Another Green World

We had such fun with the Seattle Worldcon that we’re doing it again! J will fly to Anaheim tomorrow and meet up with our friend AH, while I attend from home. Meanwhile, although I paid lots of attention to several categories of the Hugo nominations, I hadn’t given any thought at all to the guest of honor, Barbara Hambly. J, meanwhile, has read several of her books and was excited to see her name in the schedule… then I said, “hey, she’s the Guest of Honor!” Ha! We should have been reading her stuff. J has one of her novels here, but it’s the second in a series (he’d read the first in the library).

Anyway, we’ve marked up our personal schedules. I’ve got about 50 things of interest, over the course of the five days, many conflicting with each other. Fortunately, most of them will be recorded so I can watch them later. J has only marked up Thursday and Friday so far. I think he’ll be at the con by 1:30 or 2 pm tomorrow.

The Phoenix Guards, by Steven Brust. Khaavren Romances #1.

For more than 20 years, Steven Brust has been writing a very entertaining series about an assassin, Vlad Taltos, who lives in a fantasy world with two types of humans: those built like us, with lifespans like ours, and another species that’s somewhat bigger and lives for maybe three thousand years or so. The ones like us are the Easterners, who mostly live on the eastern side of the continent, and whose culture is basically Hungarian. The fancier ones are Dragaerans, on the western side of the continent. Vlad is an Easterner who lives among the Dragaerans and has several very powerful ones for his closest friends and colleagues. Brust is writing Vlad’s story in a series of 19 books, each written in a slightly different style. So far 17 have been published, and he says he’s written the final book and is at work on the next-to-final book, so it seems high time for me to reread the series.

But first, I wanted to reread the world’s historical fiction, “written” by one of my favorite characters, Paarfi of Roundwood, a Dragaeran historian publishing in Vlad’s time but writing in a style that’s both modeled after Alexandre Dumas and amusingly pretentious. Here’s a typical sentence: “[They] found themselves in a small, stuffy basement, which would have been damp, smelly, close, and dark, were it not, in fact, well-lit, which prevented it from being dark.” Ha! Even better are the dialogues, which are in a very stilted and wordy style that copies something Dumas did at one point, I suppose, because he was being paid by the word? Suffice it to say that if you’ve read the Vlad books to your child, don’t bother with these, because they probably won’t appreciate them, but as an adult you might develop a deep affection for the style.

Anyway. The Phoenix Guards was obviously inspired by The Three Musketeers, and its characters are mostly Dragaerans living a thousand years before Vlad. (Thanks to their long lifespans, at least two of them also appear in his books.) Khaavren, a young Dragaeran who’s skilled with his sword, ventures out into the world and joins the emperor’s guard, along with three others: the moody Aerich, the flamboyant gambler Tazendra, and the scheming (in a good way) Pel. The first chapters are, to be honest, rather dull, as they keep getting into fatal duels with others. Again and again. But then they set out on an adventure, and the story really picks up, as does the character development. It’s absolutely grand fun, especially the conversations with the emperor that resolve the problems at the end. If you can be patient with the attitudes and dueling at the beginning, it’s definitely worthwhile.

The Once and Future Witches, by Alix E. Harrow. This fantasy novel, set in 1893, tells the story of three sisters in an alternate United States, in which witchcraft is real and has been suppressed by men, with the struggle to revitalize it closely intertwined with the fight for women’s suffrage. It was entertaining to read, and I generally liked the characters. I think, though, that if the witchcraft described in this book could be practiced openly, it might be a bit much. I was also thinking the book should have content warnings that aren’t the usual – in this case, a difficult childbirth, a very sick baby, a kidnapped baby, and the burning of a library of rare knowledge. I also wonder if people will look back on the books of our era and comment on how many have a gratuitous trans character. Finally, the Latin phrase used in the book that matches the title uses a term meaning “evil-doer” for “witch,” when there are more neutral terms for “witch” available in Latin. These are all small quibbles, but they’re on my mind.

I have to say, I really appreciate that there’s so little on my calendar these days. It’s fantastic to be past the wedding and past their big trip to Europe. I am getting more caught up on sleep, and getting some things done that I care about, and procrastinating the rest. I spent about an hour and a half working on LL’s problem and got everything written up and sent to her. I made some progress on my book (chapter two). I read outside a while with J (it is still not smoky again, yay), and we did a simple walk to the middle school and back when it started getting too dark to read outside (and too likely for mosquitos to show up). Just pleasant little things – nothing hurried, nothing looming.

My next-door-neighbor M, who is 21, works at our Safeway, and it’s great fun when she’s working an evening shift on the same night that we’re shopping, because we can often have a reasonably full conversation while she’s ringing up our purchases, and afterwards too if there aren’t many customers. She hadn’t worked that shift for months, though, unfortunately. But tonight she was there. I showed her a wedding photo, and she told us about her recent camping experience. She’s in her third year of college, studying wildlife biology, and she loves to camp in the Idaho wilderness – this time, with a cousin, a friend, and the friend’s two dogs. They weren’t in a campground, just on their own, with two of them sleeping in a tent and the friend outside in a hammock, when suddenly the dogs started barking loudly and non-stop. M stuck her head out of the tent and saw… a cougar up in a tree, not fifteen feet away from them! She was able to get quite a few photos before the cougar came down from the tree and ran off. Then she took more photos, showing how close it had come, its paw prints right next to where their campfire had been. She said her biologist side thought this was very cool and exciting, but her human side thought maybe she was about to die…

I haven’t caught up on sleep yet, but I did sleep enough last night that I was fine for driving. I went downtown and got a library book I very much want to read (although I have two books ahead of it), and I joined J, D, and DG at their dinner before Magic. Three married men! I also walked to the game store with them from the restaurant, then back to my car. And after I got home I did a bigger walk, to the neighborhood track and back. It’s great to not have smoke! I need to appreciate it consciously while it lasts!

Back in 2017, J had some reward from work that gave him $250 credit at the Nike store, so we went there and bought him a pair of black sneakers, which cost $140. Up to that point, he’d only ever bought cheap shoes, so he was astonished that with shoes, you can sometimes get what you’ve paid for! These shoes were comfortable and lasted for years and years of regular wear.

DG and his friend C, though, have been giving him a hard time about how old they are, and they really wanted him to get some similar shoes again, because apparently these rather conservative looking, black-on-black shoes have a reputation. As Google’s AI summarizes, “The all-black Nike Air Force 1 ("Black Forces") is famously stereotyped in internet culture as the ultimate "menace" sneaker—jokingly associated with chaotic energy, illicit activity, and people who are looking for trouble.”

And – despite his MUD character I met all those years ago named Chaos – that’s very much the opposite of J’s personality, so they appreciate the humor of him wearing such shoes. He went to the Nike store with DG today and bought a pair. And with his $110 credit, still good from years ago, his new shoes only cost him $5!

The two types of animals that drivers in my neighborhood may find themselves having to stop for are deer and wild turkeys. Deer will start crossing the street wherever they're inclined to do so, but curiously, turkeys tend to cross at intersections. Today, for example, I saw a mama turkey and two chicks crossing at the corner of a street I was passing. I wonder why?

Masquerade in Lodi, by Lois Mc Master Bujold. Penric & Desdemona #..7? I'm doing my Penric reread using the omnibus books, which is why I just read this one – it was published later than the others I've already read, and is set a little earlier – before his life-changing visit to Cedonia. In this one , Penric is living and working in Lodi, the Venice-like capital of Adria. A young man has been overtaken by an insane demon, and he escapes into the night, so Penric has to find him before disaster befalls him (or others). He finds himself accompanied by a demon-dispelling Saint who is very different from the aging gentleman he'd previously met in this role – this one is only 20, and female.

One thing I especially appreciate about these stories is that once the action is resolved, we get to spend more time with the characters, working out and talking through the implications. It seems like such a responsible way to approach fiction-writing.

I had two sources of considerable consternation today (losing the bracelet my grandma gave me, which I like to wear often, and finding a factual error in the celebrated opening paragraph of a highly regarded book), so I’m going to try to focus on the many good things about today. Let’s see!

The weather was great – a bit on the warm side, but the sky was beautifully blue. The new Magic set is based on The Hobbit, and J gave me a booster pack that he got from the prerelease event. I went downtown to the library and got to eat lunch with the three of them and their friend F, and afterwards I got to drive D home. The two cats J lets go outside came promptly when I called them to come in, and I had fun rereading the beginning of the second book in the Ana & Din series. Also, although Magic went rather late, we did get to watch an episode of One Piece. And we’re all healthy, etc. etc.