nlbarber

Heading out of the hotel with luggage this morning, it was raining lightly. Fifteen minutes later going into the building at the Denver Federal Center the rain had gotten quite heavy. As I never bring rain gear to Denver because I never seemed to see enough moisture to get very wet, I got very wet. Two hours later headed out to the airport, it was briefly snowing, then settled to a mix of rain and snow. With wind. Rather unpleasant standing outside waiting on the shuttle bus at the rental car place.

But the week of database testing went well as evidenced by the 2-hour wrap-up session ending after 35 minutes, the weather was nice (or at least not unpleasant until today), and I'm now hoping for an uneventful flight home.

.....

But, alas, it was not to be....

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I was well entertained by His Majesty's Dragon, which is Napoleonic Wars (naval) with dragons. Hits my love of Horatio Hormblower and fantasy in one. I think it's time to grab the book and a glass of milk and retire to bed...

Stayed home from work today, bothered by the cold and by a very painful crick (or nerve, or pulled muscle) below my left shoulderblade. Of course, all plans to work at home failed to come to fruition, and I finished Catherine Asaro's The Charmed Sphere instead.

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This book is presumably the hand-off of the world of Pern from mother to son--it's co-authored by Anne and Todd McCaffrey. I won't try a plot summary, but the book focusses on watch-whers, and reads like one of the juveniles in the series, such as Dragonsong. It's not a bad little story, though I'm glad I got it from the library and didn't buy it. (Actually, I quit buying Pern some time ago, and really don't make an effort to read them unless a copy drops in my lap.)

Most annoying was the poor editing, blame it on the authors or the editor as you will. Not in the typos/grammar sense, but in the plot line. I'm a pretty head-down reader, and lots of inconsistencies and such can go right by me, but in Dragon's Kin, they jerked me from the story several times. Such as the early scene where Kindan, the protagonist, sees and explains how a watch-wher goes between. In the middle of the book, Kindan wonders if his young watch-wher could be taught to go between, "like a dragon", and the discussion continues to conclude that watch-whers couldn't be taught that, only dragons and fire-lizards. Then in the book's climax, Kindan asserts that watch-whers can go between as he saw his father's do it.

The other example now escapes me, but it was an info-dump that was repeated early on, leading me to say "but you just told us that!"

Oh, well, I still enjoyed the story, and will pass it on to see if my niece might like it.