#robert jordan

Usually I try to do a little write up on each portrait I paint, but I’m so done with this one I can’t bring myself to go in to much depth. Min is a character who started off with so much promise and personality in the books.

She’s got a fun sense of humour, which we see when she’s teasing Egwene about staring at Galad, and again when she’s pretending to be a vapid airhead to spite Gawyn (that scene kills me every time), but when she goes to Rand’s side, Min becomes this weepy, trembling, emotional wreck who only seems to exist to please Rand, and she just becomes insufferable. So I've tried to give her a bit of an uncertain, vulnerable expression like she's about to burst into tears because that's how I think of her. I started with a completely different face for this portrait, but when I realised Min's hair wasn't cut like a boy's anymore when she appears in this outfit, I changed it to something a bit prettier.

I’ve been listening to the @everybodyhatesrand podcast, and they discuss how Min’s character is deteriorated by her love interest instead of improved, and I strongly agree.

I’d hoped that painting her would help me love the character a little more like it did with Gawyn, but no. Sorry, Min.

Jim Butcher: Twelve Months, completed July 5

Jim Butcher is an author who, kind of like Brandon Sanderson, I was deeply into for a while but then got a little fed up with, and whose work I am now trying to resume a more balanced relationship with. I started off with the Dresden Files, of course, back when I was interested in trying all of these new urban fantasy series. I didn't mind the first book, but I found Fool Moon kind of annoying, so after that I switched to Furies of Calderon and basically alternated that series with Dresden. Which is perhaps why I didn't really get hooked on the Dresden Files series until Proven Guilty, after which I picked up the pace and got caught up around Cold Days, and I think Skin Game I read when it came out. Then I got caught up on the short stories and did a whole series reread, and I was eagerly anticipating the next ones.

The next ones were Peace Talks and Battle Ground, a linked pair in which the stakes get a lot higher, and there ends up being a literal actual war happening in Chicago. And that's kind of where he lost me for a while. In particular, he lost me with one particular character death. I mean, sure, let's have some characters die in the war. If you're going to have a war in the first place, somebody should get killed or else it just feels half-assed. But killing a long-running character and the main character's romantic interest? When the book ends with the explicit intention that the next book is going to be about an arranged marriage? That smacks of gratuitous fridging. And it pissed me off. It probably didn't help that these books came out in quick succession in 2020, when the rest of the world was bloody stressful enough.

This book was then a long time in the writing. He'd started another series, the Cinder Spires, starting with The Aeronaut's Windlass, which I was kind of meh on. As I was starting to sour on Brandon Sanderson with the Stormlight Archive and Wax & Wayne Mistborn books, with their "hard fantasy" heavily-designed magic systems, I was also starting to sour on some similar authors--including Brent Weeks's Lightbringer series and Jim Butcher's other fantasy series. (And frankly, Battle Ground had more in common with Sanderson's take on The Last Battle in A Memory of Light, qv., than a lot of other things I've read.) Other stories came out in the Dresden Files timeline, but I ignored them. The second Cinder Spires book came out, and I put it on my shelf with plans to probably read it "sometime", and I did read the novella "Warriorborn". I even had vague plans to read his Spider-Man novel. But mostly I felt he had to be punished. Having trouble writing the next book? Good, I hope you choke on it. …Okay, not really. But apparently I needed to get some distance, to let the series be its own thing.

It's reasonably common for me to be slow getting started on a series, and then get more interested at some point. It's less common for my interest to wane later. Like, perhaps, the Vorkosigan saga post-A Civil Campaign? But it does happen, and I'm still struggling with what to do with it. It may happen more with TV shows, where at some point I just begin to shrug and write it off. I never went on to Season 3 of "Battlestar Galactica", or past the whole interminable Pan plotline in "Once Upon A Time". My wife and I just kind of lost interest in "Star Trek: Discovery" after the third season, too. And we're still two episodes into Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor with no firm plans on when we might go further.

But anyway, when Twelve Months came out earlier this year, I made sure to let everyone else know they could read it first--my wife first, and then one or both of my twentysomething kids who were caught up on the series. Then I let it sit and cool its heels on my shelf for a while. But now, I guess, maybe it was time for me to give it a try and see if he was going to win me back, piss me off more, or if I'd be just "shrug". After all, it was time for a male author, not an epic fantasy and not science fiction, so why not.

So the "twelve months" was apparently going to be the timespan covered by the book. At the beginning, it's only been a few weeks since Battle Ground, and Chicago is still picking up the pieces after what is being spun as a "terrorist attack"…though the citizens know better. Harry Dresden, currently serving as the Winter Knight under the thumb of Queen Mab of Faerie, is being compelled to marry…well, I don't know how coy I can be about this, but trying to avoid too many spoilers, let's just say "a high-ranking female member of another faction". Someone he is attracted to, perhaps (the books are never shy about Harry's appreciating feminine pulchritude, sometimes unfortunately), but considers dangerous to get involved with. The twelve-month period is how long they get to date and try to come to terms with this beforehand. Harry himself is still grieving over the woman who got fridged, but people keep trying to bring him back to his responsibilities--he's trying to help out with the post-battle recovery efforts, he has a young daughter, and he gains a new apprentice. And also, a close associate is in severe trouble after they got blackmailed into trying to kill one of Queen Mab's allies; Mab is willing to just give him up, but Harry is highly resistant to the plan, and so is his fiancé…so the only way out is to try to find the blackmailer (who is actually a spirit who possessed the associate's lover) and serve them up to justice instead. (Contining coy!)

The writing of this book did, of course, largely take place during the pandemic, which has perceptible effects on its tone, though no actual pandemic is happening in the book. A lot of insularity based on the trauma of the war, particularly among those who weren't involved but have to suffer its effects anyway. The plot is lower-key in a lot of ways than some of the recent books, centered around Harry's healing and his reluctant dating. But there is also having to deal with his "close associate", and somebody who is stirring up unrest aimed at the supernatural community. In the end it all comes together pretty well, I guess. Harry has a bunch of growth, which was presumably the purpose of fridging that woman in the last book, right? To provide growth for a man? …Yeah, still just a little bitter about that. I guess I survived. But I have not yet forgiven.

2. Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson: A Memory of Light, completed July 14

Well, this is it. The end of the Wheel of Time reread. Again, one has to wonder how much is Jordan and how much Sanderson. Did Jordan plot everything out but only write part of it? If so, was it just stuff that was in The Gathering Storm (and, canonically, the epilogue) or is it more scattered around? Maybe it doesn't matter…but nonetheless most of this book and the previous one does feel more Sanderson than Jordan. I've certainly read a lot more Sanderson than when this first came out.

As mentioned before, we finally, very belatedly, get into what's actually happening in the Black Tower. And I have to say, after a promising start back in Lord of Chaos, the Black Tower really did get very short shrift for a long time. In-world, Rand neglected it shamefully, giving exceedingly lame excuses about not having the time, even as he admitted to not really trusting Mazrim Taim. And he just kept on ignoring it, even as we got more Asha'man characters. This was on his downward slope, no doubt accelerated after his crossing the streams with Moridin at Shadar Logoth, but it's still by far Rand's biggest mistake, and I will continue to judge him for it. In the meantime, Mazrim Taim was doing so good at his job that he got a medal! I mean, he became M'Hael, the only new Forsaken of this era. The Forsaken Tea Party at the beginning of this book highlights just how depleted they are now--Semirhage and Mesaana having been removed, leaving us with Moridin and Demandred, plus three women in disgrace--Cyndane (though frankly she just spends most of the book as Lanfear), Moghedien (though she at least gets to wear her own cour'souvra now), and Graendal (cursed with an ugly body now, not at all problematic). I ended up deciding not to reread the "River of Souls" novella about what Demandred has actually been (retconned to be) up to all this time in Shara, though it is clear that he also already knew Mazrim Taim, so maybe he was still involved in recruiting Taim or something.

Perhaps my biggest problem with this book is simply that it is, well, too much battle. Some battle from time to time is fine, but this book is like 75-80% battle. Starting with the battle of Caemlyn, then Lan at the Tarwin's Gap battle in Shienar, and the holding action at the border with Kandor (RIP Kandor), before they have to pull back and just fight at the Fields of Merrilor (which is perhaps the most Tolkienesque name in the entire series) in the gigantic Last Battle chapter. There's also a little bit of kind of tying off a few loose ends before the Last Battle, like the aforementioned Black Tower, Mat finally finishing his leisurely ride to Ebou Dar to smooth things over with the Seanchan, and Perrin cementing his position as Wolf Dream Guy. (I mean, I guess I get that Egwene is too busy to be Tel'aran'rhiod Woman full time now, but still low-key pissed off that Perrin just gets to do it all.) Oh, and Tam manages to teach Rand, in a few hours, how to fight one-handed, so he gets to lose that debuff, yay! Oh, and Moiraine showing up so she and Aviendha can fix Rand's flawed post-Last Battle peace treaty, especially once Mat gets the Seanchan on board.

They start out with the four Great Captains--Gareth Bryne, Agelmar Jagad, Davram Bashere, and Rodel Ituralde--and four battlefronsts (Shayol Ghul being the fourth at that point), but things start to go downhill because apparently Hessalam (a.k.a. Ugly Graendal) is Compulsioning them from Tel'aran'rhiod to be stupid, which is why everyone needs to pull back to the Fields of Merrilor to fight there. Which leads to foxhead-amulet-One-Power-immune ancient-general-battle-memory-master ta'veren boy Matrim Cauthon to take over, as we all knew he would. Except he's still being spied upon so he needs to somehow implement a fake battle plan and a real plan simultaneously on the fly. Everyone has given up using maps in favour of just looking down through gateways high in the air.

Meanwhile, Inception-style, time flows differently at different places--basically slower the closer you get to the Bore. (We have to assume that any time difference between, say, the Borderlands and Mayene, is either completely imperceptible or at least didn't ramp up until very recently.) Rand's struggle against the Dark One thus takes place very slowly, and mostly inside the Dark One's mind as he(?) and Rand compete with their visions of what the world should be like. Rand has been saying he wants to kill the Dark One, but the Dark One shows him why this would, apparently, be a bad idea. Meanwhile Nynaeve and Moiraine are basically trapped there as living power sinks for Rand, unable to channel on their own, while Alanna is there bleeding out, which I always thought was a neat plot twist--oh, snap, that's the downside of having had Warder Powers since Lord of Chaos. Though because of the binding to the Randwives, would he have some resistance to the My-Aes-Sedai-Died effect? (Clearly the real solution would have been for Rand and Nynaeve to bond each other before starting this, because double-bonded pair Androl and Pevara seem to be able to do weird things like flipping the circle control and Pevara using Androl's talent and stuff.) It's not even clear what Rand is even doing with all that power, drawn through Callandor, inside the Dark One's mind, but maybe it just keeps him from not instantly dying?

And the whole debate about whether or not to break the seals, that Egwene was so worried about last book (which turned out to be just Rand's One Weird Trick to get everybody to come to sign his treaty), ended up becoming moot. First, Rand was like, "Okay, you decide when the seals get broken. Here." Gives her the bag of seals…at which point they discover that they're just clever fakes, and Mazrim Taim turns out to have stolen the real ones. One of the things I did remember from my original read is that Logain gets to break the seals in the end anyway. Similarly, we get a whole subplot about sneaking the Horn of Valere from Tar Valon into the battle, with Faile surreptitiously bringing it to Mat, except that as a result of accident (a bubble of evil interfering with their gateway) or malice (was the gateway created by a Darkfriend?) they end up in the Blight instead. And then it turns out that there's one or more Darkfriends in their group… Luckily, as it turns out, Mat's link to the horn was severed long ago (when he was killed by Rahvin before Rand undid it with balefire) so Olver gets to blow it in the end after all…

The whole "taking down Demandred" thing…he's insistent he wants to duel with Lews Therin, but the Dragon is busy, so instead he gets some poseurs. First we get Gawyn, canonically a gifted swordsman, and using the Seanchan shadow ring things to beef himself up, but he falls and dies in Galad's arms. (I was tempted to make some kind of "he died as he lived" joke, but considering he mostly lived waffling between two sides, he died running off when he shouldn't have and getting in over his head.) Then Galad goes up against him, with a knockoff foxhead amulet to protect him from channeling, and gets beaten but survives to return to Berelain's loving arms in Mayene. Oh, and I always forget, but Logain apparently tries to take him down with the One Power but can't manage it either. Leaving Lan to finally take up the slack. Meanwhile, Lanfear/Cyndane is trying to woo Perrin, Graendal/Hessalam turns to just Compulsioning random fighters to fight (RIP Rhuarc), and Moghedien tries to spy on the Seanchan but ends up being collared. So that leaves…Moghedien, Elaida, and possibly Liandrin being collared as their "just deserts"?

The boundaries of "The Last Battle" are a little arbitrary. Because before the Big Chapter there's the smaller battles, and then The Last Battle basically covers the Merrilor Fields battle, but after that there's still stuff happening at Shayol Ghul. The amount of actual denouement in this book is…not large. There's so many plot threads that it's hard to say whose even got closed off. We get Rand's funeral, and the plot twist that some of us had predicted several books earlier about the true fate of Rand and Moridin, and "it was an ending". Perrin's finding Faile was kind of perfunctory, and the long-term future of the Seanchan is still up in the air, but I guess that's for fanfic to sort out. Plenty of people died, though only one of our major characters. It's hard to imagine how much of the world as it was is still recoverable. At least two nations were completely wiped out…but then again, Malkier had been wiped out already and it seems like they have plans to resuscitate it, so…who knows? Is this less devastating than the Trolloc Wars was? Perhaps it is, since they might have been better prepared for it.

It's a very busy book, and most of it is battle, and that gets a little wearing after a while. People dying, Trollocs being slaughtered, plans succeeding, plans failing, so stressful. And so it feels like a bit of a letdown--the series as a whole had a lot more layers than just battle, so to finish it off with 90% battle is a bit disappointing. But I am finished the reread now, and I imagine it will be a while before the urge to do so overtakes me again…

Robert Appleton: Prehistoric Clock, completed July 17

According my reading cycle specifications, this should now be time for a book by a new, untried male author. Specifically, it should be one of my "pool-table" books, and I even had a couple preselected because the authors had been mentioned recently or something, Lord of Silence by Mark Chadbourn and The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney. But, not to put too fine a point on it, those both looked like epic fantasy, and doing the Michelle West right after Towers of Midnight had already been pushing it. So maybe it was time to ignore those two and pick another…but what?

Pick from a different list, that's what. Like picking an ebook instead of a physical book. I'd never gotten wholesale into ebooks, but my wife has embraced them readily. She got a Kobo some time ago, and reads a lot on it, though not exclusively by any means. And I can see some of the advantages. Physical books can be nice and possibly better reading experiences, but they also take up space, which frankly is kind of in short supply. And with the near-total disappearance of the mass-market paperback, a.k.a. the book that's reasonably sized and costs less than $20, ebooks may be evolving to fill that niche. Locus Magazine recently discontinued their mass-market paperback bestseller list for science fiction & fantasy because it is literally taken up entirely by reprints these days. Everything's coming out in hardcover or trade paperback. It's annoying, but I guess mass-markets were always only viable because of economies of scale, and print runs are smaller, so no more mass-markets.

Anyway, at some point my wife sold a couple of books (Gate To Kandrith and Soul of Kandrith, by Nicole Luiken) to an electronic-first (or electronic-only?) imprint of Harlequin called Carina Press. Carina seems to pubish SF and fantasy with strong romantic elements, but not romances per se…maybe they're into "romantasy" these days, who knows. Anyway, she bought several books by Carina authors, possibly at a discount, and I've read a few of them. This book was one of them that I hadn't read yet, and I'd noted it at the time but never really added it to my "to-read" shelf. My wife has been keeping organized track of her ebook purchases, I just haven't been integrating them into my model of our book collection. But hey, now it popped up in my mind as a potential new author to read… The Carina Press books are a little bit annoying, because you can't add them directly to most ebook apps, or at least I wasn't having much luck with it. I'd managed to get some of them into my iPod Touch's Kobo app, but I've got a newer iPhone that has a bigger screen and it seems like it'd be a better reading experience…it took some doing but I did eventually manage to get it on there to read.

It's clear from the very beginning that this book is steampunk, since we start in 1908 with a daring mission undertaken by a woman in the British Armed Forces with not only an airship but also a diving bell. But there is also time travel involved, and we're in some kind of alternate history (as often happens, because we don't really have steampunk). Our main characters are Lord Garrett Embrey, an English nobleman whose family is in disgrace after being blamed for some colonial mishaps they may not have actually been responsible for; Verity Champlain, a woman who is both an airship pilot and an accomplished diver; and Cecil Reardon, a bereaved scientist who's trying to unlock the secrets of time travel to fix his own past. As Verity's airship returns to London and Embrey flees a rigged courtroom, Reardon's experiment sends a slice of London containing all three of them, among others, back to the Cretaceous. Possibly because of a boy in the area of effect who was dinosaur-mad and whose brain influenced their destination. There's also a group of politicians, and a woman named Agnes Polperro who is high up in those who run the Leviacrum Council, who seem to be some sort of Powers-That-Be, but mostly it's out heroes who actually get things done. Reardon tries to repair his device to get them home, and Verity and Embrey try to keep them all alive, while Polperro seems to have other aims. Oh, and most of Verity's crew is African, and I can't decide if that's good or bad, colonialist or inclusive…

There's a vestigial romance between Verity and Embrey, which runs into some trouble because Verity blames the (wrongly-conviced) Embreys for losses in her past, but eventually they overcome these problems and get together--off-screen, during a time-skip--which seems suboptimal. Dinosaur attacks happen from time to time, but apparently I don't care much about dinosaurs in books these days. Altogether I was kind of meh on it, and there are sequels but I don't think I'll bother. I supposed that I finished it, at least.

Susan R. Matthews: Prisoner of Conscience, completed July 21

It took me a while to get around to trying Susan R. Matthews, but I did eventually get around to reading An Exchange of Hostages…already several years ago by now. This is not an easy series to get into, revolving as it does around the ethics of torture and slavery and the like. But I was in the mood for another female-written SF book, and settled on this one this time.

Our main character is Andrej Koscuisko (not "Kosciusko" like the Australian mountain, apparently). I'm a little vague on some of the setting details, and maybe some of that was established in the first book that it's been too long since I read. But essentially, he's a man from an aristocratic family who became an Inquisitor--basically a torturer. In the first book, as he's preparing for his career, he discovers that he actually has a taste for it and really, really enjoys inflicting pain. But he realizes that while this makes him suited for his job, he doesn't actually like that he enjoys it, and tries to keep it in check, which he does by being the most scrupulous rule-follower that he can. The laws tell him that he can use torture against certain people in certain circumstances, and so he does. And he doesn't like it when people try following the rules less strictly, cutting corners and violating people's rights in the process.

He is served by a group of bond-involuntaries, who are criminals who are doing time in indenture, with "governors" in their brains (just like Murderbot's governor module, I guess) enforcing their behaviour. Koscuisko is also scrupulous about respecting their rights, not abusing them as he would absolutely be free to do because they have few rights. They are essentially slaves, and he doesn't consider the whole practice wrong, just something open to abuse that he tries to avoid.

After serving a stint as a medical officer (which he is also fully qualified to do) he is reassigned to work at a prison. A people called the Nurail have been rebelling against the federation government (which is called the Bench), including attacking the ship he was on, and many of them have been captured and imprisoned; the prison he's being sent to is a processing center for them. We are quickly shown that the prison is run by an unscrupulous warden who considers the Nurail less than human (he himself is of the nearly-indistinguishable but clearly superior Pyada race) and has no qualms about working them to death, concealing those deaths, skimming off money intended to benefit them, etc. And he is under the mistaken impression that he's going to be able to keep Koscuisko in the dark about what's going on.

No bones about it, Koscuisko is a deeply problematic character. He's a sadist and a torturer, in a high social position in a society where the bond-involuntaries are just a fact of life. At the prison he's assigned a bond-involuntary sex slave as well, and thinks little of "making use" of her after a long day torturing, any more than he makes his other bond-involuntaries help him out while he's performing his tortures. But in the main he respects them as people, he is devastated when one of them dies, and even tries to treat his sex slave with respect. And while he does enjoy his tortures, he is also driven by respect for the truth, and will not seek "a confession by any means necessary" if it's clearly false. (They do have actual truth drugs, but they can't use them like Bujold's fast-penta to get confessions, only to confirm previously-extracted ones.) For some readers none of the mitigating factors matter--Koscuisko is a torturer and a rapist, end of story, and that's their right. I see him as a flawed-but-trying character in an exceedingly flawed society, trying to do what's right, and repeatedly self-flagellating (not literally, in this case) whenever he does wrong--like when he inflicts pain or death needlessly, unintentionally, or through carelessness. He's got principles. Is he going to end up leading some kind of revolutionary overthrow of the system? I wouldn't necessarily count on it, but I wouldn't rule it out either.

There are a few more books in the series, though I only have one more at the moment, as well as the unrelated novel Avalanche Soldier by the same author. So far I'm sold and will keep on.

Carrie Vaughn: Kitty Raises Hell, completed July 24

Time for another female-author book, not another science fiction and I wasn't quite ready for another epic fantasy yet, so it was probably time for another urban fantasy. Without any other predisposition in effect, I usually try to cycle back to the one I last read least recently, which in this case was Carrie Vaughn.

One of the early urban fantasy books I ever read (from the more recent urban fantasy wave, anyway, not counting earlier Charles de Lint, Tanya Huff, etc.) was Kitty And The Midnight Hour, from the library. The series focuses on the late-night radio talk-show host Kitty Norville, who is also a werewolf, and who eventually went public about it. I was kind of lukewarm on it, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, I ended up sharing a table with her and some other writers at the banquet at World Fantasy Convention in Calgary so I made a point of seeking out more in the series. I wasn't as keen on the last one, where Kitty went to Las Vegas, but it wasn't enough to drive me off the series entirely, so here I am.

In the Las Vegas book, she and her now-husband (because of course there was a Vegas wedding, why wouldn't there be) incurred the enmity of a cultish group who put a curse on them. In this book the curse shows up as some kind of mysterious invisible creature who keeps setting things (and people) on fire. But they have to deal with it back in Denver, where they have allies: Kitty's pack, of which she is Alpha but only by a slender margin; Rick, local vampire head honcho; and some new characters, including the hosts of a ghost-hunting reality show currently filming in Denver and the brother of a dead packmate looking for answers. Supposedly there's also a haunted-house investigation with the reality show people, but that is kind of overshadowed by the demon-thing stalking them, which is probably fine. Complications include a mysterious new vampire calling himself Roman who claims to be able fix their problem if he's just given free access to Denver, which Rick is not keen on, and, initially, the aforementioned packmate's brother is meddling as well. All in all, I did enjoy it slightly better than the Vegas one.

The next book looks like it's going to be another reality-show-based thing, which is like, ugh, reality TV. Closest I ever got to reality TV was Mythbusters and the occasional game show, so I never really understood the appeal, particularly having heard how heavily scripted this "reality" is. But whatever, I'll probably read it at some point.

Terry Pratchett: Thud, completed July 29

Before I start my next big series-oriented reread, it's time for some of my interstitial rereads. For a while now I've been spacing out the series rereads with some other reread slots--my slower Discworld reread, rereading some old Star Trek novels to see if they hold up (mostly they don't), just random standalone rereads, and more recently Dick Francis books in publication order. But apparently I actually weeded some of those old Star Trek books a while ago and now I'm contemplating phasing out that slot entirely, so I don't know. Maybe three slots is enough? If so, then it'll basically just be this one Terry Pratchett book before the next series, since I'd decided to do the other two books in the middle of Wheel of Time.

Thud is a City Guard subseries book, featuring Vimes and his cohorts. Like many of the later Vimes books, I find it less enjoyable because it's so much about politics. Jingo and The Fifth Elephant suffered a bit from this too. And, I mean, I know you can't easily just have a book without politics in it anywhere. I'm not like "Pratchett didn't used to be so WOKE". I'm like, ugh, the plot's all about how to deal with racial tensions between two groups being stirred up by hard-liners. If I wanted that, I could read about current events. Can't we go back to Moist von Lipwig? I mean, The Fifth Elephant was one of two Uberwald books that came out one after the other, and I always vastly preferred the Witches book, Carpe Jugulum. I imagine this makes me a deeply unserious person. Or maybe I'm just making inflammatory statements designed to stir up engagement, did you ever think of that? (Oh, wait, this is Tumblr.) Or it's like…when there's a Star Trek episode and it's about Klingons. It's just Klingons, it's not something new and interesting.

Anyway, we've been dealing with dwarf-troll tensions since at least Men At Arms, possibly longer, and there's the anniversary of a big battle (or set of extremely similar battles) between dwarves and trolls coming up, and "deep dwarves" who have a bunch of extremely dismissive views about dwarves who, for example, grow food, see sunlight, are openly female, talk to other races, or show other signs of corrupting influences. Captain Carrot, an extremely tall person who is genetically a human but raised by dwarves, is of course highly suspect to them, and in this book he's working with a new recruit, a vampire named Sally (short for Salacia) who may or may not be a ringer from Uberwald. I don't remember if Sally is a continuing character, but then there's only one more Vimes book left in the series in any case. (There's also a weird subplot about Nobby having a fabulous hot stripper girlfriend that doesn't really go anywhere but I guess it dovetails with Angua having issues working with a vampire.)

Somewhat more fun is the fact that Vimes now has a young son, and has made a promise (to himself, mostly) that he must be present at precisely 6:00 PM every day to read to him from that work of deathless art (now sold separately!), Where's My Cow?. Frankly I think he's giving himself issues about having to be there precisely on time, but I guess he knows himself well enough to know he can't cut himself an inch of slack or he'll take a mile.

The book is really about religious fundamentalism, it seems, especially when it overlaps with the pick-and-choose method of revisionism. And apparently ancient dwarves had extremely advanced technology…not sure if that makes sense, but whatever. Vimes basically saves the day again, despite dark forces trying to manipulate him into sabotaging it beyond repair. It's got good bits, but I'm not sure it hangs together if I think about it too hard. Ah, well.

I really enjoyed the Human Errors book by Nathan Lents that I got from the library, covering the many flaws in the human body. It starts with the basics--the blood vessels in front of the retina, the choking hazard of the combined breathing and feeding apparatus--but actually gets pretty sophisticated. The author is an actual molecular biologist, so he's got the depth of knowledge to do tribute to topics like how broken human reproduction is, or the brain, and devotes a whole chapter to problems with the immune system before moving on to things like cognitive biases. Highly recommended, particularly if you're still waffling on whether "Intelligent Design" is plausible or not.

For my birthday I received my long-awaited copy of Jessie Peterson's How To Create A Language, which is not the first conlang book I've read by any means, though I've never gotten very far into actually trying to make one. I have of course read her husband David's book and one or two others. This book is, interestingly, laid out as an actual textbook for a conlang course, which I find an interesting concept. Of course, people can create conlangs for a number of reasons--not just for science fiction and fantasy TV shows, but attempts to make practical languages like Esperanto--but they're mostly considered pretty nonserious. Peterson's book covers a lot of the basics so it's practically just a good introductory guide to linguistics as well. She starts with a lot about the phonetics and phonologic of the language--I'm not even into the grammar parts yet. As I go I am reminded yet again of how daunting a conlang project actually is, which is why I've never gotten very far with one. There's too many possibilities and I can never settle on them. I guess maybe I should see if there's a NaConLangMo out there somewhere, because NaNoWriMo certainly helped me get over the hump with novel writing…though 50,000 words in a month is probably ambituous in this case.