In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 11/52

Nine books this week - that is 21st to 28th October.

Three of them were a series that I'd read before, The Marianne Trilogy.  They're by my favouite author, Sheri Tepper and they're not overly long - less than 200 pages each.  Really, the three together are basically the same as one of her other novels, though they are all unique stories.  The first two books seem to follow on from one another, dealing with the same overarching problem, while the third is an adventure with the same characters.  I wonder if it was intended to be longer than a trilogy at one point?  Or intended to be two books, and then she had nother idea?

I also reread The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making and The Grl Who Ruled Fairyland - for a Little While.  The latter is a short story exploring the backstory of the main villain of the former.  It's a nice bit of semi-meta fiction; it's a fairytale set in a world that tries to tie together other fairytale tropes.  Slightly post-modernist, in the way that it's aware of other stories and that readers will also be aware of other stories and tries to go beyond that.

Feeders and Eaters, Being an Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabus and Outrageous Tales from the Old Testament were all graphic novels in the Gaiman HumbleBundle I've mentioned previously.  Heliogabus was the best of them though Outrageous Tales did cover many of the good bits of the Old Testament.

Finally, Dare Me is a book I first read several years ago.  It's a tale of obsession, set in the world of cheerleading; eating disorders, combined with cliques, combined with the drive to be a good athlete.  All very intense and claustraophobic.  Megan Abbott has a wandering yet sharp sentence style, which makes the book feel like you're always a little out of breath, trying to keep up.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 36/52

The guy who came to my birthday party 36 weeks ago is now the guy I'm moving in with.  Funny how that works.

Three books last week; Maus, Jinian Footseer and The Season of Passage.

Season of Passage is a Christopher Pike book for adults, which means it has all of the excellent drama, and blonde, blue-eyed hindus, and dramatic sci-fi/fantasy, but how his characters get to swear and have sex.  Excellent.

Maus is a true story; the author's father tells him about living through WW2 as a Jew.  Jewish people are presented as mice, Germans are cats, Polish people are pigs and Americans are dogs.  I understood why when four people were hung and I really appreciated that I was looking at mice and not humans.

Jinian Footseer is my favourite book, which I've discussed multiple times before.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 32/52

Three books last week, all new.  Raising Steam, The Girl Who Just Appeared, and The Steerswoman.  Two of them I bought very recently.  The third, Raising Steam has been on my to-read list for a while.  I read it last week because it seemed like the right time.

Knowing the circumstances under which it was written may be affecting my opinion, but it seems somewhat flimsy at times.  The jokes are cruder and more obvious.  It feels like the tone of the book is trying too hard to mimic earlier instalments.

The Girl Who Just Appeared is about a woman who was adopted.  The only hint to her birth family is the name and address on her birth certificate.  When that address comes up for rent she decides to move in and finds an old diary under the floorboards.  Great beginning, interesting book.

The Steerswoman is about a guild of truthtellers.  A steerswoman - or man, though they are rarer - is bound to truthfully answer any question they are ask, as long as their questions are answered in return.  The second you refuse to answer a steerswoman's question, you are under their ban and they will never answer a question for you again.  The book follows one specific steerswoman, who is investigating strange crystals that were strewn across the landscape some thirty-thirty-five years before.  Late eighties feminist hard sci-fi heavily disguised as fantasy, which happens to be my favourite genre (see Jinian Footseer).

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 22/52

I read eleven books this week, which is probably a record for this year (not for all time; a while back, I read thirty books in one week, just because I was bored).

A lot of the books I read were part of the Horror High series. It turns out that I had already read all but one of these. This wasn’t apparent right away, because they’d changed all the names.

Bizarrely, the horror high series is a reprint of several point horror books. The only change is a simple find and replace on the names. So, Althea becomes Alexandra. Devnee becomes Bethany. Lacey becomes Holly (a change I did not approve of), Roxanne is Laura, Randy becomes Ben, and Shannon is still Shannon, for some odd reason.

My mother collected point horror and similar books, and I read a lot of them as a teenager and pre-adolescent. They are oddly comforting to me. My mother has begun clearing out her clutter by giving the books to her mother, which is where I found them and claimed them. I remember seeing these as a teenager – I think – but I don’t recall actually reading them then.

The first two Horror High books – Toxic Beauty and Killer Instinct – are the second and third books in Caroline B Cooney’s Vampire trilogy. I love this trilogy. The vampire is a dark, rotting mass of shadows who tempts people to wish for things and then pay him back with other people’s lives. In the final book, Lacey and five other teenagers decide to party in the now abandoned mansion, and the vampire decides to make them choose which five will leave and which one will stay. I first read this when I was about fifteen and I loved it. I loved Lacey. I loved that she was strong-minded and quick-thinking, even though all her “friends” and her younger brother thought of her as an unexciting airhead. I also quite liked the name ‘Lacey’ which is a bit more unusual than ‘Holly’.

Date with Death, or Diane Hoh’s Prom Date was the only Horror High I hadn’t read before. I quite liked it. 230 pages of teen horror fiction.  Very comforting.

The Starlight Crystal isn't really aimed at teenagers, but it is by Christopher Pike who wrote quite a few point horror books and other books I loved.  I liked this one.  It's like a cross between The Forever Wars and Downtiming the Nightside or "- All You Zombies -".  It has romance and time stuff and some spirituality.  I liked it.

I listened to Season 4 and Season 5 of Clare in the Community too.  Not much more to say there; there are seven or eight seasons in all.

I read Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness for a bookgroup.  I think I might have read it before, but I can't recall whether I actually have or not, so that should tell you how interesting I found the plot.  The world building was really interesting, but the actual book was a bit meh.

The Water's Rising is by Sheri Tepper, my favourite author.  It's the sequel to Plague of Angels, and the prequel to Fish Tails which was released on Boxing Day and which ties together the series which contains my favourite novel of all time, Jinian Footseer.  I pre-ordered it, and it was delivered to my Kindle but I've been nervous of starting it, in case it disappoints me.

Finally, The Golden Slipper is a nice little book of detective stories by Anna Katherine Green.  It was published over a hundred years ago, and so is out of copyright.  The detective is Violet Strange, a Victorian society lady.  It's like Sherlock Holmes meets Totally Spies.

I need to apologise for the late post.  I sent the image to myself at work, so I could work on it in quiet moments, but those turned out to be totally non-existent.

Darker than Your Wonderland, Chapters 19-21

Part 6 is here.

19: Enigma

Rose and Scorpius' friendship wasn't the same, after that. She couldn't forget how Aphelocoma had looked at her, like she wondered why Rose was talking to her brother. It made Rose wonder why, in fact, she was talking to Scorpius.

They still spent some time together, but not like they used to. They'd study together, in the Ravenclaw common room but they no longer sat around and read books with each other.

Rose missed him, deeply. She missed sitting with him for hours, neither of them needing to say anything at all. She missed talking about books with him. She missed watching his face, unguarded as he read, especially now that she only saw it guarded, in front of others.

He was so good at keeping his face guarded. His natural expression was the one that made him seem haughty and that served to keep people away, as he preferred. He rarely showed true happiness or pride, not in any obvious ways.

Rose heard people mutter about his family sometimes, particularly Gryffindors, who were still deeply suspicious of the Malfoys. He never showed that he'd heard that, either.

Scorpius Malfoy was an enigma. Rose wished they could go back to the days when she'd been the person he didn't guard against, but she didn't know how.

She didn't even know where to start.

She didn't even try.

20: Clearly-

It was in February that she overheard Aphelocoma talking with her friends. Rose was waiting for Al, sitting in an alcove by the Slytherin common room, when Aphelocoma walked out, surrounded by her friends.

"The Weasley girl?" Aphelocoma was saying in response to a friend's question. "I guess that's all over. Merlin knows why they were ever friends in the first place. She's clearly-"

Aphelocoma's voice faded, as she drew further away from Rose. Hidden in her alcove, Rose was red with fury. She was clearly what? Too poor? Too common?

Fuming, Rose marched off in the other direction, deciding that she'd see Al later when she'd cooled down. She headed for the library, but abruptly turned around when she saw Scorpius and headed off to spend the rest of the day hiding in her dorm.

A week later, Rose had decided that enough was enough. At breakfast, she screwed up her courage and sat next to Scorpius instead of with the other girls from her year. He smiled at her when she did, a genuine smile.

Rose didn't often take the time to reflect on it, but she knew that Scorpius wasn't close to anyone except herself and his sister. There were people he spent time with, but none that he was really close to.

She took a book from her satchel and showed it to him under the table. The Visitor, it was called, by the same author as Beauty.

"Come with me after classes?" she asked. "Let's go read, like we used to."

"Yes," Scorpius said, smiling again, his fleeting, genuine, smile. "Anywhere in particular you wanted to go?"

21: The Shadow

She took him to the room of requirement, a place her mother had told her about. Today, it had a roaring fire, two cosy armchairs, and a plate piled high with little cakes and biscuits.

They talked about Beauty first, the book he'd given her. Looking at the publishing date, Rose knew that Snape must have bought the book shortly after her parents had started at Hogwarts. She wondered if he'd been thinking of Lily; it seemed more feminine than his usual tastes. She wondered if he'd thought himself akin to the lover who was believed long dead, and abandoned, but was found and reclaimed, almost too late.

Scorpius' gift The Visitor, a book about a future world where people had forgotten the present, and misunderstood the meanings of mundane items. Where people thought that muggles living today were magic, and that the simplest match stick was evidence of their great power. Rose found it frightening, how knowledge could be so easily lost between generations and superstition grown in its place and she thought Scorpius would be interested in that idea, too.

They settled down to read companionably by the light of the fire, in peaceful silence except when they wanted to discuss something in one of their books.

For the next three months, they were back to their old friendship. They were happy. The only shadow, as Rose saw it, was that of his parents.

Part 8 is here.

In Which We Discuss Eating Animals You Can Talk To

There are quite a few stories out there with characters who can speak to animals, but very few then go to deal with the dilemma of eating them.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three.

Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is an excellent, novel-length Harry Potter fanfic which imagines that Lily was kind to Petunia, and as a direct result, Petunia married a scientist and was more loving towards Harry.  Harry Potter-Evans-Verres is a scientifically-minded rationalist who does lots and lots of interesting things at Hogwarts, and I very highly recommend giving it a read.  However, what we are concerned with here is what he does when he finds out about Parselmouth, and hears of other spells that can give animals cognisance.  He diligently researches exactly which foods are likely to have come from sentient creatures and avoids those he isn't sure of.

In Jinian Footseer, Jinian, who can talk to animals, doesn't eat anything explicitly mentioned as not being vegetarian in the first book.  In the second and third, she does explicitly eat meat.

In The Fairy Godmother, part of Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series, Elaina drinks dragon blood and begins to understand all animal speech.  After listening to the chickens for five minutes she decides it's okay to eat them because they're stupid.

In Which We Discuss Tattoos

I have two tattoos so far; a red butterfly on my ribcage, and ivy on my inner thigh.  I got them both done at the same time, a few years ago, and I adore them.  I'm planning to get another soon.

My red butterfly - nicknamed Patrick - was inspired by the Project Zero/Fatal Frame games, particularly the second one, Crimson Butterfly.  It was really anything to do with the game itself - it was the end song, Chou or Butterfly.  There's a line in which I first saw translated as "See, I can flutter better than you thought".  I liked the song, and I liked that sentiment.  Other parts of the song - particularly the start of the chorus which loosely translates to "burned down/burn on" also appealed to me.  I've struggled with depression since my early teens, so this idea of burning, destruction, etc, followed immediately by the idea of "see, I can flutter better than you thought" spoke to me.  It spoke of recovery and hope.

I started using the red butterfly as a custom smilie to sign off forum posts.  I was about seventeen then.  When I was twenty-one or twenty-two and getting my ivy tattoo, I asked them to take five minutes to put my butterfly on me. It was a spur of the moment decision which was exactly right.

My ivy was a little less straightforward.  I started planning that tattoo out in early 2007 when I was eighteen.  I knew I wanted it to be a twining ivy design on my left inner thigh.  I liked the idea of it being slightly seductive; you'd see the edge of it below a miniskirt and wonder how high it went.  I also wanted my tattoos to be somewhere I could see them, and I preferred them to be somewhere that was hidden by default.  Not because I'm ashamed of them; because I like to customise my look with wigs and different outfits and make-up, so I didn't want anything permanent on display.

Ivy as a symbol had been in my head for a while.  I associate it with my maternal line; my great-grandmother's cottage was covered in it, and there are paintings of ivy in my grandmother's current home.  It was always around when I was a child.  I also like that it's tenacious and stubborn.  That appealed to me too.

I decided to have my tattoos done after I was raped for the second time.  It was part of recovering; I wanted to reclaim my body as mine and I wanted it to hurt so the knowledge really burnt into me.  The tattoos I'd been planning for years seemed the best way to do that.  I'm glad I didn't try to be too 'deep' or referential with them; I could so easily have gone for a relevant quote or something more objectively symbolic which was easier to explain, but also less personal.  That wouldn't have been right for me.

I've often thought that the way I feel about my tattoos is the way I'd like to feel about anyone I marry.  The voice in your head should say "YES THAT ONE" as loudly as possible.  When they ask "I do", the response should be "You're damn right I do".

Since I've been struggling with another bout of depression recently, I've been thinking of getting another tattoo if I reach a certain date.  I'm thinking November.

I want a castle on a hillside.  The hillside will be my right hip, and will follow the curves of my body.  The castle will be a rook, ie, the chess piece.  It's a castle imitation.

The main idea comes from the song Castle Imitation, which appears at the end of the game Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter.  You see, in that game, there's a bonus dungeon.  Fifty floors of battles, no saving, limited inventory, starting with a level 1 party.  Takes about eight hours.  I completed it over a weekend; the first time, I died on the fiftieth floor, so I tried again the next day and finally made it through.  Then I defeated the final boss - which was MUCH easier - and finished the entire game.

The basic premise of Dragon Quarter is that the entire society lives underground.  Your party are trying to reach the surface and the mythical 'sky'.  You start 1000 metres below ground and work your way up. 

So, the end of the game; the combination of my having spent sixteen hours over two days finishing that damn dungeon and the fact that my characters finally got out of the darkness and felt the sunlight for the first time in their lives...it was a good moment.  I had a sense of complete and utter relief when I heard that ending song, Castle Imitation.   I still feel that when I hear the song now.  Just a sense of...it's over, it's done, you did it, you can rest now.  I've felt relief on other occasions, of course, but this was the most distilled version.  Every other time, it was tempered with something else, and it was more complicated, and it wasn't really over.  This was a game; it was a discrete experience that wasn't connected to anything but itself.  That's why that feeling wasn't diluted, and that's why that's the memory I want to commemorate.

It reminds me of my favourite line from A Streetcar named Desire; "Sometimes, there's God, so quickly". I've used that on occasions when I've felt that feeling of relief; on suddenly having a job offer, or receiving money when you didn't know how you were going to pay all the bills that month.  I'm an atheist and I'm not a huge fan of the play otherwise, so I don't want to ink anything more strongly connected onto me.  It's just a nice little bonus in this case.

The song has a line in it; "Ikite, ikite, ikite, ikite, ikite...".  It translate to "I live, live, live, live live...".  I like that.  It reminds me of other things, most notably my favourite line in my favourite novel, Jinian Footseer.  Jinian is depressed, and is suffering from total emotional numbness.  Bartelmy shocks her back into feeling, and asks if she would rather be alive than dead, even if it hurts.  Jinian replies;  "I would rather be alive.  Even if it hurts".

I would rather be alive.  Even if it hurts.  That's the other thing I want my tattoo to say.  I'm alive, and I'm okay, and I got through it, and when bad things happen sometimes there will be god so quickly, and I would rather be alive even if it hurts.

In Which We Discuss Books I've Read Recently

I kind of lost track of noting down the books I'd read each week.  I'm tempted to begin again; I recently turned 26, right between Into the Fourth at Trebizon and The Myth of the Money Tree, so it wouldn't be too difficult to do posts on the books I read every week aged 26.  I'll think about it; I'm already one and a half behind for that.

You can see I've been rereading the Trebizon series.  I read a couple of them as a child, though I never had the entire set.  They're £2.99 each on Kindle, and they take about half an hour each.  They're set in a boarding school in Cornwall, and were originally published in the late eighties and early nineties.  Very simple, but sweet.  They're quite comforting.

I'd been meaning to get ahold of a copy of Alison Bechdel's Funhouse for ages.  I bought it from Foyles in London.  I've been stressed and depressed recently, so a friend took me down there first class, installed me a Canary Wharf apartment, gave me £200 and a pre-loaded Oyster Card and told me to have fun.  It was fun, until I realised that I was actually still pretty depressed and got taken to hospital.  Funhouse probably seems an odd choice in those circumstances; it's autobiographical, about Bechdel dealing with her own sexuality, and her father's sexuality and suicide.  It didn't bother me, mostly because I didn't personally relate to the issues of Bechdel's father.  I've never struggled with repressing aspects of my personality - my issues are more to do with my impulsiveness.

The scooter book I read because I took my CBT at the end of July.  Didn't pass - couldn't get the hang of the throttle in the short time we were allowed.  Authority and Looking for Alaska I read for bookclubs.

Mounted by the Minotaur  I read purely out of curiosity.  Someone at one of the aforementioned bookclubs had pointed out the existence of dinosaur and mythological erotica on amazon, and I couldn't help but read some of it.  It was free!

Plague of Angels, Last Girlfriend on Earth, Amanda's Wedding and Jemima J were all books I love, and I found it comforting to reread them recently.  I woke up early, the first night I spent with a man I really - loved?  Wanted? - and read a hundred pages of Amanda's Wedding lying next to him.  That's over now.  Plague of Angels was also for a bookclub, this Sunday.

On Gold Mountain by Lisa See was quite interesting.  I've read and loved a few of her books before, and I didn't realise she was mixed.  It was quite interesting reading about the history of a Chinese family in America.  I'm mixed Indian/British, so my family history isn't the same, but there are parallels with other mixed people.

Sharp Objects and The House We Grew Up In are both by authors I've liked in the past, so I thought I'd give these new novels a go.  I didn't like Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects as much as Gone Girl but it was pretty good.  The House We Grew Up In was pretty good too, but not as good as my favourite Lisa Jewell novels - One Hit Wonder, or A Friend of the Family or The Making of Us.

Soul Identity  had an interesting premise; it's about a world in which people can track reincarnation by the pattern in your eyes.  There's no way to recover memory or experiences, beyond leaving a diary for your future self, so that form of reincarnation doesn't seem to have any practical value.  If I don't have my body or my memories or my personality, am I still me?  Purely because the pattern in my eyes is the same?  I'm not totally sure I'm on board with this.  I'd rather gain immortality by not-dying, personally.

The two cookbooks I mostly read in order to get them off my unread pile.  Nothing too special in them, although I did finally use my slow cooker for something, which was nice.  Finally, the poetry; I have a collected edition of Sophie Hannah's poems, but they don't include anything from Hotels Like Houses.  Plus, the man I mentioned earlier was talking a lot about joining the 27-club, and I wanted to show him Your Death is Not Allowed.  He turned 28 last Sunday, so at least I don't need to worry about that.

In Which We Discuss Reading for Book Clubs

You may recall, I attended a bookclub several years ago.  They were reading Frankenstein, which I'd been meaning to get to for years.  It was an okay evening, but the next few books were things I'd never felt any interest in, so I stopped going.

I've often felt resentful over being forced to read things I'm not interested in.  I think this stems from being forced to read specific books at school.  We'd always read as a group, and it was so slow.  If I'd been allowed to read myself, it would have taken half the time.  But, no, I had to listen to some eejit stammering over words and taking ages to come out with the simplest things.  So frustrating.  So I think I probably had a similar issue with bookclubs suggesting I read things I didn't want to.

My feminist group started a bookclub about a year ago.  At first, my attendance was patchy - couldn't always afford the book, couldn't always get time off to go, sometimes just completely forgot.  Now I'm working the first problem's solved, and I've booked those days off as holiday for the rest of the year.  I get most of then back as my natural rest days anyway.

It helps that it's a small group, and it's amongst people I know and it also helps that it covers a topic I like, so I find reading the books quite interesting and rewarding.

I've started going to another bookclub since then.  A coworker recommended John Scalzi's Red Shirts to me, and when looking at MeetUp a little while later, I noticed a local group was planning to read it.  I enjoyed that meeting, and went to the next one, since it was sci-fi themed and I was free.  Also, because the book had happened to be sitting on my unread shelf for a few years.  Again, it's a small group of people that I like, and the books are things that I'm interested in.  Since we're all fairly fast readers, they've started a midweek book group, as well as the general one, which I've also been going to.  So that's three!

This month, I've actually chosen two of the books.  Sheri Tepper's Plague of Angels, and Colette Dowling's Myth of the Money Tree, both books I've read and enjoyed previously.  I'm quite looking forward to discussing both of them!

I've also been rereading The Dice Man, which I haven't read in a good five years.  I'm still listening to Firestarter on audiobook, though I stopped for a bit.  Making it a daily habit on HabitRPG has really helped me get back into it.  I'm also listening to The High Lord intermittently.

In Which We Discuss Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind blew me away.

Ha!  Pun!

I watched Gone with the Wind on Christmas Day, and picked up the book shortly after that.  I've owned it for a while - almost ten years - but had never read it.  I don't know why.  Maybe because I didn't have much idea of what it was about, and it's over a thousand pages long.

Anyway, I really liked the movie, so I decided to pick up the book.

Warning: Spoilers for Gone with the Wind Beyond Here!

Firstly, I loved Scarlett.  She's a ruthless bitch.  She's accused of being selfish, and it's true that she doesn't take much consideration of other people's feelings.  But, really, would a selfish person break themselves to support others like she does?

I also loved Rhett.  He and Scarlett deserve each other, in a good way and a bad way.

I loved how readable the book was.  It was over a thousand pages long, but the only thing that put me off about that was the idea of trawling through it.  Actually reading it was easy.

I was aiming to write a really thorough review and explanation of this book, but now I come to try to do it, I find I have no original thoughts.  Only fangirl squeals.

Oh, wait.  I do have one observation to make.

In Sheri Tepper's Grass, Marjorie observes that her husband's fiery personality is at odds with her own.  She wants to know him gently, to observe him at arm's length.  He wants to know her by possession.  He can either be up close or far away; he has no middle ground.

Rodrigo, Marjorie's husband, reminds me of Scarlett and Rhett, while Ashley is more like Marjorie.  Their unhappy marriage is something like how I imagine Scarlett and Ashley would have ended up, if Scarlett had her way.

In Which We Discuss The Tenth Circle

Warning; This Post Contains Spoilers for The Tenth Circle.

Daniel Stone is a perfectly nice, normal, suburban man. His wife is a college professor, so, as a comic book artist, he works from home and takes care of their daughter, Trixie, who is fourteen years old, and madly in love with her first boyfriend, Jason.

Or so her parents believe. Like most teenagers, Trixie needs her space, and her privacy, and to this end, has begun giving her parents information on a need-to-know basis. What they don't need to know is that she and Jason broke up. And Trixie will do anything to get him back.

So, she attends a party at her friend Zephyr's house, with the sole intention of flirting with everyone possible in order to make Jason jealous. This is one of those teenage parties where the soul objective is to 'hook up' with anyone or everyone. It's the kind of party where games like Rainbow are played. In Rainbow, each girl wears a different coloured lipstick, and gives oral sex to random guys. To put it crudely, the boy with the most decorated cock at the end of the evening wins.

Trixie isn't entirely comfortable with this, and drinks a little more than she intended to. By the end of the evening, she, Zephyr, Moss – Jason's friend, and Zephyr's love interest – and Jason end up playing strip poker. After a few awkward scenes, Zephyr and Moss end up upstairs, and Trixie is crying in Jason's arms in the living room. And that's when it happens. That's when he rapes her.

The news that Jason Underhill has been charged with rape sweeps through the small town. Jason is the golden boy, the star hockey player, the one with the bright and shining future, and a hockey scholarship just waiting for him.

Daniel Stone, Trixie's father, is furious. For years, since he met Trixie's mother, Laura, he's been trying to control his temper, and hide his past. Trixie has no idea that the gentle father she knows was once a dangerous rebel, that her mother was attracted to him solely because of the danger. Daniel's fear of becoming someone he doesn't want to be, of his daughter not recognising that person, comes through in his artwork, some of which is shown at the start of every chapter.

Daniel is currently working on a comic book called The Tenth Circle, loosely based on Dante's Inferno, which his wife has always been interested in. Dante's Inferno describes the nine levels of Hell, and similarly, Daniel's comic shows his main character, Duncan, traversing those nine circles of Hell in order to rescue his daughter ('Tracey'). When afraid or in danger, Duncan will turn into some kind of animal, in order to escape or defend himself. He has no control over this, and he knows that each time it happens he becomes a little less human. His one fear, like Daniel's, is that he will become someone his daughter will no longer recognise.

The theme of what Dante considers to be a sin is also something that is focused on in the plot. The first circle of hell, according to Dante, is reserved for those who did not believe in or worship their god. The second circle is reserved for adulterers and those who were overcome by lust, the third is for gluttons, the fourth is for the avaricious and the miserly who hoarded possessions, and the prodigal, who squandered them. The fifth circle is reserved for the wrathful, and sullen or slothful. In Picoult's interpretation, then, the first five circles are for those whose own desires were foremost to them, who only harmed or betrayed others as a side effect, not as their main intention. The sixth circle is for the heretics, while the seventh is for the violent, those who committed suicide, the profligate, and those who were violent against god, nature or art. Those two are for people who harmed other people or themselves intentionally through indulging their own desires. The eighth circle is for those who deliberately and knowingly committed evil; corrupt politicians and church officials, false prophets, seducers, thieves, and various falsifiers. The ninth circle is reserved for those who committed the worst crimes – the traitors. Cain, Antenor, Ptolemy, Judas, and Lucifer himself, the ultimate traitor.

Daniel somewhat agrees with Dante's classification of sins, with giving in to your own desires but intending harm as the least, and betraying a loved one the worst. But it's what he, and his character, find in the tenth circle of hell, something Dante never wrote about, which serves as the culmination of this theme. Laura considers this, too. Who worse to betray than a loved one?

Laura Stone, is wracked with guilt over what happened to Trixie. She has been conducting an extra-marital affair, which is why she wasn't at home or answering her phone that night. She was breaking it off, but that doesn't make her feel any better for being with him when she should have been with her daughter, especially when she discovers that Daniel knew, or rather suspected, before she told him, anyway.

Trixie Stone has taken to inflicting physical pain on herself in order to forget her mental and emotional pain. She's also become more interested in Daniel's past. He grew up in Alaska, in an Inuit village. Picoult takes this opportunity to examine the culture of the Eskimo people, in much the same way as she did the Amish in Plain Truth, although not to such an extent.

The book is written completely in third person. Picoult uses a similar style to Terry Pratchett to zoom-in on a certain characters thoughts, which leads to something interesting. Jason is convinced that Trixie is just trying to take revenge on him. Because he didn't rape her. They had sex, but he honestly believes that it was, in no way, rape. But Trixie believes that it was. And these characters can't talk to each other for all sorts of medical and legal reasons. They each assume that the other is lying, although the reader can see that the truth is far more complicated than that.

Still, as the trial gets closer, things start to heat up. Trixie is victimized by her classmates, who either believes that she's making it up, or assume that being raped makes her a 'whore'. One girl tells her "I wish Jason Underhill would rape me".

Things aren't going so easy for Jason, either. Although most of the class on his side, he's confined to his home for legal reasons. Trixie's father is after him. And he loses his hockey scholarship. Jason becomes more and more depressed, which leads to a somewhat surprising turn of events.

The Tenth Circle is both gripping and absorbing. I read it in one night, unable to put it down. Since it's in third person, it's impossible to get as close to the characters as in, for instance, My Sister's Keeper, which was told entirely in the first person. Still, the characters are far more dramatic, and the inclusion of the Inuit culture makes it a lot more interesting. The comic book, which is shown between chapters, a device used similarly in Sheri S. Tepper's Gate To Woman's Country (although that was a play, not a comic book), is pretty good quality, although fairly short for a comic book. As an extra, letters are hidden within the pages of the artwork, revealing a quote, which Picoult feels, sums up the novel.

In Which We Discuss The Gate to Women's Country

The Gate to Women's Country is set in the future of our own world, as many of Tepper's books are. The world as we know it has been destroyed - in this case, judging by hints in the book, by nuclear power - and the resulting civilizations that form from the small pocketed remnants of humanity are usually vastly different although not entirely separated from the world we know. The alternative is that humanity eventually meets with other worlds, enabling different societies to be shown and contrasted in that way.

Anyway, the book begins with the main character, Stavia. She is heading for a meeting with her fifteen year old son, David, who has spent the last ten years living outside the city walls as a warrior, as all boys do. No man is tested in battle till the age of twenty-five; between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five he must make a choice; to return through the gate to women's country, renouncing the warriors, and living his life as a servitor, studying rather than fighting, or to renounce his mother and live outside as a warrior, returning only once a year for Carnival (the only time women and warriors meet in an intimate manner, although they may talk over the wall at other times). The servitors are looked down on by the warriors, and some are even attacked by their century as they return through the gate. It is rumoured among the warriors that the returning servitors are castrated. It is, at least, known that the servitors never father children, since every son is brought to his warrior father (a daughter's parentage is not discussed unless she seems to be becoming involved with a close relative). There are many cities in women's country (Stavia's home, and therefore the main setting of the book being Marthatown), the cities branching off when they reach the point where they are unable to support themselves on the land nearby.

While the women spend their lives learning, rediscovering the knowledge that was lost, and growing food, the warriors spend their time in ceremonies, games (with sports similar to our football/soccer), and, of course, in battles with other garrisons. Warriors are not allowed to study; the founders of women's country decided that wars must be fought in hand to hand combat. They refused to allow warriors to learn techniques that will enable them to attack cities, to kill many people at a distance, and so on. A warrior must see the face of the man he kills. Therefore, when a garrison goes to war, to protect its city, no women or children are killed. Only men who have chosen to fight do so.

However, some women, (often blinded with love for a certain warrior) feel that the ordinances are silly and pointless. A few women run away to live as whores outside the city, some because a warrior has convinced them that he will run away with them, and others simply because they prefer it. Others, including Stavia, break or bend the ordinances in other ways, often not fully realising the point of the ordinances and the effects of their actions.

Some of the warriors also feel that the ordinances are pointless. Some of them make a game of seducing women out of the city walls, while others have more ambitious and sinister plans. Some of the warriors feel that, even if they take over the cities, the women will continue growing food for, and supporting them, while they both have their cake and eat it. They believe that the women have some secret, some weapon or such, and they feel that they deserve to share in it. Several warriors believe that if the women do have such a weapon they would be fully justified in taking it, women being too weak to handle such power.

The rest of the story is told in flashbacks from Stavia's meeting with Dawid, most of the book focusing on Stavia's romance with Chernon, a young warrior. As Stavia struggles with her feelings for Chernon and her respect for the ordinances, which forbid much of what he asks her to do. As certain events come to pass, Stavia finally learns why women's country is the way it is.

The twist, when it finally comes, is amazing, and completely unexpected, despite the many hints and foreshadowing's in the book. I bullied my boyfriend into reading this, and I had to try so hard to stop myself from blurting it out before he got to it.

The characters are amazing, and have a great amount of depth. The servitor who lives with Stavia's family, Joshua, although presented as merely background for most of the book, is, in fact, one of the most important characters. The amount of depth and emotion given to him is incredible, and allows the reader to empathize with him perfectly.

Although this book is as old as I am, it doesn't seem at all dated to me. Despite being one of Tepper's shorter books, at just over three hundred pages, it still has a great amount of depth and plot for you to mull over.

The contrast of societies is also fascinating. Halfway through the book, another society, separate from women's country is introduced. This is more patriarchal, and practices bigamy, despite a shortage of females (due to a practice of female infanticide a decade or so before). The differences and similarities between this society, women's country, and our own world give you a lot to think about. No society is perfect of course, but the thought of something completely different is interesting.

This is a feminist book, so, naturally, many of the villains of the piece are male while many of the heroes are, in fact, heroines. Some characters, such as Joshua provide balance, but the book is essentially about the difference between stereotypical male and female values.

In summary, this book is amazing. I love Sheri S. Tepper's work, and although this isn't my favourite, it does have a certain charm all its own.

In Which We Discuss Beauty

Another repost. Again, I've improved greatly as a writer, and, since this is one of my favourite books, I will probably return to it at some point.

Tying together various fairy tales from through the ages in a way that is completely realistic and believable, 'Beauty' is a work of art.

Sheri S. Tepper has an odd gift of making the fantastic completely logical and believable. Beauty is a human girl, a normal girl, despite being a fairytale character. Nothing in the book seems far fetched or unbelievable, despite the nature of its inspiration.

The book is a good length (at 476 pages in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition), but nothing is stretched out more than it should be. Nor is it overly shortened. The pace is perfect.

As in all of her books, Sheri S. Tepper puts her characters in certain situations that give a lot of things for the reader to think about. Beauty travels to hell at one point; the people there are those who enjoyed horror and pain, and used it for amusement. The people in heaven are those who built beautiful things and tried to make the world better in their own way. That's an interesting definition of good and evil. Since this is set in our own world, the vision of the future that is given is fascinating and scarily plausible.

Yet despite the depth and complexities of the plot, the book is not at all difficult to read. It's the sort of book you'll finish reading, reflect on it for a moment, then turn back to the beginning and start again. All in all, fascinating.

In Which We Discuss Further Chronological Reading Challenges

A little while back, I decided to read everything Lisa Jewell had every written, in the order in which she'd written it. It was quite an interesting experience, and most of it was chronicled on this blog. You can find it through the "Chronological Reading Challenge" tag, which is also on this post. Scroll on down a bit and you'll see it.

Although I had read most of the books before, reading them in this way did give me further insights into them, and into the author. The main thing I noticed was her growing...obsession? Focus?...something - with children. More and more, children became the driving force in her character's lives. Not necessarily the fact of having them, more the consequences of various things connected with them, if that makes sense. For instance; one character's life changes utterly when she becomes pregnant and proceeds to give the child up for adoption. Another has her life change when she accidentally orphans and paralyses a child in a single accident. Yet another has her relationship go off the walls when she accidentally becomes pregnant.

Those events and the novels they appear in aren't in chronological order, as listed above. Generally speaking, things which happen to children get worse and worse as Jewell grows older, and writes more novels.  And, of course, as she has her own children, and presumably, worries and obsesses over all the horrible things that could happen.

However, moving away from Jewell, I am inclined to repeat the experiment. I'm considering doing it with Sheri Tepper, but her bibliography is long, complex, split over many different names, and occasionally out of print.

Excuse me, I must shriek like a fangirl.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Tepper's writing a sequel to Plague of Angels, set to be released this year! Ah!

Ahem.

I just googled Tepper's bibliography, looking for a complete list in chronological order, including those books published under pseudonyms, and spotted that. Now I am happy.

Anyway, her wiki page is probably the most thorough list, and you can see that that would be quite a project. Especially considering that I probably own less than half of them right now, and the library almost definitely doesn't stock many of them. So Tepper wouldn't be a great choice for this project, not until I have lots more money and free time (sadly, the two do not come together).

I do have a fair amount of books to get through at the minute too. I've just started the Mavin Manyshaped trilogy, of the True Game series, and I still haven't read most of my current library books. I need to get through those quick, before my reservations come in. So another CRC would take a while to get off the ground.

At the minute, authors I'm considering include Ben Elton (although I recently gorged myself on his work, so maybe not), Jenny Colgan (I already own most of them, and I know the library has the rest, so that would be easy), Nick Hornby (ditto), Trudi Canavan (a relatively new author, so less of a back catalogue), and Matt Beaumont (would have to buy, since the library is missing a few of them). Maybe Alice Hoffman or Kjartan Poskitt (I'm just looking at my shelves for random inspiration here - those aren't authors I've really considered before, which may actually be a point in their favour). Stephen King would represent many of the same problems as Tepper.  Dahl, maybe?  I don't know.

Any suggestions, comment. It should be open to those people without accounts now.

In Which We Discuss My Favourite Book

...it's Jinian Footseer, by Sheri Tepper, closely followed by Billie Lett's Where the Heart Is.

I found Jinian Footseer in a charity shop when I was about eleven or twelve. There wasn't much of a blurb on the back - just a quote from a song in the book. I can't recall the other couplet, but it ended with this;

Eye of the Star
Where Old Gods Are.

Players, take your places. The land itself calls Game!

The reason I need to remember that is because the cover has been loved clean off in the last decade. The tops of a few pages are missing as well, near the beginning. I should really get a new copy, but they're a little tricky to find.

Although the back cover wasn't very informative, it seemed interesting. Intriguing. Jinian, on the cover, looked interesting too, her and the Oracle. I suspect this is where my long-lived desire for ruddy red hair came from.

The book drew me in right from the beginning. It talks about a strange world, and peoples with strange Talents (which I wrote a little more on here). It's a curious mix of medieval adventure and fantasy, but infinitely more readable. It's like a feminine version of Poul Anderson's work, if anyone out that is familiar with that, a little like Three Hearts and Three Lions. I can't pinpoint exactly why - the content isn't obviously similar, and there are a few differences, mostly the masculine/feminine thing I mentioned. That, and Anderon's hero was much more familiar with our modern world, while Jinian is completely separate.  And Tepper doesn't go near Arthurian legends.  But still...

As I get older, I see more things in the book. At one point, for instance, Jinian is touched by a Shadow, and becomes disheartened. The connection between her mind and body is broken, and although she continues moving for a while, out of habit, she can't bring herself out of her slump. Then, at other times, she is struck with a wild sense of activity, with no direction. She suffers from insomnia, too.

I read the book a few years before I suffered through my worst points with manic depression, but Tepper's writing describes the illness perfectly. I'm going to quote a small passage from the book here.

"And now you must decide which pain you will bear. That of being as you were. Or that of being as you are."


I brought myself up to my knees. That was as far as I could get. The hand that had held the teacup appeared again, a full cup in it, the steam rising into my nose. I gulped it, interrupting the gulps with sobs. "Pain of being as I am? I don't understand."


"But of course you do. The pain of curiosity unsatisfied, of ambition unfulfilled. The pain of love unreturned, of devotion undeserved. The pain of friendship rejected, of leadership ridiculed. The pain of loneliness and labor. Silly child. Did you think living was easy?"


Well, I had, of course. Not really easy, perhaps, but easier than this. I guess all children expect life to be easy. It seems easy, just looking at it from the outside. Being half-dead, as I had been for the past while was easier than this.


"It's easier to be dead," she said, seeming to Read me. "Always."


"I think I would rather be alive," I managed to say. "Even if it hurts."

There are other passages I've found meaning in, over the years. I couldn't tell you how many times I've read the book, but there's something new in it every time.

Incidentally, that's why my username is Bartelmy. Bartelmy of the Ban is the non-narrating character speaking in that passage.

When I first read the book, at the age of eleven or twelve, I was concerned only with Jinian's point of view. As I grew older, I began to understand the other characters, to gain sharper insights into them as I became more experienced, more life-full. Suddenly, when I was nineteen or maybe twenty, Bartelmy's viewpoint struck me. Not fully, but enough for me to realise how much myself and my life had changed since I first read the book. I go a little further into my past usernames and their logic here, if anyone's interested. I would like to add that it's not the literal aspect of the mother with which I'm concerned - more a less conventional kind of change, which, though not really motherly, is still part of growing up as a woman. If that makes sense.

Jinian Footseer is part of a trilogy of trilogies, written in the eighties, and scarcely reprinted since then. A few of the other novels, namely those containing Peter's adventures and those continuing Jinian's were mentioned at the end. I looked for them for years - this was before the internet, remember, or at least before I had regular access to it. I looked in charity shops, keeping an eye out for anything by Tepper. I never found anything else of Tepper's second hand, ever. I looked at the library, and it even looked as though Balsall Heath had a copy of Jinian Star-Eye...but, it was lost.

I did find a copy of The True Game, a printing which brings together the three Peter novels, King's Blood Four, Necromancer Nine, and Wizard's Eleven. I was about fifteen then, I think, and since it was a reprint, I was able to order it from Waterstones.  Incidentally, I picked up a lot of Tepper's other novels when they were printed by Gollancz in the early years of the last decade.  The Visitor and Beauty are particularly good, as are Plague of Angels, Grass and the rest of the Arbai Trilogy, and The Gate to Women's Country, and -

Oh, just read them all.  You won't regret it.

Peter's story overlaps with Jinian's near the end of his third book, and the beginning of her first, although the main part of it is set towards the end. The other two books in the Jinian series, Dervish Daughter and Jinian Star-Eye, I found on amazon, when I was nearly nineteen.  They're about £30 together, but I picked them up separately, since I already had the first one.

The final trilogy, the Mavin Manyshaped books, I also found on amazon. However, they were quite expensive - about £30 for the combined edition. You don't want to know how much they are separately. However, a few weeks ago a cheap copy popped up, and my friend bought it for me. It's sitting on my shelf over there, waiting for me to be finished rereading the Jinian novels (I read the Peter series last week). I want to be properly ready before I finally read the entire series.

Incidentally, since Mavin is Peter's mother, her books are, I believe, chronologically before Peter and Jinian's, although she does show up throughout all six of the others. It's possible that her books encompass the whole series, in much the same way that Jinian's and Peter's overlap.

Another interesting element of the series is the fact that, although Peter was conceived first (or at least, written first), and Jinian is, technically, a companion character, she's also fully realised. When she shows up in Peter's novel, she doesn't reveal her whole history, or foreshadow very much of it at all. Nothing's contradicted, but Jinian is a far more subtle and internal person than Peter, and since all of the books are written from the first person viewpoint, one can only know what Peter knows. I will say though, that I wish the first Peter novel had included mention of where he and Jinian first met. I know that it's unlikely he'd remember, or think it at all important, but a tiny mention would have been enough. It would have leant the series even greater depth and entanglement through the various plots, although it's not like it suffers overmuch through the lack of it.

In Which We Discuss Fantasy

I love Gollancz SF and Fantasy Masterworks series.

For those unfamiliar with them, the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series are great fantasy and sci-fi novels, reprinted by Gollancz in covers that look really, really pretty on a shelf together. Each one has a number - I think they initially released one every month or so, although they seem to have stopped at just over sixty for both - and comes in pretty colours which complement each other.

What I really like about the series is that it's encouraged me to read books that I might not have picked up otherwise. My logic is that I like most of the books in the series, so there's a pretty good chance that I'll like the rest of them.

I picked up my first, Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist in a charity shop a few years back. I got Sheri Tepper's Beauty in Waterstones, mostly because I'm a big fan of Tepper, ever since I found a copy of Jinian Footseer in another charity shop years ago. Those are both in the Fantasy series, numbers 11 and 14 respectively. I decided then to try to get the rest, since I enjoyed both of those.

Then I picked up another Tepper, Grass, in the SF series, and decided to collect those. I usually think of myself as more of a sci-fi than a fantasy fan, but I seem to have much more of those.

I'm going to list down the novels in two tables, in another post, so I can keep track of what I've got, and which ones I need.

Initially, I began this post to talk about Jack Williamson's Darker than you Think. I love the title - whenever I read it, I imagine David Bowie in Labyrinth. You know that line where he says "it's further than you think"? Well, exactly the same tone.

Random trivia; my middle name is Jareth.

Anyway, the book's got a pretty interesting take on werewolves and vampires, and other mythical creatures. It's a little hard to explain, but the explanation is essentially mathematical, and links to probability and telepathy. It's fascinating. But far too short.

Anyway, off to make tables.

In Which We Discuss Lisa Jewell

I've settled on a new project for myself and this blog. In short, to read the complete works of an author, in chronological order, reviewing each one, to see how he or she has changed over time.

My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and Sheri Tepper, but each of those has a bibliography as long as my arm. Instead, I'm going with Lisa Jewell. Her bibliography, in chronological order, is as follows;

* Ralph's Party (1999)
* Thirtynothing (2000)
* One Hit Wonder (2001)
* A Friend of the Family (2004)
* Vince and Joy (2005)
* 31 Dream Street (2007)
* Roommates Wanted (2008)- alternative title for 31 Dream Street
* The Truth About Melody Browne (2009)

Of those, I've read six; the first six, actually.
Thirtynothing I find to be sickeningly sweet, while One Hit Wonder and A Friend of the Family are two of my favourite novels.

So, I'll be starting with this just as soon as I'm done reading my current library books and Tepper's Arbai trilogy. That'll give me time to get used to typing on this new notebook.

In Which We Discuss the Maiden, the Mother, and the Other One

In many, many different mythologies, there are three magical women - the Fates, the Norns, or Shakespeare's Wyrd Sisters, for instance. Generally, these three women are portrayed as a maiden, a mother, and a crone - the three main stages of a woman's life.

Of course, these days, as Terry Pratchett put it, a women can put off being at least one of those for quite a long time. So there are four stages. The maiden, something else, the mother, and the crone.

I'm twenty years old. I'm not a maiden, and nor am I mother. I'm not a crone. So, I'm currently the other one.

Incidentally, 'the maiden, the mother and the...other one' is also taken from Pratchett's writing, when Esme Weatherwax muses on the tradition. She doesn't like to think of crones, since that would be her role.

Anyway...

My first online name was Yunalookalike. I signed up to a games site, and although I didn't intend to stay, I wanted a 'game-y' name. My boyfriend at the time had exclaimed on how much Yuna from Final Fantasy X-2 resembled me, so I just quickly tapped in the name, and didn't think any more of it. 'Yunalookalike', or just 'Yunie' became my online identity for the next three years, as I aged from fifteen to eighteen.

Now, Yuna is obviously a maiden, and although I technically wasn't at that point, my mindset was far more innocent than it is now. The name, and the connotations it had, fitted that stage of my life. Soon after my eighteenth birthday, I started using the name Deis.

Deis is a character from the Breath of Fire games. She's an immortal sorceress Naga (half-snake, half-woman), and extremely sensual. At one point, in Breath of Fire IV, the party need to enter her mind, and find her waited on hand and foot by attractive young men. She's neither a maiden, nor a mother, nor a crone.

Now I'm a little older, I've started experimenting with the name Bartelmy.

Bartelmy of the Ban is a character in Sheri Tepper's True Game novels. She's a Dervish. In the world of the True Game, the Dervish are women who train themselves, and have tremendous willpower. The rites they put themselves through result in their being unable to bear children in the normal manner - instead they pay other women to act as surrogates. Unfortunately, the woman Bartelmy chose to bear her daughter refused to give the child up. Not out of love, but because she believed that the Dervishes could give her a new and beautiful young body. They couldn't, and Bartelmy's child was unaware of her for sixteen years. Bartelmy continued with her mission, while watching over her child from afar. She appears at key moments, when she is able to help. She is not a hands on parent, but she is a mother. An unconventional one, but still a mother.

In Which We Discuss Beguilement

There's a kind of magic-user in the Witcher novels. Sorceresses.

All sorceresses are beautiful. Fact. It goes with the territory. But, no attractive young girl is ever trained as a sorceress. It's a discipline reserved for those daughters who cannot be used for allegiances, the ones no one will want to marry. This apparent contradiction is easily resolved - the girls become beautiful as they become better sorceresses, and use magic to improve their appearance.

There's one character in the Witcher who is utterly beautiful, when Geralt, the titular character knows her. But he realises what she once was - a hunchback.

That entirely changed my view of her, and it's interesting to think of why. It doesn't change who she is. It doesn't make her any less beautiful now. But still, it changed the character for me.

Now, within the world of the True Game series by Sheri Tepper, there are a variety of Talents. These talents take various forms, such as mind-reading, healing, necromancy, and beguilement, among others. These Talents are genetic, among Gamesmen caste.

Anyway, those with beguilement - also known as 'follow-me', since that's what it convinces others to do - tend to come into the Talent early. The Talent can also convince others that the user is utterly stunning - it's essentially a mix of leadership, seduction and charisma. Since they get it early, they tend to rely on it, and nothing else. So those with beguilement are selfish, and, if not actually stupid, at least somewhat unresourceful.

Anyway, there are two characters in particular that I'm thinking of. Prince Mandor ('prince/princess/queen/king/ruler' is an honorific given to those who only have the talent of beguilement) and Witch/Priestess Dazzle (Witches/Priestess have the talents of beguilement, power-storage and firestarting, all in slightly lesser amounts than those who have just one of those).

Both Mandor and Dazzle were generally seen as utterly stunning. But both were hideous.

Oh, they were naturally beautiful, once. But Dazzle, well she, her mother, and her half-brother and half-sister were caught in the middle of something when she was young. Her half-sister was a healer, and begged for power to save Dazzle's mother. But Dazzle refused, hiding in the corner and weaving beguilement around herself, convincing herself that she was safe. Even when part of the roof fell and sliced off half her face, she still convinced herself she was safe and unhurt. Her half-sister (Silkhands) begged her for some of the power she'd stored (remember, priestess/witches can store power - normally it can be drawn from heat, but all the nearby heat had been taken for the fight which had caused the damage). Dazzle refused, convinced that Silkhands wanted the power for her mother, rather than to heal Dazzle's own face. She didn't even realise how repulsive she was, because she never stopped beguiling. And nor did anyone else (except for Silkhands, and a few other main characters).

Mandor knew immediately what had happened to him, although, again, he was able to hide it from others. He suffered a similar accident, with similar effects. In his case, there was no healer nearby, and knowing that he'd lost his beauty - whether the world could see it or not - just about killed him. Especially when one who'd once admired him was able to see through the beguilement, and know what he really looked like.

Later in the True Game books, some Shapeshifting characters (shapeshifting is a talent too) discuss how the shape one is in affects the personality. It's true. How people look, and how this is accepted by society does change them. Even if you can't see it. Even if it's in the past.

Or perhaps I am rather shallow. In fairness, both Mandor and Dazzle were very unpleasant people.

In Which We Discuss Charity Shops

I like them.

When I was little, my grandmother would take me with her when she went shopping, and charity shops always have lots and lots of cheap books. I remember when they were 5-10p each. Those days are over, but charity shops are still good for a bargain. I found one the other day that only charges 20p for a paperback, and got a fiver's worth. Was a nightmare getting those home.

The other handy thing about charity shops is that you're never quite sure what you're going to get. It lets you look at books you've never heard of it and might not have thought of. It's how I discovered authors like Jenny Colgan, Lisa Jewell and Sheri Tepper, for a start.

Plus, you know, you're helping people. Not a major concern (I'm altruistic when it suits me, not for the sake of it), but still nice.