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Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Review: In the Shadow of Lightning by Brian McClellan
Posted on January 17, 2023 January 12, 2023 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A+ Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
In the Shadow of Lightning (Glass Immortals, #1) by Brian McClellan
Narrator: Damian Lynch
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, steampunk
Series: Glass Immortals #1
Length: 24 hours and 53 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on June 21, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository, Bookshop.org
From Brian McClellan, author of The Powder Mage trilogy, comes the first novel in the Glass Immortals series, In the Shadow of Lightning, an epic fantasy where magic is a finite resource—and it's running out.
"Excellent worldbuilding and a truly epic narrative combine into Brian's finest work to date. Heartily recommended to anyone who wants a new favorite fantasy series to read."—Brandon Sanderson
Demir Grappo is an outcast—he fled a life of wealth and power, abandoning his responsibilities as a general, a governor, and a son. Now he will live out his days as a grifter, rootless, and alone. But when his mother is brutally murdered, Demir must return from exile to claim his seat at the head of the family and uncover the truth that got her killed: the very power that keeps civilization turning, godglass, is running out.
Now, Demir must find allies, old friends and rivals alike, confront the powerful guild-families who are only interested in making the most of the scraps left at the table and uncover the invisible hand that threatens the Empire. A war is coming, a war unlike any other. And Demir and his ragtag group of outcasts are the only thing that stands in the way of the end of life as the world knows it.
"Powerful rival families, murderous conspiracies, epic battles, larger-than-life characters, and magic."—Fonda Lee, author of The Green Bone Saga
"Engaging, fast-paced and epic."—James Islington, author of In The Shadow of What Was Lost
"Clever, fun, and by turns beautifully bloody, In the Shadow of Lightning hits like a bolt through a stained glass window."—Megan E. O'Keefe, author of Chaos Vector
As the story opens, Demir Grappo is Icarus, and we see him in the moment of his spectacular fall. A cocky young genius both in politics and on the battlefield, we catch him just at the moment when he learns that someone has decided that he has flown too close to the sun – and that it is time to clip his wings. Or burn them.
It's a broken man who slinks away from that battlefield, covered in disgrace where there should have been glory. To say that Demir plans to hide in the lowest and meanest places he can find is a bit of an overstatement. We'd call it a psychotic break. He just runs away from his shame and his responsibilities.
Nine years later the young man is a bit older, even sadder, and doesn't see himself as any wiser at all. He is doing a better job of getting through the days, but he has no plans, no hopes, no dreams beyond doing that for another day.
Until an old friend finds him in the back of beyond, to tell Demir that has mother Adriana Grappo, the Matriarch of the Grappo guild family, has been assassinated. And that Demir is now Patriarch, if he is willing to take up the mantle, the reins, and the responsibility he left behind.
He'll go home to protect his guild family and hunt down his mother's killers. Even on his worst day – and he's had plenty of them in the intervening years – he'd be able to smell the stink of a coverup no matter how far away he was from the seething cesspit of politics and corruption that is the capital of the Ossan Empire.
Demir is willing to tear the Empire down to get the truth. Little does he know that the plot he plans to uncover will require him to save it – whether it deserves it or not.
Escape Rating A+: "Glassdamn." It rolls easily through the mind, or trippingly off the tongue, as though it's an epithet that we've always used – or at least could have if we'd had a mind to. And glassdamnit but this is a terrific story.
It's "glassdamn" because the scientific sorcery that powers the story and the world it explores is based on the use of specifically tuned, resonating glass to provide its power. While there are multiple religions in the world none of the deities or pantheons rule much of anything. Glass is king, queen and knave and everyone swears by it and at it and about it all day long.
Glassdamn, indeed.
The title is a bit of a pun. Our protagonist, if not necessarily or always our hero, Demir Grappo, spends the entire story living in the shadow of the political and glass dancer prodigy "The Lightning Prince" – his own former self, the self that he has been running from for all these years. Demir and the man he once was are going to have to come to some kind of resolution if he is going to have even half a chance at fixing everything that's wrong with Ossa, with his guild family, with sorcery and especially with himself. It's difficult to tell which will be the hardest job.
The story is told from several perspectives, so that the reader is able to see what's happening over the vast sprawling canvas that is this first book in a protected trilogy. While we follow Demir, we also have a chance to see the Ossan empire from other points of view, including the childhood friends he brings back to the capital to help him in both his quest and his more mundane work, the master craftswoman he partners with in order to carry out his mother's last request, and his uncle Tadeus, an officer in Ossa's much vaunted Foreign Legion, an army that takes nearly as big a fall as Demir once did.
They may rise together – or they may discover that the game is beyond them all. It's a question that is not yet answered when the story concludes. Which is utterly fitting for the first book in a trilogy. I just wish I had an inkling of when the second book is going to be available, because this is a story that left me with a terrible book hangover. I can't wait to go back.
One of the things that both sucked me in and drove me crazy about In the Shadow of Lightning, but which also explains why I liked it so glassdamn much, is the sheer number of recent stories it reminded me of, as well as one long-loved classic and, surprisingly, a videogame.
Throwing Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham, Engines of Empire by R.S. Ford, and Isolate by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. into an industrial-strength book blender will get you close to the feel of In the Shadow of Lightning. All are stories of empires that have already rotted from the head down. All have 'magic' that is treated scientifically, to the point where their worlds are all much closer to steampunk than to epic fantasy – which doesn't stop all of them from BEING epic fantasy anyway. None of them are about classic contests between 'good' and 'evil'; instead all are about people attempting to turn back the tide of the type of evil that results from power corrupting. These series starters are not exactly like each other, but they all 'feel' very similar and if you like one you'll probably get equally immersed in one of the others.
The individual character of Demir Grappo, that mercurial broken genius, appearing as antihero considerably more often than hero, trying to save as much as he can and willing to sacrifice whatever it takes into the bargain, recalled a character from a much different time and place, but whose story was still conducted over a sprawling canvas. If you've ever read the Lymond Chronicles (start with The Game of Kings) by Dorothy Dunnett, Demir is very much in Lymond's mold – and it was a bit heartbreaking to watch Demir making entirely too many of the same mistakes and sacrifices. I'm also wondering if he's going to face some of Lymond's desperate compromises and am trepidatiously looking forward to finding out.
And for anyone who has played the Dragon Age series of videogames, the corrupt guild family political power brokering – as well as the open use of assassination as a political tool – bears a surprisingly sharp resemblance to the Antivan Crows. I half expected someone to leave a message that "the Crows send their regards," because they most certainly would, with respect upfront and a knife in the back.
The audio made that last bit even more evocative because the narrator did one hell of a job with all the accents. He also told a damn good story, giving the feeling that we were in each character's head when it was their turn "on stage", and making each and every voice distinct. AND he managed to put me so completely inside both Demir's and Tessa's heads that I would have to stop for a few minutes because I could tell that whatever was coming next was going to be awful, and I cared so much that I almost couldn't bear to experience it so closely with them.
So, if you enjoy big sprawling epics, whether fantasy or SF, In the Shadow of Lightning is just the kind of world-spanning, world-shattering, monsterful and wonderful binge read just waiting to happen!
I can't wait for that glassdamned second book in the trilogy. I really, really can't.
Posted in A+ Reviews, audio reviews, audiobooks, book reviews★ 1 Comment ★
Review: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
Posted on December 29, 2022 December 28, 2022 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1) by Olivie Blake
Narrator: Andy Ingalls, Caitlin Kelly, Damian Lynch, David Monteith, James Patrick Cronin, Munirih Grace, Siho Ellsmore, Steve West
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dark academia, fantasy
Series: Atlas #1
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on March 1, 2022
The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world's six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation – and here are the chosen few...
- Libby Rhodes and Nicolás Ferrer de Varona: inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds.
- Reina Mori: a naturalist who can speak the language of life itself.
- Parisa Kamali: a mind reader whose powers of seduction are unmatched.
- Tristan Caine: the son of a crime kingpin who can see the secrets of the universe.
- Callum Nova: an insanely rich pretty boy who could bring about the end of the world. He need only ask.
When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they must spend one year together to qualify for initiation. During this time, they will be permitted access to the Society's archives and judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them.
This dive into the inner workings of a very dark academia begins with Atlas Blakely, Caretaker of the Alexandrian Society, visiting the six most powerful mages of their generation and making each of them an offer that they can refuse – although he knows that none of them will.
It's the opportunity of a lifetime and they all know it. Even if, at the beginning, they don't realize that it will absolutely be the end of at least one of theirs.
In this alternate version of our world, magic has taken the place of science, and is treated, studied, and advanced much as science is in the world we know. Magic has created the equivalent, if not the better, of the technologies that power our world. Magic is known, it is respected, and it is feared.
Magic is power every bit as much, if in a somewhat different way, as power is magic.
Those six powerful mages are being recruited to join the Alexandrian Society, the secret inheritors of the knowledge and power that was once held in and by the Great Library of Alexandria. Membership in the Society confers prestige, which, on top of their already considerable magical power, is certain to bring them wealth and yet more earthly power as well.
But for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every powerful and secret society, there is at least one, if not two or six, rivals searching for a way to take that power and add it to their own.
The six mages who have been recruited by Atlas Blakely have one year to suss out all the secrets held by the Society, by its enigmatic caretaker, and by each other. It's not enough time to even scratch the surface of that labyrinth.
But it's all that one of them has left.
Escape Rating B: I have extremely mixed feelings about The Atlas Six. So mixed that the blender of my feelings hasn't stopped whirling even a week after I finished the damn thing.
At the top of the column labeled 'good' feelings, the book is compelling as hell. Once the story gets past Libby and Nico's barely post-adolescent sniping and swiping at each other, the whole thing is off to the races in a way that both commands and demands the reader's attention.
I finished at 4 o'clock in the damn morning because I just couldn't put it down – and when I tried it gnawed at me until I picked it back up again. Over and over until finally I fell out at the end, as exhausted and spent as the characters.
Howsomever, at the top of the column labeled 'bad' feelings is the fact that not a single one of these characters is on the side of the angels. There ARE NO angels here. There are no innocents to serve as heartbreaking collateral damage. Saying that no one is any better than they ought to be doesn't nearly cover it. More like they are all worse than each other in a Möbius strip of turning their backs on anything that could be classified as "light" and diving straight for the bottom.
If you need to like at least one character to follow a story, even if that character is an anti-hero rather than a hero or a lovable or even just a redeemable rogue, there is absolutely no one in this story who remotely qualifies. Every single character, even the ones that at the beginning you might think will turn out to be a bit corrupt but not too awful, seems to have had their moral compass surgically removed at birth or shortly thereafter.
At the same time, for most of its length The Atlas Six seems to sit squarely on the intersection between "power corrupts" and "some gifts come at just too high a price." And those certainly are elements of the story. But, just as we think we know what's going on, the centrality of those two tropes is knocked off that center. Or rather, we learn that believing that those are the central tenets also centers characters who may not actually be IN that center.
Which admittedly does ramp up the tension VERY dramatically for the second book in the series, The Atlas Paradox. Which, thank goodness – or more likely badness in this case – is already out so I'll be starting it as soon as I recuperate from the first book.
The thing is that I'm not sure there's anything honestly new in The Atlas Six. It's fascinating, it's compelling, it's stomach turning at points, but the whole corruption of dark academia thing is not exactly new under the sun. (Recent examples include Babel by R.F. Kuang, and The Scholomance by Naomi Novik to name just a couple). For this reader, the way that all the arcs, at least so far, are trending so deeply downwards means that I'll be diving into the second book more to see just how far down into hell these people and this situation can go. I suspect it's pretty damn far. I don't actually care about ANY of the characters.
So, if you need to like someone, anyone in a story to want to make your way to its end, The Atlas Six may not do it for you as a reader. I'm very much of two minds about the whole thing.
Howsomever, while I may have had a ton of mixed feelings about the story, but absolutely none whatsoever about the full cast narration. The way the book was narrated was truly what both made it possible for me to read and compelled me to finish. The perspective on the events is batted around between seven first person narrators, the Atlas Six themselves plus Libby Rhodes' boyfriend Ezra Fowler. In the narration, the actor changed when the perspective did, and the actors did a fantastic job of making each other their characters distinct and easy to recognize.
Because voice acting fascinates me, and this group did such a damn good job of it (and because I had to do a fair bit of digging and listening to figure out who played who), here's almost the full cast list: (I think I got this right but if I didn't or if someone knows who Damien Lynch voiced PLEASE let me know)
-Libby Rhodes voiced by Caitlin Kelly
-Nico de Varona voiced by James Patrick Cronin
-Reina Mori voiced by Siho Ellsmore
-Parisa Kamali voiced by Munirih Grace
-Tristan Caine voiced by David Monteith
-Callum Nova voiced by Steve West
-Ezra Fowler voiced by Andy Ingalls
One of the reasons that I plan to listen to the second book, The Atlas Paradox, just as I did The Atlas Six is because this stellar cast is returning for the second book, along with three additional players whose identities I have yet to discover.
However I end up feeling about the second book, even if those feelings turn out to be as mixed as they were for this one, I already know the performance is going to be riveting.
Posted in audio reviews, audiobooks, B Reviews, book reviews★ Leave a comment ★
Review: Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivenor
Posted on August 11, 2022 August 10, 2022 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | audio reviews> audiobooks> B- Reviews> book reviews
Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivenor
Narrator: Sophie Loughran
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Published by Flatiron Books, Macmillan Audio on August 2, 2022
When twelve-year-old Esther disappears on the way home from school in a small town in rural Australia, the community is thrown into a maelstrom of suspicion and grief. As Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels arrives in town during the hottest spring in decades and begins her investigation, Esther's tenacious best friend, Ronnie, is determined to find Esther and bring her home.
When schoolfriend Lewis tells Ronnie that he saw Esther with a strange man at the creek the afternoon she went missing, Ronnie feels she is one step closer to finding her. But why is Lewis refusing to speak to the police? And who else is lying about how much they know about what has happened to Esther?
Punctuated by a Greek chorus, which gives voice to the remaining children of the small, dying town, this novel explores the ties that bind, what we try and leave behind us, and what we can never outrun, while never losing sight of the question of what happened to Esther, and what her loss does to a whole town.
In Hayley Scrivenor's Dirt Creek, a small-town debut mystery described as The Dry meets Everything I Never Told You, a girl goes missing and a community falls apart and comes together.
Dirt Creek is a "For Want of a Nail" story in the guise of a mystery/thriller plot. "For Want of a Nail" is a proverb that starts out with losing a horseshoe because the protagonist needs a nail to keep the horseshoe on the horse. And it results in the loss of a kingdom because of the chain of events that follows.
Dirt Creek is that kind of book. It begins with a then-unknown person discovering the corpse of a young girl buried in a shallow grave on a remote property outside of the tiny, dying town of Durton not too far outside of Sydney, Australia.
Most of the residents of Durton call it "Dirt Town", and the creek that runs near town is "Dirt Creek". (Dirt Town seems to have been the title of the original Australian edition of the book.)
While the book kicks off with the finding of that body, witnessed by a couple of unnamed – at least at that point – children, that event is actually the final nail in the killer's coffin. The story, the story of how so many things fell apart in Durton, begins the Friday before, when 12-year-old Esther Bianchi doesn't come home from school. On time. Or at all.
The story, over a long, hot weekend and part of the next week, follows the unfolding events from multiple perspectives. The police detectives who come out from Sydney to investigate Esther's disappearance, Esther's mother, Constance. Constance's best friend Shelly. Esther's best friend Veronica – who everyone calls Ronnie. And Esther and Veronica's mutual friend, Lewis, an 11-year-old boy who is being bullied at school and beaten at home.
Everyone in Durton knows everyone else, their friends, their families, their secrets – and their lies. Sooner or later, all the truths are going to bubble to the surface. Nothing ever stays buried for long – not even poor Esther Bianchi.
But by the time Esther's body is found, the weight of the secrets, both big and small, that are being hidden from both the police and the entire community, have already broken at least one marriage, rescued at least one mother and her children, caused one child to be savagely attacked – and torn an entire town apart.
Because at the very beginning of Esther's story, two children saw something very suspicious. Something they were much too afraid to tell. And because they didn't, for want of that telling at a time when it would have done the most good, one event led to another – until all the pieces came together at the quietly chilling end.
Escape Rating B-: This is going to be one of those "mixed-feelings" kinds of reviews. You have been warned.
Before I start on the things that drove me bananas, one thing that most definitely did not was the narrator, Sophie Loughran. I listened to about half the book and read the rest because I was pressed for time. I wish I could have continued with the audio because the reader was excellent and did a terrific job with the Australian and English accents. She made each of the characters sound distinctive, which would have been particularly challenging because all of them, with the exception of 11-year-old Lewis whose voice hasn't dropped yet, were female. And yet, I always knew who was speaking by accent, by intonation, by vocal patterns. She also did an excellent job of keeping to the slow, deliberate pace of the story, particularly when voicing Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels who both spoke and thought in a thoughtful, deliberate manner.
Howsomever, Detective Sergeant Michaels' thoughtful deliberation pointed out an issue that I had with the story. For a thriller, it moves quite slowly. It takes half the book to set itself up – and to set Michaels and her detective partner up in Durton. As a thriller, this needed to move a bit faster. The descriptions of everything and everyone were meticulous to a point close to monotony.
There's also a lot of foreshadowing. Not necessarily the obvious foreshadowing – because the reader is pretty sure that little Esther is not going to be found alive at the end of this story. The story, and the town it is set in, are both so bleak that there's just no way to eke a happy ending out of this one.
What gets foreshadowed is the "For Want of a Nail" nature of the story. Every time someone fails to inform someone, anyone, else about an important clue, it gets foreshadowed that this lack of information might have changed things before all of the other terrible things that happened were too far along to prevent.
Those omissions do all turn out to be important, because they send the police on wild goose chases that waste time and personnel – both of which are in short supply. But it's also a truth that everybody lies, so there's nothing unexpected or exceptional about people lying to the police. It's just humans being human.
As many red herrings and half-baked clues and misdirections there were in this story, there was plenty going on and oodles of directions for the case and the reader to follow. There were two elements of the various internal monologue that felt like one-too-many. One was that Detective Sergeant Michaels is keeping a secret from the reader and in some ways from herself about the reasons behind the breakup of her recent relationship. The other was that the children of the town who were not directly involved in the plot had chapters as a kind of Greek chorus. Either element might have been fine, but together they distracted from the progress of the mystery without adding enough to offset the time and attention they took.
So very much a mixed bag. I loved the narration. I liked that the small-town mystery was set in a small town somewhere VERY far away. I thought the mystery plot and the way that the police were stuck chasing their own tails a lot of the time was as fascinating as it was frustrating. I did not figure out whodunnit as far as the child's death was concerned, while the various villains who were exposed during the course of the investigation did receive their just desserts – which is always the best part of a mystery.
But Durton turned out to be a seriously bleak place, and in the end this was an equally bleak story. I seriously needed to visit my happy place when I left there. I'm probably not the only reader who did.
Posted in audio reviews, audiobooks, B- Reviews, book reviews
Review: Spear by Nicola Griffith
Posted on April 22, 2022 April 21, 2022 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> audio reviews> book reviews
Spear by Nicola Griffith
Genres: Arthurian legends, historical fantasy, historical fiction
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tordotcom on April 19, 2022
The girl knows she has a destiny before she even knows her name. She grows up in the wild, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake come to her on the spring breeze, and when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she knows that her future lies at his court.
And so, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and, with a broken hunting spear and mended armour, rides on a bony gelding to Caer Leon. On her adventures she will meet great knights and steal the hearts of beautiful women. She will fight warriors and sorcerers. And she will find her love, and the lake, and her fate.
The stories of King Arthur and the knights of his Round Table are myths that we seem to absorb by osmosis, as the stories are told and retold – and have been for centuries. King Arthur is one of those legends that seems to reinvent itself for each new generation, and Spear, with its heroine Peredur, is a fine addition to that long and proud tradition.
As this story opens, Peredur doesn't even know her own name. She is growing up in complete isolation, with only her mother for company, in a remote valley in Wales. Her mother has two names for the girl, one meaning gift which she uses on good days, while on bad days, she calls her "payment". Whichever the girl might be, her mother tells her stories of the Tuath Dé, their great treasures and their terrible use of the humans they see as beneath them. Humans like her powerful but broken mother, who has isolated herself and her child out of fear that the Tuath, or at least one of them, will hunt her down in order to take back what she stole from him.
Peredur, like all children, grows up. She finds the valley small and her mother's paranoia, however righteous, constricting. And she wants to fight. So she leaves the valley and her mother behind and goes out in search of the King and his companions – who she saved once when they wandered into her mother's secluded valley and found themselves facing more bandits than they planned.
Peredur is searching for a place to belong and a cause to serve. But she has had dreams all of her life of a magical mystical lake and a woman who lives by its side. This is the story of her quest to learn who she really is, what is the true nature of her power, and to find a place where she can belong and can bring her skills to fight on the side of right. To make something, not just of herself but of the place to which she joins herself.
In the court of Arturus at Caer Lyon, Peredur finds a place she wants to call her own. And a king who is reluctant to let her claim it.
Escape Rating A: This is lovely. The language is beautiful, and the reading of it by the author gave it just the right air of mystery and myth. It felt like a tale of another world, as all the best variations on the Arthurian legends do in one way or another.
From one perspective, Spear stands on the shoulders of many giants, previous retellings of the "Matter of Britain", from Monmouth to Mallory to T.H. White to Mary Stewart. In particular, it reminded me very much of Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy (beginning with The Crystal Cave), not for its focus on Merlin but for its attempt to set the story in a more likely historical period, in both cases sometime in the 5th Century AD, after the Romans abandoned Britain and left a vacuum of power which Arthur did his best to fill.
By setting the story in 5th Century Wales, the author is also able to loop in the stories of the Tuath Dé, or Tuatha Dé Danann, and weave one set of legends with the other, to give Peredur both her origin and the source of her power. That she was then able to link the whole thing back to Arthur through his mad quest for the Holy Grail made for a delightful twist in the story – albeit one with an ultimately sad ending. (If the Tuath Dé sound familiar, it may be from The Iron Druid Chronicles where they play an important part even to the present.)
But Spear is an interpretation for the 21st century, in that Peredur, better known as Percival in many versions of the Arthurian Tales, is a woman who has wants to fight like a man and has chosen to present herself as a man because she lives in an era when women do not become knights, much like Alanna in Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness Quartet.
This is also a queer interpretation of the Arthur tales, not just because Peredur is lesbian, but because she moves through a world where same-sex relationships and poly-relationships are simply part of the way things are. That includes Peredur's love of the sorceress Nimüe, but also changes the eternal triangle of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot into a quietly acknowledged triad as a normal part of the way things are. Just as quietly acknowledged that the Lance of this Arthurian legend was born with one leg malformed. He's still a capable fighter, and a veritable centaur on horseback. The world and its heroes are not now, nor have they ever been, made up entirely of straight, 100% able-bodied, white men, and this story acknowledges that heroes are everywhere, everywhen and everyone. As they, and we, have always been.
Spear turned out to be a lovely, lyrical, magical extension of the Arthurian legends that borrows rightfully and righteously, as all Arthurian tales do, from what has come before, from what fantasy writers have added to the period and the interpretation, from the time in which it is set, the time in which it is written, and the author's magical stirring of that pot into a heady brew.
One of these days I need to pick up the author's Hild, because it sounds like it will be just as fantastic (in both senses of that word) as Spear turned out to be.
Posted in A Reviews, audio reviews, book reviews★ 1 Comment ★
Review: The Starless Crown by James Rollins
Posted on February 7, 2022 February 6, 2022 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
The Starless Crown (Moon Fall, #1) by James Rollins
Narrator: Nicola Barber
Genres: dystopian, fantasy, post apocalyptic, science fiction
Series: Moon Fall #1
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on January 4, 2022
An alliance embarks on a dangerous journey to uncover the secrets of the distant past and save their world in this captivating, deeply visionary adventure from number-one 'New York Times' best-selling thriller-master James Rollins.
A gifted student foretells an apocalypse. Her reward is a sentence of death.
Fleeing into the unknown, she is drawn into a team of outcasts:
A broken soldier, who once again takes up the weapons he's forbidden to wield and carves a trail back home.
A drunken prince, who steps out from his beloved brother's shadow and claims a purpose of his own.
An imprisoned thief, who escapes the crushing dark and discovers a gleaming artifact - one that will ignite a power struggle across the globe.
On the run, hunted by enemies old and new, they must learn to trust each other in order to survive in a world evolved in strange, beautiful, and deadly ways, and uncover ancient secrets that hold the key to their salvation.
But with each passing moment doom draws closer.
Who will claim the starless crown?
A Macmillan Audio Audio production from Tor Books
©2022 James Rollins (P)2022 Macmillan Audio
"A fake fortune teller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved." At least according to Robert A. Heinlein in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long.
From that perspective, The Starless Crown is the story of Nyx, the authentic soothsayer – not that she would think of herself as such – receiving the full force of that kicking around. Deserved or not.
Definitely not – at least not in regards to anything that she personally has done. Not that she's had a chance to do all that much when the story begins – as she seems to be just fifteen or thereabouts.
We meet her in school, in her astronomy class, as they study their "Urth's" tidally locked rotation around the sun. A sun which they all refer to as the "Father Above," the capital letters implied in the reverent way they speak of it. The Father Above is part of their pantheon of gods, along with the Mother Below (the Urth), the dark Daughter (the new moon) and the silvery Son (the full moon).
A catastrophe, shrouded in the mists of time, created the Urth that Nyx knows from the Earth that we now live on, locking our rotating world in a fixed position relative to the sun, so that only a relatively narrow circle is habitable for humans, in that relatively thin slice where the sun does not boil and its lack does not freeze. A circle that surrounds the Urth in just the same way that a crown surrounds the head of a monarch.
The story of The Starless Crown is Nyx' story, as she breaks free of the shell she has been enclosed by her entire life. A story where she dreams of the destruction of her world – and the one thin chance where she might save something from the inevitable wreckage.
At a cost much higher than anyone is willing to pay.
Escape Rating A-: I listened to The Starless Crown from beginning to end. I enjoyed the listening – the narrator was very good and did an excellent job of differentiating the many, many voices of this story's large cast.
At the same time, I didn't feel compelled to finish it more quickly, so I didn't pick up the ebook at all. The slower pace of listening worked better for me, because this is a slow burn kind of story. It takes a lot of chapters to get all the characters set up because they begin in far different locations under far different circumstances. We are seeing the plot come together from a great many disparate eyes.
And it takes a long time for all of those disparate – and sometimes desperate – parts to come together into the whole that is going to push this saga forward.
Part of my fascination with this story is that this is post-apocalyptic story that takes place in the far aftermath – an aftermath so far into the future that the people living it no longer recognize from whence they came – although we do.
Not that civilization as we know it wouldn't break down and reform fairly quickly, messily and bloodily. In that sense it reminds me a bit of Aldiss' Helliconia Trilogy, Stirling's Emberverse starting with Dies the Fire, and the videogame Horizon Zero Dawn.
But the way the situation has evolved and devolved posits a corollary or an antonym to Clarke's Law, the one that goes, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The Starless Crown is an example of something I'd want to call Harris' Permutation if I were the person naming such things. Because this story is an example of a different principle, that "Any science sufficiently muddied by time or religious claptrap is indistinguishable from magic."
They don't know what they don't know. Too much was lost in either the initial cataclysm or the long dark night that inevitably followed. What they've managed to find is now interpreted through a lens of religion, to which what we call science has become enslaved. And some of its methods are used to enslave others.
This is also a story of "Mother Nature bats last". Whatever happened in the past that created the tidal lock, the coming moon fall feels like its inevitable result. The moon controls the tides. It can't. So it keeps getting closer in order to try harder. Or something like that.
So we have a group that is not unlike the Fellowship of the Ring. A young seeress, a disgraced prince, a thief, an escaped slave, a living statue from the distant past on a quest to save their world – even if they don't know it yet.
Arrayed against them are the forces of the powers that be. They're not all evil, although some of them very much are. Some of them are willfully blind and some of them are just blind. There's a lot of "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", but there's a fair bit of "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
But the villains are fascinatingly – if occasionally stomach turning-ly – twisted, the heroes are plucky to the max and the escapes are nail-biting, hair-raising, edge of the seat last minute scrapes. The reveal of the past, the fear in the present and the desperate hope of even a fractured future are handled in lush descriptions and buckets of regrets, recriminations and tears.
I have no idea how this band of misfits is going to get themselves and their world out of the mess they are in, but I look forward to finding out.
Posted in A- Reviews, audio reviews, audiobooks, book reviewsTagged audiobooks
Review: Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner
Posted on October 19, 2021 October 18, 2021 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | audio reviews> B Reviews> book reviews
Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events by Brent Spiner, Jeanne Darst
Genres: autobiography, humor, mystery, noir
Published by Macmillan Audio on October 5, 2021
Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository
From Brent Spiner, who played the beloved Lieutenant Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, comes an explosive and hilarious autobiographical novel.
Brent Spiner's explosive and hilarious novel is a personal look at the slightly askew relationship between a celebrity and his fans. If the Coen Brothers were to make a Star Trek movie, involving the complexity of fan obsession and sci-fi, this noir comedy might just be the one.
Set in 1991, just as Star Trek: The Next Generation has rocketed the cast to global fame, the young and impressionable actor Brent Spiner receives a mysterious package and a series of disturbing letters, that take him on a terrifying and bizarre journey that enlists Paramount Security, the LAPD, and even the FBI in putting a stop to the danger that has his life and career hanging in the balance.
Featuring a cast of characters from Patrick Stewart to Levar Burton to Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, to some completely imagined, this is the fictional autobiography that takes readers into the life of Brent Spiner and tells an amazing tale about the trappings of celebrity and the fear he has carried with him his entire life.
Fan Fiction is a zany love letter to a world in which we all participate, the phenomenon of "Fandom."
There's a fine line between parody and farce, and it feels like Brent Spiner tap-danced over it in both directions, multiple times, during the course of this story. If that dance turned out to be set to one of Frank Sinatra's greatest hits, or something else from the "Great American Songbook" I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised.
It might be best to go into this story not really thinking of it as, well, a story. It's more of a combination of homage and love letter. The "mystery" part of the story reads like an homage to the noir films of the Golden Age of Hollywood, complete with a reference to that classic image of noir, the painting Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, 1942 courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
It's also a love letter, to his friends and fellow crew members of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and to all of us who vicariously voyaged with them aboard the Enterprise-D.
But as a story, it goes over the top so much and so often that it pratfalls down the other side. At the same time, it mixes events from his real life in a way that intentionally blurs the line between fact and fiction to the point where the reader just has to hang on for the ride without attempting to figure out which is which.
So the story is grounded in what feels like the real, the real traumas of Spiner's childhood with his abusive stepfather, the real grief over the death of Gene Roddenberry which occurs during the course of the story. But the picture that hangs within that real framing is the story of a crazed fan stalking the actor and making his life his misery, while his attempts to find help to keep him safe and find his stalker send the story way over the top into the land of make believe.
At least I hope they do, because some of what happens can't possibly be real. Can it?
Escape Rating B: I'll confess that as much as I'm still a Star Trek fan, particularly the original series and Next Generation, I had no intentions of reading this book, until I saw the audio. The full cast audio with appearances by several of the Next Gen cast playing themselves – albeit a slightly exaggerated version thereof. And that's what got me to pick up the audio – and eventually the book because I needed to doublecheck more than a few things.
There is still plenty of animosity among the remaining members of the original series cast, even after 50+ years, but there were no such rumors about the Next Gen cast, and the idea that they would get together and do this for one of their members after all these years says a lot about the group dynamic. A dynamic that was on full display in this recording.
So the audiobook is both a blast and a blast from the past and I was all in for that. Fan Fiction is a tremendously fun listening experience, and hearing everyone play themselves made the whole thing a real treat even when the story itself doesn't quite hold up to examination.
I also have to say that, as weird as it is in yesterday's book where the author is a character in his own fictional story, it's even weirder when the author is a real-life character in a story that is basically fan fiction about his own life. Particularly in the bits where he alludes to his own romantic escapades. (He's married now, but he hadn't even met his wife in 1991 when this story takes place. So it's weird and meta but not quite THAT weird and meta.)
There's a saying about the past being another country, that they do things differently there. Fan Fiction, in addition to its bloody animal parts in the mail, bombshell twin detectives who BOTH have romantic designs on the author AND the stalker who gets stalked by yet another stalker, is also a trip down memory lane back to 1991.
That's 30 years ago, and we, along with the world, were a bit different then. Next Generation was in its 5th season, and still not all that popular in the wider world of TV no matter how huge a hit it was among science fiction fans. Next Gen was in syndication only at a time before the streaming juggernauts were even a gleam of a thing in a producer's eye. It was the author's really big break as an actor, and that was true for all of the cast except Patrick Stewart and LeVar Burton.
So we were all a lot younger then, childhood traumas were a lot closer in the rearview mirror and still being worked on and worked out, and no one knew then that Star Trek would become a multimedia colossus to rival Star Wars. None of us knew then what we know now, and that's true of the author and his attitudes towards his own celebrity.
Back to this story. The mystery/thriller aspects push the willing suspension of disbelief well past the breaking point. I half expected this to turn out to have all been a dream like The Wizard of Oz. But the full cast recording turns the whole thing into a delightful trip down memory lane as well as a hilarious send-up of acting and fame and celebrity and fandom. .
If you're a Star Trek fan, get the audio and settle in to hear some of your favorite characters tell you just one more story. Bits of it might even be true!
Posted in audio reviews, B Reviews, book reviews


Why are they starting Ken Irvin?
Anyone know why Irvin got the starting nod over Craver? I understand that he has more experience but wasn't the big preseason battle between Hawthorne and Craver? That tells me that those guys are the next best after Thomas. Besides if I'm not mistaken didn't Irvin drop 2 easy interceptions on Sunday? I gurantee you that Craver would've pulled both of those down. I would much rather see Hawthorne and Craver in there as starters against Favre this week.
From the looks of things you probably will see that starting lineup this weekend. With Fred Thomas hurt, who else is there?I like Craver but i too am afraid of his inexpierence.If the football Gods are with us this weekend, he\'ll play and have a great game.
This is probably the best week for craver to start. Green Bays inexperience at WR should make it a little easier to adjust. Good time to play both of them.
It should be fine. If Terry Glenn is your biggest threat, that isn\'t saying much. Favre seems to like Driver, and Ferguson,who knows. I would worry mor with Franks and the short passes, our linebacking crew should be on their toes, with Green and Franks.
And Glenn will probably either burn a big joint before the game or get injured this week or complain about his contract, a head case.
The only big playmaker they have is Green. If they stop him its a win. Farve is great, but he doesnt have enough weapons anymore. Driver had a decent game last week but only for a couple of series. He caught 4 passes on one drive and didnt do much the rest of the game. Green is the key if the LBs keep him in check and they play with the lead better than last week this should be an 2-0 start.


This course is intended for seafarers who are designated to provide medical first aid on board ship, in accordance with regulation VI/4(1-3) of the STCW Code.
Principles for dealing with accidents or other medical emergencies using available equipment and medical guidelines.
On completion of the course, delegates will be equipped with the required information to provide medical first aid on board ship.


Luke Chambers is a foreign and security policy analyst based in Glasgow. He graduated from Oxford in 2011 before joining the Royal Navy, where is currently a Lieutenant. His main interests are in liberal interventionism, democratisation, and human rights.


text:
Q: Node.js shows [object Object] instead of result.row I'm using postgresql version 11 and have a user with id=3 with a post field(text type). when I want to show the post from database it shows [object Object] instead of the post with id=3
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const { Pool, Client } = require('pg')
const connectionString = 'postgresql://postgres:1111@localhost:5432/netSecure'

const pool = new Pool({
    connectionString: connectionString,
})

app.get('/h', (req, res) => {
    pool.query('SELECT post from users where id=3', (err, result) => {
        if(err) return console.log('error in query',err);
        console.log(result.rows);
        res.render('posts.pug', {
            post: result.rows
        });
        res.end();
    });
app.listen(3000, () => console.log('http://localhost:3000'))

pug file with #{post}:
  body
    form(action='/posts',method='post')
        label(for='exampleFormControlTextarea1') Enter Your Post
        textarea(autofocus='', placeholder='Post your message here...')#exampleFormControlTextarea1.form-control(rows='3')
        button(type="button").send Send
    form(action='/logout',method='post')
        button.logout Logout
    p #{post}

Where did I make mistake?

A: [object Object] is the default toString representation of an object in javascript.
It seems that you only want to retrieve one post with id = 3. So first you need to extract one result because postgresql will give you an array of result no matter what.
And then, you need to process the JSON object so that it is not shown as [object Object]. For quick solution, you can use JSON.stringify()
So here is the snippet of your code
app.get('/h', (req, res) => {
    pool.query('SELECT post from users where id=3', (err, result) => {
        if(err) return console.log('error in query',err);
        // need to check if post exists
        let post = (result.rows.length > 0) ? result.rows[0] : null;
        let postInString = JSON.stringify(post);
        console.log(postInString);
        res.render('posts.pug', {
            post: postInString,
        });
        res.end();
    });

A: The problem seems to be that you are trying to console.log something that is not in string format; this is why you are seeing [Object object].
To log what you actually want, consider first turning the object into a string with JSON.stringify(result.rows).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Nailsea Little Theatre Re-opens After Pandemic
Theatre lovers in Nailsea can start looking forward to getting their drama fix again.
The town's Little Theatre is gearing up to re-open its doors after being closed for more than 18 months by the pandemic.
It has lined up a triple bill of events – including two new productions – to see off 2021 with a bang.
First is an Open Day at the theatre's Union Street base between 2pm and 6pm on Saturday 23 October when people are invited to tour the building, chat to members and find out about the things that go into putting on shows – everything from appearing on stage to lighting and sound.
The day will also showcase improvements the theatre is making to help audiences feel happy about returning to the building.
Chairperson Steve Allan said: 'We've not been idle during the pandemic and are installing two new systems – ventilation to constantly bring fresh air into the auditorium (and get rid of old air) and air conditioning to keep the temperature just right.
'We're also cutting seating capacity on show nights to give people more space.'
He added: 'We're very grateful for grants we've received to help keep us going during the pandemic and install the new systems. Locally, we're particularly grateful to Nailsea Community Trust.'
The two new productions lined up are:
• a night of comedy by Alan Ayckbourn—three one-act plays from his 'Confusions' series from Monday 22 November to the following Saturday
• a Christmas treat for kids from the professional Folksy Theatre with Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Little Match Girl' on Friday 17 December (two performances at 5pm and 7.30pm)
Tickets (£10 for 'Confusions' and £8 for children/£12 for adults for 'The Little Match Girl') are available by phoning 0777 298 1037.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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If none of these options are for you, do get in touch with us to see if another option can be worked out.
We are flexible and strive to help all potential customers take care of any removal tasks.
If you are looking for a half-day job, we will come up with a competitive quote that will allow for us to get to work.


text:
Christopher Johnson July 13, 2019
EnglishFeatured PostLiterature16 min read
Rate this short story
written by: Christopher Johnson
@cjohnsonwrite
At 36, Erik Gustafson was an Angry Young Man. Wrathful, irate, sore as a crab, waxy, hot under the collar, raging, fiery, wrought-up, fuming, foaming, in a red-hot passion, in a pucker, in a huff, in high dudgeon, infuriated, furious, hopping mad, rabid, foaming at the mouth.
The year was 1984, and Rebecca was the same age as he and Robert were ten and Dora was seven. They were going to camp at Acadia National Park, on Mount Desert Island along the coast of Maine. Erik and Rebecca were both virginal campers. Erik was the one responsible for hatching this idea, driven partly by a nascent interest in the outdoors and partly by a lingering resentment that during his youth, his family had never risked any sort of wilderness or even semi-wilderness adventuring.
The drive north from Boston was uneventful, but as they entered the park, Erik had the strange sensation that they were entering a land that was somehow Other. He'd grown up in the Midwest, where the land went on forever and harbored few secrets, and although Acadia was heavily traveled and was loaded with accouterments of civilization like carriage roads and tea houses and well-defined hiking trails, it still looked dangerously untamed to him. Somewhere in the rear apartment of his mind, he had the drift of a hunch that he had neither the skill nor the knowledge for coping with this environment. Gargantuan granite rocks rumbled along the coast of the Atlantic like disobedient blocks of nature, forming a hard-rock border along the edge of the gun-metal-gray ocean, which frothed with chaotic energy. Earth was engaged in a titanic struggle with the water. Acadia was discordant, jarring.
His irritation started as soon as they arrived at the campsite. To put up their newly purchased polyethylene tent, which he had purchased for $99.99 at Hilton Tent City near the Boston Garden, he naturally needed the poles, which he dumped out of the box in which they had been packaged. The poles plummeted onto the hard and unforgiving soil. They came in pieces and would have to be fitted together to support the tent. The pole pieces lay strewn on the ground like so many Pick-Up Sticks, and as he stared at the jumble of metal that crisscrossed the earth in front of him, his heart sank. How would he proceed?
He bent down and tried to figure out how the pieces would fit together. It was like solving a jigsaw puzzle with a million pieces, and Robert and Dory watched him as he began to figure out the puzzle. There were eighteen pieces, and he soon realized that each of the six completed poles would require him to fit together three pieces. The pieces, though, were of varying lengths and had to be matched just so to form a complete pole. He hurriedly fit all the pieces together, but the resulting poles weren't right. Some were too long, some too short. He slammed one of the poles to the ground. Still, the children watched him.
He yanked the pole pieces apart to start over. "Crap!" he muttered and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He picked up various pieces and once again started to fit them together. He tried putting them together differently, but still, the completed poles were of the wrong lengths. He closed his eyes. He could feel the eyes of the children on him. Frustration spread through him like an oily inkblot. He could feel his face reddening with blood. "Damn it!" he muttered. Dory had been standing beside her big brother. Now she inched behind him.
Rebecca was setting up the cook stove on the picnic table. Overhead, Erik noticed that clouds were gathering like thick clots of gray cotton. Rebecca saw what was going on with the tent poles. She walked over, glanced at the pole pieces strewn on the ground, looked at Dory standing behind Robert, and stared at Erik. She knew his moods. "Cool it," she said in a calm but firm voice.
He knew in his blaze of anger that she was right. Turning to the children, Rebecca said, "Hey, let's go see the ocean."
"All right!" they both answered with the enthusiasm of angels that had descended into the woods. They trundled off.
Erik took a deep breath, and gradually he cooled off. Finally, he succeeded in getting the pole pieces together properly and raising the unwieldy tent.
The three of them returned just around the time he raised the tent. Then it started to rain. God, did it rain! The word rain does not even begin to describe the conditions. It was a rain of Biblical proportions—a rain of forty days and forty nights. They had sited the tent on low ground. Soon the water began to creep like mercury beneath the tarpaulin on the ground and spread slowly but inexorably across the floor of the tent. They lifted their sleeping bags and put them on their suitcases so they would remain dry. The water soaked Erik's shaving kit. It invaded Rebecca's overnight bag.
In an instant, the rain destroyed the idyllic scene of perfect sunny skies that Erik had envisioned. Pines surrounded their campsite, and the needles dripped water like acid. Reality was falling desperately short of his expectations of perfection. Wearing parkas, the children began to play near the picnic table and accidentally knocked the cooler off the table. "Damn it!" Erik yelled. "Get away from there!"
Rebecca stomped over. Putting on her most authoritative voice, she commanded, "Cool it, Erik! Go away! Get out of here for a while!"
They were camping at the Blackwoods Campground, near the Atlantic Ocean, and he hiked the short trail to the ocean. There he sat. He stared at the water and seethed. The waves rolled in as if the unseen hand of God were pushing the water toward the shore. The sound, the sight, the regularity of the waves gradually soothed his soul. As he sat there, he didn't think. He simply watched the waves.
As he walked back to the campsite, he felt somewhat calmer. The rain let up, and they decided that it was time for a fire. Of course! A blazing fire around which they would gather to cook their hot dogs and beans and roast their heavenly marshmallows! It was part of the whole idyllic vacation movie that Erik had unrolled in his imagination. They gathered firewood and broke the smaller pieces of wood into kindling. Fortunately, he had thought to bring newspapers.
He carefully arranged the papers, kindling, and small branches into a pyramid. He lit the paper, and the fire started promisingly—very promisingly! The paper ignited into a blaze. They gathered round, anticipating the wondrous fire they would enjoy. The blaze hit the kindling and gave off not fire but smoke. Desperately, Erik bent down and blew with the full force of his lungs. The fire brightened briefly but soon was reduced to a thicket of billowing smoke. "The wood is too wet," Rebecca said.
"No, it's not," he said. He was going to get this damned fire going.
"Mom's right," Robert said.
He didn't look at his son. He blew and blew on the fire until he started to cough because his lungs hurt so much. He placed more paper on the fire and lit it, and it ignited into a beautiful fire. But once the paper was burned up, the flame disappeared once again into obscene clouds of smoke.
He sat down, humiliated. Robert and Dory stared at him. Rebecca said, "Let's go to the campground office and buy some dry firewood." The three of them tramped off to the campground office. While they were gone, he felt more acutely than ever the blackness that had descended on him. He sat on the bench of the picnic table, rested his chin in his cupped hands, stared into the woods. He felt isolated, like a comet spinning through the vastness of the universe. His shadow mood obscured everything. He was an intelligent, well-educated young man. On the surface, things were fine. He had a good job, and he was respected. But for reasons that were completely obscure to him, a venomous snake had sunk its fangs into his soul.
Rebecca and the children returned with dry firewood. Robert had watched Erik's previous efforts. Eager to help, the boy arranged the paper, kindling, and small logs into another pyramid. Erik watched him. The boy had olive skin, brown eyes, and long eyelashes, and his chin was somewhat recessed, a physical trait that he had inherited from Rebecca's paternal grandfather. He was impish and aggressive but also big-hearted. He projected an air of self-confidence that attracted other children to him. But Erik knew that Robert felt the pressure of living up to their expectations. Rebecca and he were both teachers and had been the oldest children in their respective families. They were perfectionists, and they wanted things done their way. He felt that Robert might carry a burden that was unseen to him and Rebecca. In the midst of his darkness, he felt proud of his son as he worked to build the fire.
They lit the newspaper, and Robert bent down on his knees and blew on the kindling until it caught fire. The fire burned orange and then grew whiter, and finally, the flames licked at the small logs and ignited them. In fifteen minutes, they had a full-fledged blaze. Finally, they ate their hot dogs and beans, which tasted glorious in the outdoors. Erik had a beer. The children looked at him sideways, and their voices were limned with tentativeness. They sat nearer to Rebecca, and Erik noticed the distance from him.
Slowly he felt the grip of anger loosen its hold on him. They dried out the tent as best they could and rolled their sleeping bags onto the floor. The others were soon sleeping, but Erik lay awake in the dark and trembled with shame and embarrassment. He felt as helpless as a two-month-old baby. He felt stuck in a morass of negativity. He felt like he had no business being a father--felt woefully unprepared for the role. As he lay in his sleeping bag, he realized that his anger that day had felt like a shark gliding with steely silence through the nether regions of the sea. The shark was silent yet broiling. It had knife-edged teeth hidden behind skin with the texture of sandpaper. The shark was the price of inchoate feelings, unexpressed impulses.
The next day, the rain let up enough that they could go on a hike led by a forest ranger. They gathered near the ocean, and the ranger explained what made Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island so unique. They were at the latitude where the northern boreal forest, dominated by evergreens like fir and spruce, met the deciduous forest of oaks, poplars, birches, and maples. The trees stretched their limbs toward heaven. Slowly the beauty of the pines, the spruces, the oaks, and the maples began to sneak some light back into Erik's darkened soul.
They walked west from the ocean, and the ranger pointed out different trees, ferns, and wildflowers. A light mist hung in the air like a shroud, but the sun managed to peek through once or twice. The incline was fairly steep, and the trail was muddy and crisscrossed with tree roots, which were slippery from the rain. The ranger led, followed in order by Rebecca, Robert, Dory, and Erik. Dory had on her rain parka, and in the crook of her left arm, she carried Louie. Ah, Louie!--the rubber frog that she had purchased with her precious allowance when they had driven into Bar Harbor during the drive north. Dory had immediately named her frog Louie. Erik had no idea why she had named him Louie. It was as if she had been waiting all her life to name a critter Louie.
She was fair-skinned, like Erik's family, with oak-brown hair and eyes as blue as cat's-eye marbles. For a seven-year-old, she was strong. Erik would wrestle with her and Robert, and she more than held her own. She had a direct way of wrestling. She waded right into it. Robert teased her, but she gave as good as she got. In her bedroom, she kept a menagerie of toy critters, and she named them, and they took turns spending the night in bed with her. She was scrupulously fair in arranging the order in which her critters snuggled with her.
Now, on the trail, she squeezed Louie, and he emitted the most amazing croak. Louie couldn't have been more than four inches long, but his mechanical croak resounded in the woods encircling them. When Dory squeezed Louie and he emitted that bellowing croak, she laughed with the complete abandonment of a seven-year-old. Erik dreaded to think that the darkness in him had invaded her sphere of light. The ranger stopped and told them about the vegetation of Mount Desert Island. Dory listened attentively, all the while cradling Louie and protecting him from the drops of moisture that buzzed down from the primordial pines and spruces.
They resumed hiking, and Dory carried herself forward steadfastly on her little legs. Erik was amazed by her energy. Her legs drove like little pistons. As he walked behind her, she and her little mechanical frog started to take him outside myself. She stepped inadvertently into a puddle of pure, unadulterated mud, and her boot got stuck as if it were glued to the earth. The mud was thick and black, and it gripped her boot like a vise. Erik bent down and carefully lifted her foot out of her boot. As she leaned on his shoulder, he turned to the problem of the boot stuck in the mud. He twisted the boot back and forth, and in a few seconds, he had freed it from Mother Earth's sticky hands. Grabbing a nearby branch, he scraped as much of the mud off the bottom of her boot as he could and put her foot back in the boot. "Thanks, Daddy!" she said.
That night, the rains returned, and Erik's emotions began to roil once again. Why, he screamed to himself, didn't the goddam air over Mount Desert Island ever dry out? It rained steadily all night. They had moved the tent to higher ground, but even then, water seeped under their blue plastic tarp.
By now, the others were asleep. Erik lit a match and looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. He grabbed their battery-powered lamp and lumbered out of the tent. Once again seething with anger, he held the lamp high and stumbled along the trail to the Atlantic. The waters churned with waves the color of dead bark. When he reached the ocean, he furiously stripped off his waterproof jacket and let the rain pelt him so that he could suffer even more. The rain pierced his skin like syringes, and he cursed it. He gloried in his suffering! At the top of his lungs, he screamed, "Goddam you, rain!" He screamed so loudly that he scorched his lungs. He returned to the tent. He was able to sleep.
After four rain-soaked nights, Rebecca and Erik surrendered. Erik called around and found a motel room in Bar Harbor. Neither Robert nor Dory was disappointed to cease their experiment in camping. They grinned and whooped and helped Erik and Rebecca yank the tent stakes from the hard and unforgiving soil. They packed the tent and the cookstove and their tarp and everything else and stuffed it all into the trunk. They drove to the motel. On the way, Erik thought, Well, maybe we gave up too soon. The male—the man of the family—he never gives up.
They reached the motel, and the rain resumed plummeting in sheets, in torrents. Erik knew they had made the right decision. The intrepid male surrendered to the fates of nature.
That evening, Erik and Rebecca took their children into the center of Bar Harbor for a lobster meal. They didn't have much money, but they had enough to cover the cost of the meal. They were at dinner, together, breaking bread. They all had enormous appetites. They stuffed dinner rolls into their mouths, which were so full that they could not talk for a minute. Then Robert and Dora started laughing. They laughed and laughed--at the absurdity of the rolls—at the absurdity of the week.
The children fell silent and waited for the lobsters to come. Then, out of the silence, Robert said, "Dad?"
Erik looked at him. His son's dark eyes were so naked that Erik felt as if he could sink into them. "Yes, Robert."
Robert trained those dark eyes on Erik. "You were scary." Erik could not look at his son. He turned his gaze on Dory, and she looked back into his eyes and nodded in silent agreement with her brother. He turned to Rebecca, and she stared at him and did not have to say a word. He looked down into his lap.
The lobsters came. He looked back up and watched as Rebecca patiently taught the children how to crack them open. He watched as the children sucked the meat from the claws as if they were feeding on the very marrow of life. Dory fed bits of lobster to Louie, still nestled in the crook of her arm, and he smiled.
That night, as they slipped into their beds in the cocoon of their motel room, he could not stop thinking about and wrestling with the events of the week. As he lay there in bed and listened to the steady breathing of Rebecca, Robert, and Dory, he remembered the spark of tenderness that he had felt as Robert had built the campfire, as Dory had freed her foot from the mud, as Rebecca had taught the children how to eat lobster. He felt the tenderness sneak into his heart, ready to be tended and permitted to live. That night, sleep came like an old blanket once lost and then found in a neglected corner of a house.
Christopher Johnson
I'm a free-lance writer based in the Chicago area. I've been a merchant seaman, a high school English teacher, a corporate communications writer, a textbook editor, an educational consultant, and a free-lance writer. I've published articles and essays in The Progressive, Snowy Egret, Earth Island Journal, Chicago Wilderness, American Forests, Chicago Life, and other magazines. In 2006, the University of New Hampshire Press published my first book, This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains. My second book, which I co-authored with a prominent New Hampshire forester named David Govatski, was Forests for the People: The Story of America's Eastern National Forests, published by Island Press in 2013. Lately I've been writing short stories.
Latest posts by Christopher Johnson (see all)
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The One Who Learns
The One Who Learns written by: David Dephy I am listening, owl. Maybe I am dreaming in this silent...


One crucial key to successful teaching and learning is creating personal connections with students both inside and outside of school. Knowing the students' outside interests, families, and home routines, and then using this information to connect in meaningful ways can have huge rewards in helping to construct happier, healthier, and smarter kids.
At Galaxy International School Uganda, teachers see their work as educating the whole student, rather than as merely delivering facts. To educate effectively, teachers must reach out to students' families in ways not traditionally imagined and help bridge the ever-widening gap between home and school, so that students realize they are known, cared about, and expected to achieve.
To this effect, Galaxy International School Uganda has initiated the "Home Visit" program which basically requires at least two teachers visiting the student and parent(s) at their home. During the visit, teachers will brief the parent about student's progress and may discuss specific needs of the student.


When she slipped on ice at the playground of her granddaughter's school, Debra injured her hamstring and sustained a bump to the head.
We pursued an injury in a public place claim on her behalf, securing Debra £3,000 in compensation.
INJURY SUMMARY After slipping on ice, our client sustained a tear in her hamstring, a bump to the head and bruising on her shoulder.
CASE RESOLUTION Case settled in October 2016 and £3,000 was awarded to the client.
In December 2012, Debra was taking her granddaughter to school when she slipped and fell on the school playground. On the morning of the accident, it was extremely cold and icy. However, because the school caretaker was absent, the playground had not been gritted as it should have been.
As Debra walked across the main playground, she suddenly, without warning, slipped on black ice and fell backwards onto the floor, landing on her side and hitting her head. After visiting her GP, it was found that she sustained a tear in her hamstring, a bump to the head, general stiffness and bruising on her shoulder.
Debra approached Jefferies Solicitors and we pursued a public liability claim against the council that ran the school on her behalf. Initially, liability was denied by the council. They asserted that the headteacher of the primary school had gritted the playground.
However, we investigated Debra's case further. We collected witness statements from parents who were at the school on the day of the incident, which helped to strengthen the claim. In October 2016, Debra's case settled and the council awarded her £3,000 in compensation.
Had a wintery slip that wasn't your fault? Jefferies Solicitors can help.
If you, like Debra, had an accident in a school or sustained an injury after slipping or falling because of someone else's negligence, you may be able to claim personal injury compensation. Get in touch with our expert team of solicitors to assess the validity of your claim. Call us on 0800 342 3206 or make an online enquiry today.


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Miami Goes 7 Weeks Without a Murder During Coronavirus
Hey Anti-Gunners, Something Doesn't Add Up - Miami Goes 7 Weeks Without a Single Murder During Coronavirus!
April 29, 2020 By Mark Chesnut
Gun-ban proponents claim that more guns lead to more crime. In fact, that fallacy is the very reason most gun-control laws are pushed by anti-gun legislators and gun-ban groups.
If that is true, however, why did Miami just go seven weeks without a murder for the first time in more than six decades at the very same time gun and ammunition sales were setting near all-time records?
Koco.com recently reported that Miami went seven weeks—Feb. 17 to April 12—without a single murder for the first time since 1957. According to the police chief, while "stay at home" orders played a role, the trend started in mid-February before social distancing was put in place.
Of particular interest to gun owners and other Second Amendment advocates is the fact that during those seven weeks when nobody was murdering anyone else in Miami, more guns were being sold to law-abiding citizens than nearly ever before. In fact, during the month of March—which falls within Miami's seven-week period—the FBI ran 2.7 million background checks for new gun sales, making it the second highest month in history for gun purchases!
While anecdotal, the Miami situation would seem to directly dispute the contention that more guns lead to more crime. In fact, even the anti-gun Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) admits that Americans use their firearms for self-defense quite often.
In a 2013 study titled "Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence," the National Academies Press reported:
"Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed. Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008."
It's likely many haven't heard about that study, as the CDC did nothing to publicize the self-defense aspect of the results. In fact, comparing 500,000 to 3 million defensive uses to 300,000 violent crimes as "at least as common" seems to be a feeble attempt to hide the fact that a little simple math shows gun usage to be nearly two to 10 times more frequent in favor of defensive use.
In contrast to the situation in Miami, New York, where restrictive gun-control laws result in few concealed carry permits and a very low number of firearm retailers, murders have jumped greatly the past few weeks.
According to the Daily News, the NYPD reported 10 homicides last week, compared to five in the same week in 2019. There were also 11 murders the week before that, compared to four in the same time period last year.
Not surprisingly, this surge in murders comes in a city where it's very difficult for citizens to acquire firearms for defense of themselves and their families, and where laws pertaining to those who do own guns make it very difficult for them to have a firearm on hand when violent crimes occur.
Fact is, researcher John Lott was right when he named his famous book on gun control, More Guns, Less Crime. At the very least, the recent drop in murder in Miami during record gun sales makes no argument for anti-gun advocates' contentions to the contrary.
SIGHTRON S6 5-30x56 ED Line of Premium Riflescopes: New for 2022


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Steve Cavanagh
Steve Cavanagh was born and raised in Belfast before leaving for Dublin at the age of eighteen to study Law.
He currently practices civil rights law and has been involved in several high profile cases; in 2010 he represented a factory worker who suffered racial abuse in the workplace and won the largest award of damages for race discrimination in Northern Ireland legal history.
He holds a certificate in Advanced Advocacy and lectures on various legal subjects (but really he just likes to tell jokes). He is married with two young children.
Follow Steve on Facebook at facebook.com/SSCav1 and Twitter @SSCav


There has been some controversy over my position at Pierson and I would like to take this opportunity to clear up some confusion if I can. First, I want to thank all of the teachers, staff members, friends in the community, parents and students who have come forward in my support and expressed concern over the circumstances surrounding this; your affection and encouragement means more than I can say.
Even though the food service department lost considerably less this past school year than they did at the end of the 2006-2007 school year or previous years with my salary and benefits included, the department still lost money. Rather than subsidize the lunch program as many school districts do, the Board of Education felt eliminating a position would be a more direct means to financial stability. In July my full time position as Food Service Director was eliminated. It was thought that because the current kitchen and dining room staff had been fully trained in their current duties that given the size of the district it would not be too much for them to absorb some of my duties within their current positions/salaries and no manager would be required. My position had civil service requirements, but as long as certain management duties I performed were now done by administration all requirements would be fulfilled.
While it may seem that I got the short end of that stick, this is common in smaller districts and was the responsible thing for the BOE to do. Although it truly pulled the rug out from under me and my life has changed entirely, it was not personal. If it were, I would not have been appointed as the musical theatre director for both the middle and high school for the current school year as well as the senior class advisor. Perhaps the elimination of my position could have been done differently, but remember that the BOE was elected to safeguard your interests as taxpayers and that was the basis of their decision.
Great strides were made in food services while I was there. Statistically, during our contract with Aramark we averaged 54 lunches daily; with Whitsons we sold about 78 lunches per day, and last year on our own 110 lunches per day were averaged (while this was reported from the district as 11%, we had 490 students enrolled at Pierson, so unless this percentage was applied using total enrollment from both Pierson and the elementary who are not offered lunch, it was more than twice that percentage).We went from the original contract food service that was little more than re-heating frozen fried foods to a self operating full service cafeteria. We served nutritious meals, ala carte and snack items prepared fresh on the premises; students were offered healthy choices in fresh fruits and vegetables, entrees prepared fresh daily, homemade baked goods and baked packaged snack items. We more than complied with, and in fact surpassed federal and state mandates for wellness, the national school lunch program and the Suffolk County health department receiving glowing reports from all during health inspections, audits, scheduled and spontaneous visits. We supplemented the income received for lunches by catering in-house events such as administrative meetings, awards ceremonies, science fairs, meals provided for poll volunteers, promotions for various groups, orientation programs and moving up ceremonies. These were catered events that were previously given to outside local sources and allowed us to add nearly $7,000 more to cover the costs of running a food service department (this figure was added after the audit report was submitted). In addition we implemented the much needed and well-received breakfast program. I developed inter-department accounts to save the district time and money, allowing home economics and various groups to order through the cafeteria at cost. Plans of providing the catering for the sports banquet ($5,000) were discussed as well as possibilities of providing Bridgehampton School District with their lunch needs and offering our elementary students a bagged lunch program. We were looking into an after school snack program and/or providing take-along snacks for our sports programs.
All of the additional food services we did provide and were looking to provide generated or would generate supplemental income to the department to help pay the expenses we were not covering. While it was never the goal to make a profit from providing students with meals, the department does need to be self-sufficient. Adding additional services as discussed may have been a means to that end, but because we were very young in our self-operation the BOE felt it too risky to chance some of these additions just yet.
Your lunch program is in good hands; the cooks and cashier are capable community members and mothers of students who brought collective professional food service experience to those positions when they were hired. They will be maintaining the program at the quality level the students are used to with the goal of breaking even financially. I would encourage you to support the program in any way that you can. For every full lunch served to students the district receives a monetary reimbursement from state and federal funding sources; this is to encourage students to make healthy choices. In addition to the reimbursements, the more full lunches that are sold the more commodity foods are made available to the district directly. Enroll your student in the prepaid lunch program, you won't have to worry about their lunch daily and they will be provided a balanced meal; if you cannot afford lunches you may qualify for the free or reduced lunch program for your student(s), the district receives reimbursement and commodities for those as well; it is very discreet and the child will never be overtly identified. Breakfasts are included in these programs also. Seniors, you are of course enjoying your off campus privileges this year, but it can get very costly! Why not get your lunch in the cafeteria first, and then go off campus? Perhaps the cooks could look into the possibility of a grab 'n go lunch for seniors that would be packed and ready at the start of your lunch period. Faculty participation has steadily increased over the past two years, yet there were still those that could not make it down to the cafeteria for various reasons. Another possibility would be a pre-ordered packed lunch or sandwich of the day delivered to the faculty rooms in the mornings between breakfast and lunch. If everyone only buys drinks or snacks occasionally in the cafeteria now, and the lunch program is re-evaluated again at the end of this year and found a financial liability, you won't have a place to buy anything in the building in the future. BUY LUNCH!!
 Again, thanks to all for their words of encouragement and support.
As a former Sag Harbor resident that had his favorite old Raleigh bike stolen about ten years ago, I'm amazed to read in the police reports of your paper that this continues on a weekly basis.
Surely the police department could place a decoy bike with a hidden locator device and track these thieves.
Your editorial "Protecting the Trees" in the September 18 issue of The Express is excellent and I agree with you completely. As an 82-year-old, life-long resident of Sag Harbor, I feel many of the changes that have occurred over the past decade are often more of a minus than a plus. Now, a lovely 100-year-old oak tree is to be chopped down because there have been three accidents in the last two years where that oak stands, on Jermain Ave. There have also been thousands of cars traversing Jermain in those last two years. I can't help but wonder why three accidents is a valid reason for a — seemingly — quick decision to chop down that tree.
I am in no way comparing the life and safety of a person to the loss of a tree, I assure you. However, I have to question what caused those three accidents. Not the tree. Cause was either excessive speed —Â in a 25 mph zone, —Â driving under the influence or, very simply, a poor driver. To hit a tree so hard that the car flips over and lands on the other side of the road is, to me, a definite indication of one of those reasons. As you wrote, there must be other alternatives including insurance dealings and the worry of lawsuits, and they should be seriously considered.
I just want to let you know that more people attended your wake and funeral that attended a home game at Marlin Stadium in Miami. If you remember, I sent you the Palm Beach Post which had a picture of an empty stadium with less than 400 fans in the stands. In fact, the relief pitchers were counting heads as the game went on.
All of the times that you drove me to Islip as I caught the 7:15 a.m. flight to Palm Beach. I still owned the Ideal and commuted monthly to Florida. You scared me one time because you stopped for gas! I thought I would miss my plane.
All of the trade shows we attended in New York City. When we hopped on the Jitney, 80% of the bus knew us and the other 20% were trying to figure what celebrities we were.
All of the dinners we ate at John Ducks with Paul from Huntington Tobacco. We shared him as a salesman because many of our products overlapped. Paul always had the duck and ate with his mouth open and you and I would comment on such a slob he was on the way home.
All of the lunches we shared over the years. Whenever I came to Sag Harbor, I would come in your store and yell at the top of the stairs: "Philly Lunch!" Lisa was so happy to get you out of the store.
All of the porch parties at Jane Harris's house. Attending were Tom and June Bubka, Jack and Judian, Yazmine, Jane and of course Jackie and I. Since I hosted these parties we only drank champagne. The last party was the summer of '07 and I cooked striped bass. You can't find striped bass in Boca! We used to ask strangers to take our picture on the porch.
You backed out of my driveway this past winter going back to your hotel room. We had spent the night enjoying Palm Beach with our wives. We had dinner at Taboo, a very famous restaurant. You ordered pizza, which shocked me and upset Roseanne. Ed Robertson, from Sag Harbor, was our driver, whom I hired to surprise you.
We hugged each other good-bye and off you went. I told you I would see you this summer. I regret so much now that Jackie and I didn't come to Sag Harbor this summer. Please forgive me for that. I attended your wake and funeral to say good-bye to you and support your family. They knew how close we were. I even stayed at Ted's house the entire four days I was home.
You and I were both blessed to live and work in Sag Harbor. You stayed and my circumstances made me leave. Well Phil, you brought me back home and I want to thank you. I promise I'll stay in touch with your family. May you rest in peace my friend. I love you.


D'Youville is proud to serve our student veterans as a Yellow Ribbon institution by supporting the Post-9/11 GI Bill for veterans.
The Yellow Ribbon Program allows institutions of higher learning such as D'Youville to voluntarily enter into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to fund tuition expenses and fees that exceed the annual cap established by Congress.
D'Youville will cover the costs of tuition and fees that exceed the $20,235 cap, as a benefit to eligible veteran-students.
Note: Veterans under this program are not eligible for the D'Youville Veterans Tuition Waiver (VTW) or any other D'Youville grant, waiver, or scholarship since the veteran's entire tuition and fees for each semester are paid in full by the VA and/or D'Youville.


You enjoyed Horsey Racing? Come back often since we add new Horse Racing Games every day on HorseGames.net!
Horsey Racing is a side scrolling horse racing game. This is a simple, but exciting flash miniclip.
You have to choose between a quick race and the tournament mode. If you simply want to try the quick race mode, you will have to be faster than one other horse and the game will start instantly. If you choose tournament mode, you will be able to select your horse from three available ones. After you make your pick, the race with start and you will have to defeat the other two horses. When the countdown reaches 0, you have to press the left mouse click for the horse to start running. After that, you can make it run faster or slower by changing the position of your mouse; if your pointer is located on the left side, the horse will run as fast as it can, but you might hit the obstacles. This is why you should keep the pointer on the middle of the screen. When a simple fence appears, you just have to click and the horse will jump. When a larger fence appears, you will have to double click for the double jump. If you hit the obstacle, your horse will stop for a couple of seconds. If this happens 10 times in a single race, you will have to start over. There are many powerups which can be collected in Horsey Racing and you can even make your horse fly for a few seconds.
In the end, Horsey Racing is a great horse racing game and the controls are very easy to get used to.
Horsey Racing has been played 97831 times by our visitors. This horse game is available from our collection of Horse Racing Games. Horsey Racing is hosted on HorseGames.net, your number one place for horse games of all type.