David Gillon

After three and a half weeks I seem to be largely over the bug I've had, and have finally had confirmation it wasn't Covid - I was starting to wonder given my symptoms could have been consistent with the delta variant. If I hadn't already had a test through the ONS survey I'd have had to go get one, I just wish the ONS tests were higher priority (I think it was about 10 days, vs the 24 hour turnaround on standard tests). OTOH, I've still got very little energy - I did my standard half mile walk yesterday for the first time in a month and was breathing more like I'd run it by the time I got home. So there's not a lot going on at this end.

My sister's household is rather more on the run-ragged side of things at the moment as they took delivery of their new puppy (Poppy the Cocker Spaniel) at the weekend, and she's so energetic they're being worn out. They thought they'd puppy-proofed the house and garden in advance, but apparently not as successfully as they imagined. It sounds like she needs to be taken out for a good long daily walk to tire her out, but unfortunately they can't do that until the end of the month as she needs her jabs first. The big surprise is that my mother, who'd been pooh-poohing the idea of them having a dog, thinks she's lovely and is even offering to puppy-sit for the odd hour here and there.

Books  Consumed:

It's mostly been stuff I can read without devoting a lot of brain to it, a bunch of on-line alternate history - really good in places, shame about the politics - and a few of the J D Robb 'in Death' mysteries.

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (who I see is actually Sarah Monette)

Maia is an abused 17yo, living in a remote manor on the edges of the Elven empire with his guardian and a few staff. Then a messenger arrives, Maia's father and older brothers have been killed in an airship crash, which means Maia the family embarrassment is now the Emperor of the Elves. Which leaves Maia dumped into the leadership of a major nation with effectively no training or warning, or support network. His situation is so bad the only person he can initially turn to for advice is his embittered abuser.

And there's no respite, he is dropped straight into multiple state funerals, his coronation and all the normal business of state too. And of course everyone thinks that someone who hasn't had any opportunity to form his own opinions can be bent to theirs. And worst of all for his potential for survival, Maia is kind - definitely not a plus when dropped headfirst into snakepit politics.

He lucks out in his selection of a personal secretary, and his personal staff and bodyguards are mostly intent on serving him, but, as they keep reminding him, they can't be friends. And what is left of his family are almost unanimously of the opinion they could, and should, be doing a better job of it than he is.So Maia's on his own, and the plots to replace him are already forming.

This is really, really well written, Maia works as a viewpoint character and is believably fallible and out of his depth, something which doesn't magically change. If I have criticisms it's that this is very heavy on the invented terms, why invent a completely new set of ranks for nobility (for example) when we have a perfectly usable set of English ones (and German ones if you want something a little more outre), never mind you're keeping 'emperor'. Plus there's a fairly laboured analogy in which Maia is 'the Goblin Emperor' because he's half-Goblin, and elves are white, while goblins are black. The story doesn't even really dig into the implications of that, because Maia has grown up outside of it, and then is too high-ranked for it to become an issue. And I wasn't at all convinced of the wisdom of giving your male protagonist a name that's familiar and female when everyone else gets a neologism as a name.

Agent of Byzantium, Harry Turtledove

I re-read this after it came up in conversation last week. It's an anthology of short stories in an alternative history. Basil Argyros, our protagonist, is a Magistranoi - an Imperial troubleshooter - in a 13th Century Byzantium that never fell to the Turks because Islam never came about and where St Maomet is Basil's favourite saint (something we're told in each story, which does get a little repetitive). The unifying theme of the stories is (mostly) Basil being present at the invention of something significant. In the first story, which tells us how Basil became a magistranoi, it's the telescope. In the second, Byzantium is facing a smallpox epidemic, and Basil pretty much invents vaccination. In the third story he's in Egypt, and effectively invents mediating labour disputes while dealing with a strike over the reconstruction of the Pharos. Next it's Western Europe, where the northern tribes have been knocking off Byzantine fortresses with hellfire and Basil's been given the job of working out how they're doing it. Then he's off to the Persian frontier, to deal with a sudden rash of propanda broadsheets - printing - which brings him into contact with the beautiful and deadly Persian agent Mirrane. Then we're back in Byzantium for an outbreak of iconclasm that needs a religious conclave to settle - and who should be bedding the Alexandrian primate and chief iconoclast but Mirrane. No new invention here, but printing comes in handy. And the final story has us in Georgia/Alania, where the local princeling's intriguing threatens to loose the steppe tribes onto the Byzantines (or the Persians, so Mirrane's in town), and where the invention of brandy proves the way to a mans heart is through his stomach.

I do like these stories, it's not the first time I've re-read them, but I do feel a couple of them are flawed. In the story set in Western Europe, the character who really could have challenged Basil is put on a bus (aka left behind when she breaks her leg), and in the final story the resolution of the Basil/Mirrane conflict is a bit too pat for me.

Web Comics

Several of the comics I read are moving into their endgames.