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Archive for the ‘Unfinished series’ Category

Marie Brennan–A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir of Lady Trent (The Lady Trent Memoirs, 1) (2013) [audiobook 2013–Kate Reading]

Posted in Audiobooks, Death, Dragons, Fantasy, Feminism, Kate Reading, Marie Brennan, Rhys Davies, Sci-fi, Science, Sexism, Threats, Todd Lockwood, Unfinished series, Violence on November 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 2021] A Natural History of Dragons

This book sounded interesting. I knew nothing about it (aside from the title) and had no idea it would unfold the way it did.

Turns out that Kate Reading, whom I didn’t know, was an outstanding reader. She did male voices so compellingly that I forgot it was just one reader.

The book is a memoir.  The book feels like a Victorian novel (where a woman is not allowed to have the kind of adventures she ultimately does).  Reading reads Lady Trent in a kind of slow, deliberate, older, upper class lady voice.  It felt a wee bit slow at first, although I couldn’t imagine her doing it any other way.

Lady Isabella Tent is the leading scholar on dragons.  Indeed, the book starts:

All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth into the clear light of modern science.

Each chapter even has an olde-fashioned style in which the chapter heading summarizes what’s to be found within.  Lady Trent is an old woman now, finished with the excitement of her life and all that she has accomplished and she has decided that rather than answering all of the letters she gets all the time, that she would set the record straight and write her memoirs.

She starts from her early childhood and her tone is at one approving and occasionally disbelieving in the kind of person she was.

When Lady Trent was young Isabella, she had a unladylike desire to be scientific.  When she first captured a “sparkling” (this book is written as if we would know what she’s talking about since it is a memoir of a famous person’s exploits.  If you don’t know what a sparkling is, well, where have you been?).

Her mother was horrified by her behavior.  I mean what kind of girl dissects a bird to see how it can fly?  A scientific genius, that’s what kind. (more…)

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Chris Grine–Secrets of Camp Whatever : Volume 1 (2021)

Posted in Chefs, Children's Books, Chris Grine, Funny (ha ha), Goblins, Graphic Novel, Oni Press, Poo, Summer Camp, Supernatural, Superstitions, Unfinished series, Vampires, YA Books on October 31, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: August 2021] Secrets of Camp Whatever

I’m not sure who brought this book home, my wife or my daughter, but I was pretty delighted to read it.

Two kids are heading to the town of Nowhere with their parents. They are moving into their father’s mother’s old house on the outskirts of town.  It’s a small town and when they pull into the local diner, the waitress tells them to turn around and go back home… that place is haunted.  But the local museum owner, Henry Person, tells them not to believe that nonsense.

He says that Nowhere is known for unusual things–monsters in the lakes, elves in the forest, even a bigfoot sighting.  But the fog is so thick no one can confirm anything.

Willow is going to summer camp and is not particularly pleased about it.  Her younger brother Gryphon is not going to camp, but he really wants to.  Where’s the justice?  When their mother hears about the fog and the creepiness around the camp she wonders whether they should even send WIllow.

But the kids’ dad when to Camp … Whatever like a million years ago and he is pretty excited for Willow to go.  He can’t wait for her to hear all about the camp at the opening campfire.  Even if a kid did go missing the year he was there… and was never heard from again.

But Mr Person says the camp hired a new camp director … Clarence Tooter, a big game hunter.  He’ll keep the place safe.

A nice touch is that Willow uses a hearing aid, but it’s not a big deal to the story.    Except that Mr Tooter believes she is deaf and so he yells at here whenever he sees her.  And that sign language is very important to the story (although the reader doesn’t need to know it). (more…)

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Terry Pratchett–Lords and Ladies (1991) [Discworld #14] [Witches #4]

Posted in Casanunda, Death, Discworld, Elves, Fairy Tales, Funny (ha ha), Granny Weatherwax, Greebo, King Verence, Magic, Magrat Garlick, Mustrum Ridcully, Nanny Ogg, Terry Pratchett, The Dean, The Librarian, Unfinished series, Violence, Voodoo on October 11, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: Fall 2021] Lords and Ladies

The Discworld Witches are back for another story.  (This is the fourth Witches story which puts them on equal footing with Rincewind at this point).

I have been reading all of the Discworld stories in order (obviously?) and I wasn’t looking forward to this one because of the lousy cover.  I mean, look at that.

But this book turns out to be great.  In addition to the enjoyable story, Sir Terry sets the record straight on elves.  They are nasty.  They are wicked.  They are not cute, they are cruel.  And they don’t appear in Discworld because generations ago they were locked out

The only way they can get back in is via the Dancers, a ring of magnetized iron stones.  Or technically they can’t get in there because the iron stones keep the elves away–elves can’t abide iron.  But when the time is right the worlds get close and the elves try to see if they can somehow get someone to magic away the iron.

And it turns out this is a time of convergence.  Crop circles begin appearing around Lancre and that can only mean that the universe of Elves is nearby.

So what is wrong with elves exactly?  They enter the minds of humans using glamour, to try to make them see the world differently.  Yes, Witches enter into human and animal minds, but only temporarily.

Here’s what they say about elves.  And what those words mean.

  • Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
  • Elves are marvelous.  They cause marvels.
  • Elves are fantastic.  They create fantasies.
  • Elves are glamourous.  They project glamour.
  • Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
  • Elves are terrific.  They beget terror
  • No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.

Granny and Nanny can remember the stories about the elves.  But Magrat is too young, to sweet to believe that elves are bad.  She would believe that the elves are magical and fantastic in a good way.  She would not understand why they must be kept out.

And so Granny and Nanny do not tell her.  (more…)

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Terry Pratchett–Small Gods (1992) [Discworld #13]

Posted in Brother Brutha, Camels, Death, Discworld, Funny (ha ha), Gods, Magic, Om, Philosophy, Religion, Terry Pratchett, Unfinished series, Violence on October 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: Fall 2021] Small Gods

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Small Gods satirizes religion.  On the Disc, it is common understanding that gods exist because people believe in them.  They come into existence when someone begins to believe and they grow more powerful the more people believe.  But some gods have few followers and they are known as the small gods.

One such god is Om.  Om once had a huge following, there was even a town named after him, Omnia.  But over the years, people started fearing the religious leaders who enforced the “rules of Om” or out of habit.

Om has been depicted in statues as a massive scary creature.  But when Om decided to manifest himself this time, he came as a turtle.

There’s a fascinating side bit about how eagles are the only animals that can kill turtles.  They bring a turtle very high in the air and drop it on a rock.  The eagle plagues Om throughout the book. (more…)

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Terry Pratchett–Witches Abroad (1991) [Discworld #12] [Witches #3]

Posted in Casanunda, Death, Discworld, Emberella, Erzulie Gogol, Fairy Tales, Funny (ha ha), Granny Weatherwax, Greebo, Magic, Magrat Garlick, Nanny Ogg, Terry Pratchett, Unfinished series, Voodoo on October 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: October 2021] Witches Abroad

Our trio of Witches is back.  And they’re about to do something they never imagined.  They are going to “forn parts.”

A local older witch (yes, older than Granny and Nanny) Desiderata Hollow dies and she sends Magrat her wand.  Granny and Nanny are more than a little miffed that she gave it to Magrat.  I mean, really.  Not that Granny or Nanny needs a wand or wants a wand or wants anything to do with a wand, or anything.  But still.

Getting the wand means that Magrat is now the Fairy Godmother to a girl named Emberella.  But although she gave the wand, she also gave no instructions whatsoever.  So Magrat really doesn’t know what to do.  The only note that she gave to Magrat included the important information to not let Granny or Nanny get involved.  Which Granny and Nanny take to mean that they should really take over the whole proceedings.

But Magrat is determined to do this right.  She wields that wand with authority and turns anything she waves it at into a pumpkin (she can’t do anything else with it).

As fairy godmother, Magrat’s one duty is to ensure that Emberella does not marry the Duke (who has a seriously questionable past).

Everyone knows that Fairy Godmothers are supposed to get young girls to marry Princes or Dukes.  So they are working against Fairy Tales.

But before they can even deal with Emberella, they need to cross the disc to Genua where Emberella lives.  This leads to a road-movie type story where the three naive travellers go to all manner of new places.

Nanny Ogg, who fancies herself a wise traveller also seems to know a lot of forn languages (or at least she knows a lot of rude words in other languages).  The Witches have some very amusing adventures.  There’s a Running of the Bulls type event which they find themselves right in the middle of, there’s a cave that they escape from in a giant pumpkin (thanks Magrat), and there’s a village where a giant house falls on Nanny Ogg to the delight of the locals.  Nanny is fine because the house fell on her willow-enhanced hat.

It turns out that the Duke is actually a puppet.  And the woman behind the diabolical plan to have Emberella marry the Duke is Lilith Weatherwax–Granny’s sister.  Nanny knows of Lilith because they grew up together, but no one else knew she had a sister.

Lilith has been using the power of mirrors to create more and more magic.  And she is quite powerful. She has been using the power of stories to impact the Witches travels and wants to use the Cinderella story to change the fates of Emberella and by extension, all of Genua.

Granny and Nanny are a little out of their element here (not that they are weak, they are just in an unfamiliar situation) and wind up getting help from a local witch.  Well, she doesn’t call herself a witch, but as the women talk they see that they have a lot in common.  Erzulie Gogol is a voodoo witch who lives in a swamp and has a zombie servant named Baron Saturday.  Pratchett has some good fun with stereotypes of the swamp–especially Granny not understanding alligators and the like.

Granny hypnotizes Magrat into attending the ball as if she were Emberella.  Magrat quite enjoys the experience. As does Greebo who is turned into a human.  Since Greebo is all impulse, he makes for a rakish human (who, unfortunately, doesn’t understand how his hands and arms work).

Another great rakish character introduced here is the dwarf Casanunda: “World’s 2nd Greatest Lover, swordsman, liar, soldier of fortune, stepladder repairer.”  Casanunda wins over women with his remarkably romantic courtship practices.   He is quite taken with Nanny Ogg who wouldn’t know romance if she sat on it.  He is fascinated that nothing he does impacts her an he finds her irresistible.

This book is a lot of fun because Pratchett is out and about, playing with and massaging sterotypes and just generally having a good time all over the Disc. And of course, it’s always fun seeing Granny and Nanny fight with each other even when they agree with each other.

Incidentally, Magrat and Verence were hot and heavy (well, luck warm and mildly chunky) at the end of the previous book, but things seem a little cooled down between them.  Witches aren’t supposed to marry, so who knows what will happen there….

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Terry Pratchett–Reaper Man (1991) [Discworld #11] [Death #2]

Posted in Alfred, Binky, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Death, Discworld, Funny (ha ha), Magic, Mort, Mustrum Ridcully, Terry Pratchett, The Dean, The Librarian, Unfinished series, Vampires, Wizards, Ysabell, Zombies on October 5, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: October 2021] Reaper Man

This book opens unlike any other, with an amorphous group of beings called The Auditors of Reality.  (Well, it opens with a bit about Morris Dancing, which is pretty funny).  The Auditors have no individual personalities (in fact, when One says I (“I hate them”) it is immediately dispatched so a more neutral Auditor can take its place.

The Auditors want to make sure that everything is following the Rules. And what isn’t following the Rules?  Well, Death isn’t following the rules.  Death is developing a personality.  And that cannot happen.  So they fire him.  Yes indeed.

He goes off on his own trying to figure things out.  He winds up getting a job as a farm hand (his reaping skills are unparalleled).  The woman he works for is quite suspicious of him (and everyone in town is quite suspicious of her). Death is caught off guard and when she asks his name he comes up with unsuspicious name of Bill Door.

The woman is Miss Fitworth.  She is an elderly woman (rumored to have a large chest with a lot of money in it).  She had a fiancé who went on a business trip and never came back.  Rumor is that he left her, but she doesn’t believe it.

This is all well and good, but without Death, dead humans don’t know what to do–no one is there to guide them to the afterlife.  So they kind of just keep piling up.  Poltergeists run amok.  And then there is aged Wizard Windle Poons.  He was really looking forward to reincarnation.  But after he died, his spirit just returned to his body.  Of course, since he is dead, he doesn’t have any concern with old age–his sight and strength are better than they have been in years.  But everyone is more than a little freaked out by him. (more…)

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Terry Pratchett–Moving Pictures (1990) [Discworld #10]

Posted in Camels, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Death, Detritus, Discworld, Film & TV, Funny (ha ha), Gaspode the Wonder Dog, Laddie, Magic, Mustrum Ridcully, Philosophy, Terry Pratchett, The Dean, Theda "Ginger" Withel, Unfinished series, Victor Tugelbend on September 30, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: September 2021] Moving Pictures

For his tenth Discworld novel, Terry Pratchett decided to have fun with Hollywood.  Indeed, it is set on a hill called Holy Wood–an abandoned location that seems to suddenly have a magnetic attraction for Disc inhabitants.

This book also introduces Mustrum Ridcully as the new Archchancellor of Unseen University.  Ridcully will remain Archchancellor for the rest of the novels.  He proves to be unkillable (at least in practice) because he is unlike any Wizard around.  He had left the University nearly four decades earlier having become a Seventh Level Wizard at the young age of twenty-seven.  He left to look after his family’s land.  Over the last forty years he has become quite a fan of the outdoors, of exercise, of rising early and basically everything else that Wizards find revolting.  He loves hunting, owns several crossbows and is very hard to surprise–hence, no one has been able to usurp him as Archchancellor. (more…)

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Terry Pratchett–Pyramids (1989) [Discworld #7]

Posted in Camels, Death, Discworld, Egyptology, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Magic, Philosophy, Ptraci, Teppic, Terry Pratchett, Unfinished series on September 17, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: September 2021] Pyramids

After six books tackling roughly the same geographical area, Pratchett sets out to “Egypt” for Pyramids.  “Egypt” in this case is the wonderfully named Djelibeybi.

Djelibeybi is going broke.  They make pyramids for each of their Pharoahs.  And each pyramid gets bigger and more impressive.  But where does the money come from when the Pharoah is dead?

Teppic (short for Pteppicymon XXVIII), left Djelibeybi and is studying at the Assassin’s Guild in Ankh-Morpork.  He’s not the best assassin but he has learned a lot (and has survived).  Indeed, he manages to pass his final exam (meaning he survived).  But after he does so he has a psychic realization that his father the Pharoah has died and he must go home and take over the throne.

Dios is the high priest of Djelibeybi.  He is the actual ruler of the country.  He makes all of the rules and decisions saying that everything he wants is “tradition” etc.  The Pjaroahs tend to nod and go along with it (Dios is like 200 years old).  Dios is intent upon making Pteppicymon XXVII’s Pyramid the biggest the country has ever seen. (more…)

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Terry Pratchett–Wyrd Sisters (1988) [Discworld #6] [Witches #2]

Posted in Death, Discworld, Eskarina Smith, Funny (ha ha), Granny Weatherwax, Greebo, King Verence, Magic, Magrat Garlick, Nanny Ogg, Terry Pratchett, Unfinished series, William Shakespeare, Wizards, Wizards on September 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: Summer 2021] Wyrd Sisters

This story reintroduces everyone to Granny Weatherwax.  It also introduces two other beloved characters: Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick the other two witches in the region.  It took six books to bring about Nanny Ogg!

This book owes a debt of plot to MacBeth.  It even begins with the familiar opening scene.  Three witches stand around a bubbling cauldron and one asks portentously, “When shall we three meet again.”  And another, after a lengthy pause says.  “I can do next Tuesday.”

The three witches are Granny Weatherwax, the scary, stiff, witch who takes no guff.  There’s Nanny Ogg, the smiling, raunchy, seemingly good natured witch who also takes no guff.  She has a brood of countess children and grandchildren and she loves them all (except the young girls who marry her sons).  She also has the most evil cat in the world (Greebo, whom she thinks is a sweetiepie).   And then comes Magrat Garlick, the youngest witch who is really into occult symbols and books and trinkets.  The other two think this is a load of tosh and know that witch magic is all about headology. (more…)

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Terry Pratchett–Sourcery (1988) [Discworld #5] [Rincewind #3]

Posted in Coin, Conina, Death, Discworld, Funny (ha ha), Lord Vetinari, Magic, Rincewind, Terry Pratchett, The Librarian, The Luggage, Unfinished series, Wizards, Wizards on September 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: Summer 2021] Sourcery

This story follows up on some of the ideas in Equal Rites.  In that books we learned that the eight son of an eighth son was destined to be a Wizard.  But the eighth son of a Wizard–which shouldn’t happen since Wizards don’t have relations.

But in this story, an excommunicated Wizard (he DID have relations) had a eighth son whom he named Coin.  He wanted to take revenge on the Wizarding world because of how they treated him and what better revenge than to create a Sourcerer.  A Sourcerer generates power rather than using it.

A few years later, Coin goes to Unseen University and overthrows the current Archchancellor Wayzygoose.  (The Archchancellor role becomes more stable in a few books, which is what I remembered).  Coin, being a strong presence and the kind of person who can Set Things Right, is embraced by the Wizards (who are pretty susceptible to this sort of thing).  It turns out that Rincewind (and his Luggage) as well as The Librarian (who is a Wizard that was tuned into an orangutan and does not want to be turned back) were not at the University when this all went down.  So they’re aware that something is suspicious about Coin. (more…)

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