THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY is the debut novel from another TooMUSH alumni, Genevieve Cogman, so I was predisposed to like it. OTOH, it’s a Library Story, and Library Stories are never…quite…what I want them to be. I don’t even know what I want them to be, save that I haven’t encountered it yet, so I was also moderately trepidatious. As it turns out, THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY is pretty splendid. In a nutshell, the Librarians are in search of unique books, ones that only appear in one alternate universe, and are helping…
catch-up post
Young Indiana and I went to see Home, which was a sweet little film. It’s also the first animated film I can think of since Prince of Egypt where white people were only incidental background characters instead of the homogeny, which was great. Today is Mother’s Day in Ireland. I have been greeted with a lie-in, a homemade card, and waffles with strawberries, which is a pretty nice start to the day. I was gonna go see Insurgent, except it doesn’t start until next week. Darn it. Maybe I can…
Small Gods
I was not a fan of Terry Pratchett. I read several of his very early Discworld books when I was still in high school, probably around 1988. The fact that I read *several* is more an indication of how much I read than how much I liked them, but I actually stopped reading them before I ran out of them to read, which *was* an indication of my dislike. It wasn’t Pratchett in particular; I eventually realised I didn’t care for most satire in prose form. In 1996 I was…
whoosh!
MAGIC & MANNERS is off to the editor. I’ve lined up a copy editor, the cover artist is working on the cover art (as she can; poor woman broke her arm!), and I’ve got a couple people I need to talk to about book layout. I also need…to think about what I’m doing with ISBNs, and I need to grit my teeth and delve into the Ingrams system, as I don’t see myself suddenly being flush enough with cash to hire someone to deal with that for me, much as…
Recent Reads: Hurricane Fever
Tobias Buckell’s terrific ARCTIC RISING was one of my favourite books the year I read it (2012, looks like), for its near-future SF climate change worldbuilding and its heavy focus on the Arctic, which is obviously near and dear to my heart. I liked pretty well everything about it–setting, queer POC female lead, slam-bam adventure plot–which meant that HURRICANE FEVER, set in the Caribbean, had a big hill to tackle as its sequel. It didn’t quite succeed, in that I didn’t love it as much as I did ARCTIC RISING,…