This is the third volume of Martin’s lo-o-o-o-ng saga, “A Song of Ice and
Fire”, and I don’t want to say too much about it because I don’t want to
spoil the plot. Suffice it to say that it’s a worthy successor to
A Clash of Crowns; see that review for my
general comments.

I embarked on the 1128 pages of this book with patience in my heart, and
I enjoyed every moment of it thoroughly. Even the walking corpses.

Last summer I wrote a program called Notebook for managing my notes on various topics. A notebook is a collection of pages, as many pages as you like, with hyperlinks between them. It’s a lot like an editable website, except that it’s quicker and easier, and it’s also programmable. If you know how to program, you can extend Notebook in a variety of ways. You can find out more about it here.

Just the other day, someone I’d never heard of released an
article on “wiki” software. A wiki is, in fact, an editable website, a lot like Notebook but available from any web browser. The author cites Notebook as a neat application in its own right, and a good starting place for people who want to know more about wikis since it has the same feel but doesn’t require a web server.

Me, I just think it’s neat that people I’ve never met and never exchanged e-mail with are happy enough with Notebook that they are telling other folks about it.

Whilst out and about with my two boys this evening (fetching home a copy of Panther for my PowerBook, as it happens), we discovered that there’s now a Lego Store at the Glendale Galleria.

Not only is there now a Lego Store at the Glendale Galleria, it’s directly next to the Apple Store where I went to get my copy of Panther. With two small boys in train, I had about as much chance of avoiding the Lego Store as–

I can’t think of a comparison that’s strong enough.

Now, I’m a Travelled Gentleman; I’ve been to LegoLand California. I’ve seen the Big Store at the Beginning that stands at the entrance to LegoLand…and while it is, indeed, an impressive sight, I’ve always found it to be somewhat disappointing. They’ve got too much in the way of souvenirs, and too little for the diehard LegoManiac.

About the Dread House of Lego at the Glendale Galleria, I have no such reservations. It’s a Perilous Pit of Plastic Temptation. Not only are the walls lined with Lego sets large and small, they have the big, hard to find sets for sale. There’s a Star Wars Imperial Walker (the four-legged kind) that’s at least a foot and a half high. There’s an Imperial Star Destroyer that’s three feet long. There are shelves and shelves of Star Wars sets, Harry Potter sets, robotics sets, NASA sets (including a Mars Exploration Rover that looks remarkably like the ones that are currently on the way to Mars), Soccer sets (soccer Lego? But apparently it’s popular), and everything else.

And if that’s not bad enough, there’s the Back Wall, which is studded with the Bins of Doom. Each bin is filled with one color and shape of Lego brick. There are about a hundred bins, and the bricks are in colors that have never before been seen in the world of Lego. For $12.95 you get what looks to be about a 36 ounce cup with a tightly fitting lid–and as many Lego bricks as you can cram into it.

This is Pure Evil. And had I not just bought a copy of Panther I might well have succumbed. And it really is Evil, because 36 ounces of Lego isn’t a whole lot when you’ve got a Big Imagination. You have to keep going back for another cupfull. And then another. And that will begin to run into Serious Money.

Lego fans have been screaming for just this sort of thing for years–I just hope there aren’t any bankruptcies.

(Oh, and yes, my kids did blow their allowances there.)

Here’s a Google feature I bet you didn’t know about.

Go to Google, and do a search on your phone number (including the area code). If your number is listed, it will return a page showing your name and address, along with links to MapQuest and the like.

If you’d rather not have your name and address quite so available in this way, you can click on the telephone icon next to your name and address, and Google will give you instructions on how you can have Google block your phone number.

I found out about this in an e-mail message I received today, and at first I thought it was probably a hoax–but just to be sure, I gave it a try. Sure enough, up popped all of my contact information. I’ve asked them to block it; apparently it takes about forty-eight hours.

Now this book is just too silly for words: an absurdly earnest mixture of
Modesitt-style fantasy, pop psychology, and romance novel shtick. Let me
tell you a little about it.

There are five branches of magic, Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Spirit.
Every person in Green’s world is more or less capable in one of these
areas. Most people are Lows. Some are Middles, and some are Highs–and
every person revealed to be a Middle must go to the capitol and be tested
to see whether or not they are Highs. Our tale concerns five such
people, one from each of the five aspects. This is Very Significant, for
the nation in which they live is ruled by the Ruling Blending. The
Ruling Blending is a team of five people, one from (of course) each of
the five aspects, who have not only learned to merge their magic
together, but who won their place through fierce competition.

This competition is held every twenty-five years, and the winning
Blending rules the nation for the next twenty-five years. A great deal
is at stake, here, and so of course there is great incentive to skew the
results. Our five heroes are not supposed to win, and of course they
will, though not in this book (it’s the first of five in a series called,
natch, “The Blending”).

So who are our charming five? First, there’s a sea-captain who has no
interest in being a High, even for the power the position holds; he just
wants to live on the sea. Why? Because although he’s a rough, tough,
extremely handsome well-built man, he’s claustrophobic. He simply cannot
stand to be cooped up inside.

Then there’s the astonishingly beautiful young woman who has been
seriously traumatized by a forced marriage to elderly sadistic lecher
whose business interests her father wished to control. The old lecher is
dead, now, and her father wishes to marry her off again. She’d rather die.

Which brings us to our young gentleman, the sheltered, protected son of
one of the highest-born ladies in the realm, one of those poisonous women
who live through their children. He’s never
before been anywhere without his mother, and he has no idea of how the
world works. But he’s extremely handsome, and remarkably well-built,
because one of the servants showed him how to exercise.

Then there’s our astonishingly beautiful lady of the evening with a heart of gold,
the leading courtesan from a major provincial city. She’s no interest in
being a High, either, but coming to the capitol to be tested got her out
from under the thumb of her erstwhile madam. Remarkably, she’s the one
with the least emotional baggage, even though she doesn’t think that love
is real.

And finally there’s the farmer’s son from the boondocks, a truly decent salt-of-the-earth
type who sincerely wants to be a High. He’s hampered by two things: the
fear of trying to use more magical power than he can control and thereby turning
himself into a vegetable, and the narrow and limited moral code he grew
up with that tells him that the courtesan’s profession is simply wrong, a
problem since he’s rapidly falling in love with her–and she with him,
although she doesn’t believe him. Have I mentioned that he’s extremely
handsome, with a hard body from all that farm work?

And so all of them have baggage, and all of them have issues, and oh,
they all have such wonderful and growthful advice for each other, and
such astonishing insights into what makes everyone else tick. It’s like
inviting Oprah Winfrey into your fantasy novel. It’s so wonderful to
watch all of them growing into healthfulness. And then, of course, five of them are
such wonderful people, not like any of the other folks in the story, all
of whom are twisted, evil, manipulative users–at best.

I’ll give the author this much–despite all the anachronistic
pop-psychology and the absurd characters, and despite the five-fold
symmetry that means we get to hear about all of the testing and training
in five times over in five slightly different yet still tedious
flavors–despite all that, I say, she managed to hold my attention to the
end of the book. I’m not sure whether that means that Ms. Green can
really spin a tale, or whether she just pressed enough of the right
buttons amid all of the unintentionally hilarious wrong ones to keep me
going.

I’ve given the book to Jane to read, because I want her opinion. I know
a little bit about being a man, having been one lo these many years, and
the leading men in this tale don’t strike me as being men. Instead, they
strike me as a romance novelist’s fantasy of what desirable men should be
like. But it could be that I’m doing the romance genre a disservice, as
I don’t read them.

I’m mildly curious about the next book in the series, as the whole
testing/training/bootcamp kind of tale appeals to me for some reason;
it’s why I like L.E. Modesitt, Jr.‘s books. But it’s not
a good sign when you find yourself giggling at a book rather than with it.

We’ll see what Jane says.

I’ve just posted the November issue of Ex Libris Reviews, our monthly book review. If you’re a regular reader of this weblog, then you’ve already seen my reviews and Deb English’s reviews, but you haven’t seen Craig Clarke’s reviews. So go see ’em!

We went trick-or-treating in the rain tonight, which is unique in my experience. To my knowledge, we haven’t had a wet Halloween night here since I was born.

Just goes to show what can happen when everybody in Southern California prays for rain at the same time.

Lynn Sislo just read some advice for writers that struck her the wrong way. Me, I think Lynn misses the point in a couple of places–though that’s the fault of the author of the advice.

Lynn quotes:

3. EMPTY ADVERBS
Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally – these and others are words that promise emphasis, but too often they do the reverse. They suck the meaning out of every sentence.

She feels that this rule is contradictory with–excuse me–contradicts the writer’s previous rule about avoiding flat prose. I disagree. When I write, I try to write with nouns and verbs, and avoid using any adjectives and adverbs at all. I can’t quite manage it–but the result is that I only use them when they add value.

She then quotes,

Once your eye is attuned to the frequent use of the “to be” words – “am,” “is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” “be,” “being,” “been” and others – you’ll be appalled at how quickly they flatten prose and slow your pace to a crawl….

Here’s Lynn’s appalled that evidently we don’t even get to use the verb “to be”,
but I don’t think that’s the point.

I think the writer is suggesting that writers should avoid using the passive voice. It is understood, of course, that sometimes it is necessary to write in this way. But for the most part, my prose is read more happily by others if I avoid it.

Or, as I might rephrase it,

Avoid using the passive voice. Sometimes you’ll have to. But you’ll write more enjoyable prose if you avoid it.

Passive voice tends to be more wordy, too.

Finally, Lynn’s mistaken about one other thing as well–she thinks she doesn’t write well, when in fact she writes simply, directly, and clearly. ’nuff said.

…arrived today.

You can get your own here.

Bye bye.

The little country of Borogravia has been at war for as long as anyone
can remember, often with next-door neighbor Zlobenia, but generally with
anyone who’s handy. And the leading nations of the Discworld have paid little
attention, for Borogravia and its neighbors are far-off, backwards, and
dull. And then Nuggan, the god worshipped by the Borogravians, decrees
that the line of semaphore towers built by Ankh-Morpork on the border
between Borogravia and Zlobenia are an Abomination Unto Nuggan–and they
are torn down.

Meanwhile, young Polly Perks, the daughter of a prosperous innkeeper,
cuts off her hair, dresses as a man, and runs off to join the Borogravian
army. As usual, she’s following a man–her brother Paul. If Paul comes
home from the wars, he’ll inherit the inn, and Polly can go on running it
as she has been for her father. But it’s an Abomination Unto Nuggan for
a woman to own property, so if Paul dies in battle the inn will pass to a
distant cousin.

And so the next day we find Private Oliver “Ozzer” Perks marching off to
war behind one of God’s own noncoms, Sergeant Jackrum, with a squad of
other raw recruits.

You might think you’ve heard this story. You might think you can guess
what’s going to happen. You’re sorely mistaken, I feel sure.

This is vintage Pratchett, not his best but much better than his worst,
and I spent a quite pleasant week of evenings reading it to Jane.
Recommended.