Humph!

If there were any justice in the world I'd be the crackpot ruler of a small, former Soviet republic.

Who is also mayor of Chess City (both Chess City, Elista and Chess City, Dubai).

Some people have all the luck...
Tom

Humph!

If there were any justice in the world I'd be the crackpot ruler of a small, former Soviet republic.

Who is also mayor of Chess City (both Chess City, Elista and Chess City, Dubai).

Some people have all the luck...
Tom

Reviews

Hi,

So...first up: Storm Front by Jim Butcher. This is the first in a fairly popular series of modern fantasy/mystery books revolving around Harry Dresden, professional wizard. Anne really likes the series and I thought I should dip into it a little bit just to see what's up.

The book is pretty good, it certainly kept me turning the pages. But the solution to the mystery is pretty obvious about a quarter of the way into the book and completely revealed about 2/3rds of the way in. That still leaves the final magical showdown and it's a dozy, but as far as a mystery goes, it's a bit flat.

It's also unclear just how much slippage there is between the normal, mundane world and the magical one. The idea is that magic is a hush-hush kind of thing, but since our protagonist openly sells his services as a wizard and since he's on retainer with the local police force...it's not clear what the real dividing line is. Perhaps later books flesh it out. I'm interested in reading another, but in no hurry to do so.

Taking a break from books we turn to music and The Hard and The Easy by Great Big Sea. This is a great CD. It's got two songs in it about horses falling through the ice in a lake. It also marks Great Big Sea's serious return to their Newfoundland Folkmusic roots. The early CDs were mostly folk tunes with some of their own compositions thrown in. Over time, their compositions took over and they strayed from their folky roots to some sort of quasi-pop sound that was too bland to be borne (I didn't even pick up their previous CD), but this release has all the good stuff. Nothing but traditional folk tunes set to the Great Big Sea style. I really like it.

later
Tom

Reviews

Hi,

So...first up: Storm Front by Jim Butcher. This is the first in a fairly popular series of modern fantasy/mystery books revolving around Harry Dresden, professional wizard. Anne really likes the series and I thought I should dip into it a little bit just to see what's up.

The book is pretty good, it certainly kept me turning the pages. But the solution to the mystery is pretty obvious about a quarter of the way into the book and completely revealed about 2/3rds of the way in. That still leaves the final magical showdown and it's a dozy, but as far as a mystery goes, it's a bit flat.

It's also unclear just how much slippage there is between the normal, mundane world and the magical one. The idea is that magic is a hush-hush kind of thing, but since our protagonist openly sells his services as a wizard and since he's on retainer with the local police force...it's not clear what the real dividing line is. Perhaps later books flesh it out. I'm interested in reading another, but in no hurry to do so.

Taking a break from books we turn to music and The Hard and The Easy by Great Big Sea. This is a great CD. It's got two songs in it about horses falling through the ice in a lake. It also marks Great Big Sea's serious return to their Newfoundland Folkmusic roots. The early CDs were mostly folk tunes with some of their own compositions thrown in. Over time, their compositions took over and they strayed from their folky roots to some sort of quasi-pop sound that was too bland to be borne (I didn't even pick up their previous CD), but this release has all the good stuff. Nothing but traditional folk tunes set to the Great Big Sea style. I really like it.

later
Tom