Recent reading
Aug. 22nd, 2023 03:09 pmFinished Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee, a fantasy novel set in a near-future Britain where the knights of the Round Table sleep, immortal, until resurrected to fight for Britain in times of peril. In this case, the peril is climate change, dragons, and ( spoilers. ) I really enjoyed this one! I'm charmed by how Kay seems to be a favorite among modern authors of Arthuriana, although the real main character of the book is Mariam, a student nurse turned eco-warrior who finds herself flung into a world of dragons and women in ponds handing out swords and spends the second half of the book off on her own quest to save the world while Kay and Lancelot are busy having an enemies-to-reluctant-allies arc.
Slightly tangentially, this book had me musing on the line between fantasy and sci-fi: ( more spoilers! )
Anyway, go read![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants' review, which is better than mine.
Read HMS Surprise and about half of The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian— I spent most of the past week on a sailing trip, so I decided to commit to the theme and brought a couple of Aubrey-Maturin books to read. I happened to pick two that were heavy on the romantic drama of Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, and Diana Villiers, who breaks his heart about five times before they get their act together.
( Read more... )
Read Still Alive: A Wild Life of Rediscovery by Forrest Galante, a conservationist and host of Animal Planet's Extinct or Alive, a series about trying to track down animals that have been declared extinct. I hadn't heard of him or his show before picking up this book at random, but it was a quick, interesting read (although, I suspect, best taken with a grain of salt vis-a-vis Galante's self-promotion). Coincidently, at one point, I got to a part about the extinction of the great auk on the Faroe Islands immediately after flipping to Still Alive from a scene in The Surgeon's Mate where Stephen geeked out over seeing a great auk, which put the latter in a new, sadder context.
Slightly tangentially, this book had me musing on the line between fantasy and sci-fi: ( more spoilers! )
Anyway, go read
skygiants' review, which is better than mine.Read HMS Surprise and about half of The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian— I spent most of the past week on a sailing trip, so I decided to commit to the theme and brought a couple of Aubrey-Maturin books to read. I happened to pick two that were heavy on the romantic drama of Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, and Diana Villiers, who breaks his heart about five times before they get their act together.
( Read more... )
Read Still Alive: A Wild Life of Rediscovery by Forrest Galante, a conservationist and host of Animal Planet's Extinct or Alive, a series about trying to track down animals that have been declared extinct. I hadn't heard of him or his show before picking up this book at random, but it was a quick, interesting read (although, I suspect, best taken with a grain of salt vis-a-vis Galante's self-promotion). Coincidently, at one point, I got to a part about the extinction of the great auk on the Faroe Islands immediately after flipping to Still Alive from a scene in The Surgeon's Mate where Stephen geeked out over seeing a great auk, which put the latter in a new, sadder context.
