Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book continues the story from book 1, not book 2. (Which makes sense since Down Among the Sticks and Bones was a prequel) We’re introduced to some new characters and get a little more background on some of the others.

I found it to be a very interesting plot considering the world that McGuire has set up. In a way, because of the existence of nonsense, it feels like McGuire actually needs stricter rules (in her world bible) to keep from either painting themself into a corner or ending up with a cheap-feeling deus ex machine.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book serves as a prequel to Every Heart a Doorway but should definitely be read after that book in order not to spoil any plot points. The book elicits an incredible amount of emotion and I believe this is due, at least in part, to the fact that the narrative style is that of a children’s book or middle grade book - like the first Harry Potter book or the Chronicles of Narnia. This narrative style is juxtaposed with YA-level content and I think it produces the effect taking us back to those books we read (or had read to us) when we were young while containing the harsher, more cynical tone that we are ready for as adults.

Back in December, before I was having any issues that made me think I was going to have to quit running, I signed up for the Dunedin Rotary Club Triathlon. It would be my first ever Triathlon. (It may end up being my only Triathlon) I set up a Garmin 12-week training plan and, when the time came, I started my training. I was feeling pretty good as the date approached. Unlike many others doing Triathlons, I’ve been swimming my entire life. Not to get ahead of myself, but this is reflected in my 2nd place ranking for the swim portion of the Triathlon.

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

R.F. Kuang brought this story to a conclusion in exactly the right way, given the story they were telling. This final entry didn’t begin as depressingly as part 2 (thank goodness!), but Kuang writes realistic fantastical fiction. Both this trilogy and Babel: An Arcane History contain realistic consequences for the actions of their protagonists. Somewhat analogous to the original Mistborn trilogy, it’s not just “kill the evil emeperor and everything is hunky-dory”. There are consequences to civil war.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 105, February 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Here are my reviews per story:

SCIENCE FICTION
Life Sentence (Matthew Baker) - This story’s a real doozy. It’s about a potentially different way to handle criminal punishment. Because this is a well-written story, it’s not simple to decide which system is more cruel - the one in the story or the one in which we currently live. They’re both evil in their own ways. Definitely a powerful story that I recommend to anyone, especially if interested in criminal justice reform and/or abolishment. Also has the added layer (if I’m not misreading the story) of the protagonist being of First Nations descent, which makes it even worse, given the historical injustices.

Last year when I was looking at potential competitions to participate in, it saw that RipIt Events had a Duathlon pretty close to the house. I figured it’d be neat to try out a Run-Cycle-Run event. This would end up being my first competitive cycling event. However, it was scheduled for about ¾ of the way through my Triathlon training so I figured that I would be nice and trained up for the cycling portion.

If you’ve been following my blog long enough, you know that the KDE 3 -> KDE 4 transition was a mess, but somewhere around Oct 2010 (2-3 years after the 4.0 release), it really started to get stable and become my daily runner. By Feb 2011, I was loving the fact that KDE Plasma 4 had implemented the idea of activities. After user experience disaster, the KDE developers were a lot more careful with the transition to Plasma 5. Recently I read the blog post Plasma 6: Better defaults and I’m excited that the KDE developers are taking so much time to think about sane user defaults.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 104, January 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think the only story here that didn’t really click with me was “With Teeth Unmake the Sun”. It was beautiful and I appreciated that, but it wasn’t my fave. “Midway” hit me very hard at this age. Endor House is definitely my favorite story in this issue.

Here are the reviews per story:

Science Fiction
With Teeth Unmake the Sun (A. Merc Rustad): This story definitely has beautiful prose, but it also made it very hard to understand what was going on at first. Not my favorite kind of short story when metaphors are real and it’s hard to get a grip on what’s actually happening. Still, a neat set of concepts.

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was part of the kickstarter that funded this book

I did not immediately jump into this book (Sanderson’s Secret Project #2) because it was not a Cosmere book. (The Cosmere being the equivalent of the MCU for almost all Sanderson’s fantasy books) Once I finally got to it, I was a little hesitant at first. The tone was somewhat like an adult version of Sanderson’s Alcatraz series (a middle grade series). Although, seemingly like Sanderson, I’m a fan of dad jokes - this could get a bit tiring over the course of a novel.

It’s been a while since we last went to Disney; five years, in fact. We were originally supposed to go in 2020, but then, a week before our trip, Disney closed for COVID-19. Finally it was time to go back and boy have things changed. Back when we just had Scarlett, I wrote a blog post about Visiting to Disney with a 2-year-old and another about Visiting to Disney with a 3-year-old. While I don’t intend for this blog post to be nearly as formal as those entries, they do serve as a contrast for this trip.