Jevlir Caravansary

From a comment on my Threads blog, I found Beyond Words and after perusing it a bit, I decided to add it to my blogroll here.

I keep intending to add new writing blogs here regularly, but it seems like this blog always gets my attention last, so things get out of date pretty quickly. Kathy has an engaging writing style with some often subtly challenging material. I’d commend this short story titled Heaven, and this post about a retreat as good examples.

This is the third volume of the Twins of Petaybee series.

To let you know how I felt about the book, let me quote what I said about Maelstrom, the second in the series:

It is lighter than the Dragonrider series, and I don’t find the cultural background anywhere near as interesting, but the characters are engaging, and the story is fun. That’s a lot to recommend a book, especially since I look for books to read when my mind wants to rest rather than be challenged. I’m glad there are books that fit the bill.

As I read that now, more than a year after I wrote it, I can only nod my head. That is exactly how I felt reading this volume. It’s why I keep on reading authors like McCaffrey. She can’t always be writing Dragonriders books after all, and once one has done a series like that, everything else is going to look just a bit pale beside it. But this whole series is good fun, even though it’s not all that deep.

I intend to keep reading both authors.

I finally managed to watch this movie a few days ago, and found it to be pretty much what I expected. It was a very limited plot designed to connect the various violent scenes and special effects. Fortunately those were good.

It’s nice to get this without paying for it (Netflix), but if you’d like some mindless diversion that’s fun, it’s the movie for you. If you want a story, well, not so much.

have been learning to use my Palm Centro more from the road, or for times like right now when I have things shut down due to severe thunderstorms.
So I installed Postie, which massively improves post by mail. I haven’t found posting directly impossible but this is more convenient.
Watch for more short posts from the road. Note that the link is also a test.

. . . in book reviews. In this intriguing post, Bob Harris crafts a compelling list of words that all writers should eschew when they muse upon the content of a book they are about to review. Unfortunately, despite his best use of vocabulary, I found his post neither lyrical nor poignant. Try harder Bob!

Now I’m going to search on each of those words. I suspect that their only occurrences on this blog will be in this post. I must admit, however, that I both tend to use excessively complex syntax, and often words that are more obscure than necessary. I also fall afoul of (should that be on the list?) some of the words noted in the comments.

Update: I find two reviews on this blog that use one of these words, one for “compelling” and one for “intriguing.” You will find “craft” in an entry about picking up a book at a craft show. The remaining four don’t occur. I’ll have to try harder! Also, HT to evangelical outpost.

[This is a work of fiction, as should be obvious throughout. Nothing in it resembles anything else enough to be mistaken for reality, but just in case someone disagrees, if you think it represents something in real life, it doesn't. This is the second installment in the Tlisli Series, and is continued from Tlisli's Escape.]

Crossing the stream was not difficult, though it had it’s own dangers, and after crawling out on the other side, Tlisli plunged into the jungle on the other side. She hoped that just crossing into the forbidden ground would discourage her pursuers. But it was not to be.

After several minutes of pushing through jungle, she noticed the undergrowth getting thinner, and soon she came out in a clearing. The clearing was occupied by a small hill, and it looked to her like the jungle surrounded the hill, but only grass and small plants grew on the hill itself. To her left, less than 30 meters away, it looked like there had been a recent washout, a gully with mud banks cutting into the hill. What was now a small brook flowed at the bottom of it, and appeared to go toward the stream she had crossed several minutes before.

Tlisli decided that she would be better off passing the hill in this newly opened path than by walking over. There was no cover at all at the top of the hill.

Continue Reading »

I’ve been reading a lot of Mike Resnick’s work lately, especially after encountering his short story Kirinyaga, and then the book built from a number of short stories set in that world. He’s always an exceptional storyteller.

With that, I picked up Paradise, currently it appears only available used. I got my copy from my local public library, on which let me make a comment. Support your public library. It’s a wonderful institution.

Now Paradise is not a book with a theme I would normally enjoy. But this book is interesting and thoughtful and provides a variety of characters to love or hate, or more likely feel ambivalent about. (Don’t even think of mentioning the preposition at the end of a sentence!)

The lead character is a writer who writes first about the people who have been involved with the early years of human contact on the planet Peponi, which means Paradise in a local language. One thing leads to another until he finally visits the planet he has been writing about and gets a direct view.

The problems frequently reflect those of colonialism here on earth. I’d like to think we’d have better sense by the time, if ever, that we contact other sentient species on other worlds. Realistically, that’s probably not a very realistic hope. Even more, just what would “better sense” be in this context? There’s a great deal of room for wondering just exactly what each person should have done in this story. Certainly there are many specific things that are either definitely bad or definitely good.

But even assuming that the exploiters could be kept off a world like this, what would happen with the philanthropists? One imagines that perhaps a Star Trek style non-interference directive (obviously better defined and better enforced than in the series) might be the only answer. No two species would actually meet until each had developed a certain level of technology. But thinking about that leads me to many questionable situations as well.

Moralizing aside, or perhaps because of it, I really enjoyed watching the various characters work through their situations. Each is constrained by his or her own background and situation, and often there are not nearly as many choices as the outsider, such as a reader might think.

Now don’t get the idea that this story is made up of philosophizing and moralizing. The story is well told and well worth reading for fun as well as for thinking. Resnick sneaks the thinking into the cracks and you get caught up asking yourself questions, or at least I do, but perhaps I’m strange.

I strongly recommend this book whether you have to order it used or find it at your public library. Get a copy and enjoy!

I’ve been neglecting this blog for a few days, but I do have some things to write about. You can expect a couple of posts today, and then another couple by Saturday.

The testing of Wordpress 2.5 went from RC1 to RC3, and then to installing the final edition. I did most of the testing elsewhere, though I played with the layout of the site and checked plugins.

I’m pretty happy with the new version, though I disagree with some of the choices made in the layout of the administrative pages.

Stand by for more. . . .

I have just upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.5RC1, which looks pretty good. I don’t think there will be any significant changes for users. If there are, please let me know in a comment.

I’ve already written about two of the stories that form a part of this book, and I’ve also linked to what I consider an excellent review, except that it gives a bit much of the story away for my taste. But I want to make a couple of additional comments because this book is really exceptional.

I have stated before that I don’t really have standards for some kind of universal “good” or “bad” literature. Rather, there is literature that I like and some that I don’t. I’m quite happy with this being subjective. One of the things I like in literature is engaging characters, folks that you actually care about. If it doesn’t matter when a character dies, or narrowly escapes death, then I’m probably not enjoying the book very much.

There are quite a number of engaging characters in literature, and most of them are characters that I like. There’s something about them that attracts me. But there’s something special about presenting a character that I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like and making me root for him as the story goes on.

That’s the case with Koriba, the mundumugu (witch doctor) who serves as the repository for tribal knowledge and tradition on the terraformed world of Kirinyaga. He is, in fact, everything I wouldn’t like in reality. I personally embrace the advance of technology, and am at worst amused by the social changes that tend to go with it. I object strongly when someone can’t pursue their goals and dreams because of tradition. I’m ready to toss out the tradition and let people do what they can.

Koriba is in love with a set of traditions, and wants to freeze everything at that point, and yet he is so clear about his desires, and expresses himself so well, that I found myself in great sympathy with him, all the while realizing that if I were encountering him in real life, I would almost certainly be one of his enemies.

I could use every story in this book as the basis for teaching and discussing some concept or another. The story overall points to stress points in the way we handle change and the interaction of very different cultures. The world is full of less extreme examples, but sometimes it takes the extremes to get us thinking.

This book is certainly deserving of all the awards it has received, and I rate it a 5 myself.