The Night Masquerade really continues the story of Home. If you enjoyed that story, you’ll enjoy this one as well. If you read the ‘Binti Trilogy’ binding all three, it fits as the conclusion to the story.

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Change was constant. Change was my destiny. Growth.

After all the events of the first story, Binti’s finally at Uni, learning about the magical sort of math that’s mostly been hinted at up until then–and dealing with more than a touch of PTSD. So of course she decides to return home to her people for a pilgrimage–and Okwu the Meduse will come along.

Nothing was asked of Okwu and Okwu was pleased, preferring to menacingly loom in the background behind me. Okwu was happiest around human beings when it was menacingly looming.

What could possibly go wrong?

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I quite enjoy this book. It’s got some fascinating worldbuilding, interesting characters. It’s a bit hampered by being a novella–there are a few threads that I really could have used more of. Well worth the read.

One warning: the story takes a turn towards the more ‘horror’ (or at least thriller) side of sci-fi part of the way through. I was not expecting that–I enjoy that sort of thing, but be warned if that’s not your sort of story.

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That one has been on my list for years now. It’s just got such a fun title!

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”

Now, having read it… I think that I enjoyed it?

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That is quite a ride.

At it’s core, it’s a fairly standard military sci story: the aliens attacked and now we’re going out to get them back.

And then you peel back a layer and you have the development of AI–all the more relevant with the recent developments in LLMs. Now, you don’t even need humanity to fight the war. But true to form, if you don’t need people to fight, it’s all the harder to convince those back home to care. (Read: $$$)

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Did you know they made Magic School bus chapter books? (And did you know my son randomly chose #14 to start at?)

They’re basically those vibrant kids’ science books, writ large. Still with plenty of illustrations, scientific asides, and more child endangerment than you can shake a lightning bolt at.

This time around (as one might expect 😄), the Friz and class end up getting swept up into a lightning storm, shrink down to the size of electrons, and become lightning.

How cool.

It’s a quick read, a fun adventure, and I have no problems with the science presented. I’m going to have to find a few more of these to read with my son!

Onward!

We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.

This year book bingo has a ‘Underground’ category–and I’ve been meaning to actually go back and read more Verne. Seemed like a great chance to check out Journey to the Center of the Earth!

In a nutshell, it’s a quintessential Jules Verne adventure. A student and professor find an old manuscript purporting to describe a path to the very center of the Earth… and off they go to Snæfellsjökull (Icelandic is such a lovely language) and down into the Earth.

From that, it’s one adventure after another. Down caves, running out of food and water, nearly dying–and all manner of completely scientifically improbable findings along the way.

Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

I think the biggest difficulty in this book is probably entirely tied up with the fact that it’s 160 years old. It’s just written in a very different style. People just … don’t talk like that. But it does make it feel amusingly old-timey, which I actually like. (I wonder how much of that is the translation?)

Worth a read. Going to have to read a few more of these!

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Eugenics man? Lamarckism Guy?

Or Mutagen I suppose.

Bent on eradicating genetic diseases… somewhat directly. With the power to adapt quickly to any threat. Interesting enough villain!

Plus we get an issue or two each with SIEGE (Iron Man as a cop?) and Thanatos (certainly seems to believe himself to be anyways).

There’s a lot of chaos in this volume, but it’s enjoyable. I’m not a huge fan of the older style… and this has decades over the very beginning of comics. We’ll see where we go next. But for now, more Spider-Man!

Side note:

Convenient that.

One of the first things he’d noticed about Mercy was that she understood people. She really knew how to get under their skin. Under his skin.

It’s time for my every year or two re-read of the Mercy Thompson books, especially with a new one out! That’s getting longer and longer each year, and I’m here for it. I think these two series (including Alpha & Omega) are now my favorite Urban Fantasy series, beating out even the Dresden Files (although it is close).

Now, specifically for this book…

Man, we’ve come some ways. The last few books have gone thoroughly into ‘woo woo’ territory (as Mercy increasingly calls it), with Mercy learning and gaining all sorts of new and interesting powers over the dead (Storm Cursed), learning more than she’d likely ever wanted about Wulfe (Smoke Bitten), and even more powers and Fae artifacts (Soul Taken).

With Mercy, everything that can be worse is. Always.

Things have gotten so big, so it’s nice to have what actually turns out to be a relatively self contained book in Winter Lost. For the most part, we have almost a closed house murder mystery. Just Mercy, Adam, and a handful of other wild and strange folk stuck at a lodge in a winter storm.

She was staring at him.

“I could not live with losing you,” he told her, his throat tight. “There are times when I have had to let you go out into danger without me. More times when I haven’t known about threats to your life until they were long past. But this time… this time I have the privilege of being backup while you head out to see if we can rescue your brother.”

I love the focus this brings the book. And it really does give the two a chance, I hope, to love and trust each other. Adam has got some severe baggage from those witches a few books back (plus all his other baggage I suppose) and Mercy has some serious wounds to deal with. This gives them that time. With a wild story that at once feels huge and world ending–and at the same time snug.

I love it.

We do also get a few fun peeks into what else is going on on the Mercyverse, primarily through flashbacks and asides told from a bunch of other points of view, which makes this structurally more interesting than any of the other books thus far.

I’m really looking forward to what comes next! (Although I’m personally hoping for an Alpha & Omega book next! What the cliffhanger).

Onward!