Intersection Logs

If anyone is interested, today's Kindle Big Deal on Amazon UK is a bunch of second-tier Georgette Heyer novels for 99p each. (Well, maybe A Civil Campaign is a cut above second-tier. And I have a soft spot for Sylvester, because writer-heroine.)

Posy by ellarien on deviantART


The Shrooms are Coming by ellarien on deviantART

No, I'm not doing NaNo this year, though it's a wrench to admit it. I've barely had time even to think about it properly the last couple of months, and the art is still soaking up most of the available creative energy.

Monument by ellarien on deviantART

I just joined DeviantArt. Not that I really feel entitled to call myself an artist when the computer does most of the work, but lately I've been having a lot of fun generating fractal imagery, and I wanted somewhere to share it that's less grudgingly accepting of such things than Flickr.




Purple Mountains by ellarien on deviantART

Kepler Mission Manager Update: K2 Has Been Approved! | NASA

This is much happier news than my last Kepler post -- and a nice bit of scientific make-do-and-mend. With only two reaction wheels the spacecraft can't point at its original target field with enough stability to be useful, but the engineers figured out that they could stably point it at the ecliptic instead.

Just read:

Protector, by C.J. Cherryh, the second volume of the fifth Foreigner trilogy. Which I devoured in two days when I really should have been doing other things, but was left oddly unsatisfied by. We do get a bit of offstage station politics retconned in along with the Atevi politics (and ( spoiler ) and Cajeiri continues to be engaging.

Arms-Commander, by L. J. Modessit, which is the latest so far (2010) in the Recluce series, going back to the Angels of Westwind and their attempts to deal with the local politics after being stranded in Candor by a wrecked spaceship. Less onomatopoeia than in earlier volumes, and a female protagonist for a change, but way too many ellipses. According to the author's website there will be at least one more Recluce novel at some stage. It must be getting hard to fit them into the existing history, by now.

Reading now: Spellwright, by Blake Charlton. Unusual magic system, enjoyable so far. I might have guessed that the author wrote it as a medical student from the anatomical references.

I just finished a reread of The Eye of the World, the first volume in the epic Wheel of Time series. It strikes me that, in pacing at least, it's a miniature version of the whole series: a promising beginning, a saggy, baggy, tangled middle that goes on far too long, and an epic and rather awesome confrontation at the end.

I think I'll wait a little while before I plunge into the next volume.

I just finished reading A Memory of Light. At first I was reading a chapter or two at bedtime, but the last couple of days the story gripped me and wouldn't let go; I've been reading most of the day. And now, after twenty-three years and fourteen fat books, the story is done.

I'm exhausted. And sad, and satisfied. It brought me to the edge of tears more than once, in the last few chapters. For all the flaws of the series, I don't think I'll ever read another story quite like it. Thank you, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Thank you.

What I'm currently reading:

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss -- started yesterday. The first page is dire (as I commented on G+, I suppose a book as long and eagerly awaited as this can get away with starting with the badly-written boredom of a secondary character), but it gets better quickly. That's my big fat bedside book; for portable reading I just started Danse de la Folie by Sherwood Smith, which is a fun Heyer-esque Regency and was on e-book special today. I'm already nearly a third of the way through, and vastly diverted.

Just finished: In the Lion's Mouth by Michael Flynn, sequel to Up Jim River, which itself was a sequel to The January Dancer, but I hesitate to call them a series, somehow -- the tone doesn't quite match from one to the next, and while the first was very much in usual Flynn mode of dysfunctional people being Doomed, the sequel was less so. This one was back to the doom, though, and ended in a severely cliffhung fashion.

What I'll read next: considering the size of the Rothfuss, maybe A Memory of Light will be here before I finish it?