crit failing to drop a flash bang during a night operation in pirate territory and then stealing their warshuttle before realising that no-one had pilot and then having to default it from engineering (fortunately this worked). Gannics was generally on sniper duty and Rin was doing the quiet assassin thing (I mostly stayed back at base, but did covertly help the astrodroid seize the central building). In the end we got the slaves out, took down the bad guys and escaped with the league before the Empire landed.

Wednesday dinner was Man vs Food burgers from davefish followed by the remains of the ice cream.

Thursday saw us down to seven when davefish and Alistair departed and then down to six when shadowjon left. It was my second game - an attempt at running Lockwood & Co. The agency was Dalton and Clay and the agents Claire (lanfykins) and Jimmy (chrisvenus) were accompanied by an adult supervisor across two different cases. The team successfully banished Visitors and the players felt it was in the spirit of the books - I was very pleased.

Thursday dinner was baked potatoes and leftovers. My tattoo was still in very good shape (the photo below is an early one, but it still looks very much like this).



Friday morning the remaining six of us did the usual pack-up, check, mop up and exit. Fortunately the weather was rather better for driving and the roads started off much clearer. We finally got home to be welcomed by an extremely vocal puss.