This is part of the Weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. This week's challenge is Books I Want Youth To Discover.
As the father of two boys (currently aged 9 and 12), this is such a day-to-day consideration that I'm not immediately sure where to start. Naturally I want them to love the books that I loved, and to enjoy the authors that I enjoy. Naturally, that doesn't always work the way I'd hoped -- I once recommended a book to Firstborn that seemed like a quirky story about a mimic that escapes its dungeon and has to figure out how to make its way in the world; three pages later I discovered that the book was wildly inappropriate for children, but by then he'd already finished it. But generally... yeah, I'm passing book recommendations to the boys as frequently as I can.
Well, I mean, there's Harry Potter of course, but I imagine that's going to head a lot of people's lists. So let's look at some of the ones that are less obvious.
Emilie and the Hollow World and its sequel, Emilie and the Sky World (both of which were available as e-books, I swear) are really excellent and deeply underrated YA books by Martha Wells, author of The Murderbot Diaries. I would love for these to have the popularity they deserve. You have a teenage heroine who is brave but not fearless, a sort of steampunk-and-magic setting, and some really lovely exploration-adventure-danger sequences. (I also would love to see a third title in this series.)
Joan D Vinge's Cat series (Psion, Catspaw, and Dreamfall) is an older series, where the protagonist is a half-alien telepath who keeps getting dragged into trouble because of his powers, and because of his sense of social conscience.
For Love of Mother Not, the first (though not first-published) of the Flinx and Pip adventures, about a young boy with erratic psychic/empathic powers and his acid-spitting winged snake. (Who wouldn't like to have an acid-spitting flying snake?) In the first book, Flinx's adoptive mother gets kidnapped and Flinx sets out find her. As the series progresses, there are ancient alien artifacts, strange new races, and a growing threat gathering at the edge of the galaxy.
...Apparently I have a bit of a space adventures theme going on here.
Anyway, that's my top-of-my-head list. I mean, there are others that we've had some wild success getting Firstborn to read -- Harriet Hamster and Danny Dragonbreath, both series by Ursula Vernon, the Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland -- but those are modern and already quite popular, and not really much in need of being discovered.
I'll come back and update if I think of any more likely candidates before I publish this.
Oh! Late shout-out to one Beautiful Wife's early favorites: Crusade in Jeans. It's the story of a kid who gets sent back in time and gets caught up in the Children's Crusade.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
The cat is dying
When Beautiful Wife and I first got married, each of us had two cats. Mine were Wayward and Astrophe, while hers were Syn and Claire. We'd pictured merging the two households as a sort of fuzzy Brady Bunch kind of thing, but in the event they didn't blend well. Claire and Wayward kept scrapping for dominance, and various cats were spraying all over the apartment trying to mark territory, and... it just didn't quite work out.
So Wayward went to live with my parents, in a life of luxurious indulgence that I can only admire. The other three stayed with us. Astrophe, apparently, was sufficiently unthreatening that he could bond with the other two.
Then we had children, and I can barely describe the looks of betrayal that the cats gave us as they aged. Cats and toddlers are natural enemies, as cats are very particular about how they get touched, and toddlers will touch everything and have no sense of restraint. But we mostly kept them separated, and everyone was mostly all right.
And, of course, we all got older -- though when the toddlers do that, it's called "growing up". So, y'know, they grew up. The rest of us, cats included, just got older.
Eventually, for health reasons, we put Syn down. A few years later, we did the same for Claire. Neither was easy. Shortly after Claire left us, my parents did the same for Wayward.
And somewhere in the past two weeks, I've realized that we're looking at the same thing for Astrophe. On one level, it's almost overdue; he was looking skinny and miserable two years ago, but we altered his diet to something much more gravy-intensive and got him onto a semi-regular dose of miralax, and for a fairly long while he was doing a lot better. But over the last two weeks or so, well...
He's amazingly skinny. His bones are all very prominent. He keeps wandering into the kitchen and looking at us, but no matter what we give him he eats very little of it. He walks slowly, almost (but not quite) limping. One day last week, he managed to poop and throw up over a huge portion of the house, basically tracing a path from Firstborn's room back to his litter box. It took me a solid half an hour to clean it all up. And as of today, he keeps settling on this one mat beside the litter box -- way closer to his own waste than a healthy cat should be willing to settle. He doesn't seem to be in pain, he's just... increasingly, relentlessly weakening. It's been very sudden. And so far, our every effort to bring him back from this has failed.
He's still a sweet kitty. He's still... I don't know, not comfortable but also not miserable, and we're trying to give him as much affection as we can in whatever time we have left. But he's quieter than I ever remember him being, slower than I ever remember him being, more careful in his movements than I ever remember him being.
He's twenty years old, and I'm pretty sure the cat is dying.
So Wayward went to live with my parents, in a life of luxurious indulgence that I can only admire. The other three stayed with us. Astrophe, apparently, was sufficiently unthreatening that he could bond with the other two.
Then we had children, and I can barely describe the looks of betrayal that the cats gave us as they aged. Cats and toddlers are natural enemies, as cats are very particular about how they get touched, and toddlers will touch everything and have no sense of restraint. But we mostly kept them separated, and everyone was mostly all right.
And, of course, we all got older -- though when the toddlers do that, it's called "growing up". So, y'know, they grew up. The rest of us, cats included, just got older.
Eventually, for health reasons, we put Syn down. A few years later, we did the same for Claire. Neither was easy. Shortly after Claire left us, my parents did the same for Wayward.
And somewhere in the past two weeks, I've realized that we're looking at the same thing for Astrophe. On one level, it's almost overdue; he was looking skinny and miserable two years ago, but we altered his diet to something much more gravy-intensive and got him onto a semi-regular dose of miralax, and for a fairly long while he was doing a lot better. But over the last two weeks or so, well...
He's amazingly skinny. His bones are all very prominent. He keeps wandering into the kitchen and looking at us, but no matter what we give him he eats very little of it. He walks slowly, almost (but not quite) limping. One day last week, he managed to poop and throw up over a huge portion of the house, basically tracing a path from Firstborn's room back to his litter box. It took me a solid half an hour to clean it all up. And as of today, he keeps settling on this one mat beside the litter box -- way closer to his own waste than a healthy cat should be willing to settle. He doesn't seem to be in pain, he's just... increasingly, relentlessly weakening. It's been very sudden. And so far, our every effort to bring him back from this has failed.
He's still a sweet kitty. He's still... I don't know, not comfortable but also not miserable, and we're trying to give him as much affection as we can in whatever time we have left. But he's quieter than I ever remember him being, slower than I ever remember him being, more careful in his movements than I ever remember him being.
He's twenty years old, and I'm pretty sure the cat is dying.
Monday, May 6, 2019
DnD: Back to the Dungeon
This week's game seemed a little short, in part because we were a little slow to get started (a lot of crosstalk among the kids about their characters and weapon selections and possible purchases and...) and in part because one of the kids was getting picked up early so I called it a few minutes earlier than I would have normally. All in all though, it was a good game.
Having taken a day off after the assassination attempt (and not having heard anything back from Sheriff Mourn about the assassin), the group woke up and early and marched back to the keep and down to the entry chamber for the dungeon. Lord Aldenmier planted their standard, and saw them into the dungeon.
They went through the first room and into the four-way intersection, where they again paused to disable the trap on the far door. This time, the small space on the other side of the door held three spears, which they promptly collected and distributed around the party. They considered going back and attacking either the hobgoblins or the ghouls again, but decided against it. Instead, they went the other way (west) and tried the first door they came to there. Despite their attempts at stealth, the door opened noisily - and slowly. It was essentially webbed shut. Through the half-open door, Barrith could see the glowing figure of a small, glowing animal off in the far corner somewhere, but the thickness of the webs made it hard to see clearly. So they eased the door closed, stepped back, and told the rest of the party what they were looking at.
Various plans were proposed, involving trying to sneak into the room, putting different characters in the front row, trying things to ascertain what sort of spiders they were likely to be attacked by... until finally the dragonborn sorcerer said, "I know how to solve this." He then walked past everybody, went up to the door, wrenched it halfway open, and set the webs on fire with a firebolt. After a moment to make sure they were burning, he pulled the door shut again and stepped back.
It was about five minutes later that the smoke stopped curling over the top edge of the door. They gave it a couple of minutes longer, checked the door to make sure it wasn't hot, and then cautiously opened it again.
The room was no longer covered in webs. Now the floor was covered in ashes, and the ceiling was stained black by smoke. The counted the bodies of four giant spiders at various points around the room. The glowing animal-shape that Barrith had spotted earlier turned out to be a small statuette of a cat, which the dragonborn sorcerer immediately claimed (amid much cooing and admiration, and over the mild objections of the Mousefolk Cleric). Their knowledge of history and arcana didn't yield much of anything about it, but they're pretty sure that it's magical, and that its magic is somehow tied to the magic of the dungeon. Beside the statue was a bronze-bladed short sword with no magic whatsoever; the monk immediately claimed that.
They proceeded to the next room, scouting carefully (a new strategy for the group, but it seems to be paying off) and noted that something was moving around in there, and that the air around the door held a musky, reptilian scent. So they opened the door with the cleric and the sorcerer in front, both ready to parley in draconic, and found a bunch of kobolds waiting to attack them.
So much for parley. The halfling thief attacked immediately, throwing both his daggers and missing with both. (And yeah, I really need to look up the rules for Dual Wielding in 5e.) The monk attacked next, and took out two of the kobolds. The cleric used a cantrip to kill a third one. Of the remaining two, one rushed the party and struck down by a prepared action from the cleric. She had the impression that it wasn't exactly trying to attack her; it seemed to be lunging for the lamp on the ground beside her. Shadow finished the last kobold with his hand crossbow, and the group immediately moved to the post-combat looting stage.
The kobolds had been armed with javelins and daggers - six of each. Barrith, the halfling thief, took four of the javelins. He likes ranged attacks, but here in the dungeon the range is too close for him to effectively use his longbow. So... javelins. They also found a chest with 38 gp in it. Half of that will go to Lord Aldenmier, but it will still bring the party total up by 19 GP (to a total of 161)
They also now have 6 daggers (1 gp each) and two more javelins (5 sp together) that they can sell later. They also have the three spears that they took from the spear-launching trap, but they don't seem inclined to sell those.
By that time we'd reached the point where one of our players was due to be picked up, so I called a stop there. We're still moving at about the same pace - an encounter or two per two-hour session (with pizza, tacos, or sandwiches in the middle). These encounters went a lot more easily, though -- partly because everybody had leveled up, making them a bit tougher, but also because they didn't try to fight the giant spiders directly, and the kobolds are simply much weaker than the ghouls or hobgoblins were. In addition to that, the party is getting better at working together: I keep hearing words like "flanking" and "helping" and "I have a plan."
Having taken a day off after the assassination attempt (and not having heard anything back from Sheriff Mourn about the assassin), the group woke up and early and marched back to the keep and down to the entry chamber for the dungeon. Lord Aldenmier planted their standard, and saw them into the dungeon.
They went through the first room and into the four-way intersection, where they again paused to disable the trap on the far door. This time, the small space on the other side of the door held three spears, which they promptly collected and distributed around the party. They considered going back and attacking either the hobgoblins or the ghouls again, but decided against it. Instead, they went the other way (west) and tried the first door they came to there. Despite their attempts at stealth, the door opened noisily - and slowly. It was essentially webbed shut. Through the half-open door, Barrith could see the glowing figure of a small, glowing animal off in the far corner somewhere, but the thickness of the webs made it hard to see clearly. So they eased the door closed, stepped back, and told the rest of the party what they were looking at.
Various plans were proposed, involving trying to sneak into the room, putting different characters in the front row, trying things to ascertain what sort of spiders they were likely to be attacked by... until finally the dragonborn sorcerer said, "I know how to solve this." He then walked past everybody, went up to the door, wrenched it halfway open, and set the webs on fire with a firebolt. After a moment to make sure they were burning, he pulled the door shut again and stepped back.
It was about five minutes later that the smoke stopped curling over the top edge of the door. They gave it a couple of minutes longer, checked the door to make sure it wasn't hot, and then cautiously opened it again.
The room was no longer covered in webs. Now the floor was covered in ashes, and the ceiling was stained black by smoke. The counted the bodies of four giant spiders at various points around the room. The glowing animal-shape that Barrith had spotted earlier turned out to be a small statuette of a cat, which the dragonborn sorcerer immediately claimed (amid much cooing and admiration, and over the mild objections of the Mousefolk Cleric). Their knowledge of history and arcana didn't yield much of anything about it, but they're pretty sure that it's magical, and that its magic is somehow tied to the magic of the dungeon. Beside the statue was a bronze-bladed short sword with no magic whatsoever; the monk immediately claimed that.
They proceeded to the next room, scouting carefully (a new strategy for the group, but it seems to be paying off) and noted that something was moving around in there, and that the air around the door held a musky, reptilian scent. So they opened the door with the cleric and the sorcerer in front, both ready to parley in draconic, and found a bunch of kobolds waiting to attack them.
So much for parley. The halfling thief attacked immediately, throwing both his daggers and missing with both. (And yeah, I really need to look up the rules for Dual Wielding in 5e.) The monk attacked next, and took out two of the kobolds. The cleric used a cantrip to kill a third one. Of the remaining two, one rushed the party and struck down by a prepared action from the cleric. She had the impression that it wasn't exactly trying to attack her; it seemed to be lunging for the lamp on the ground beside her. Shadow finished the last kobold with his hand crossbow, and the group immediately moved to the post-combat looting stage.
The kobolds had been armed with javelins and daggers - six of each. Barrith, the halfling thief, took four of the javelins. He likes ranged attacks, but here in the dungeon the range is too close for him to effectively use his longbow. So... javelins. They also found a chest with 38 gp in it. Half of that will go to Lord Aldenmier, but it will still bring the party total up by 19 GP (to a total of 161)
They also now have 6 daggers (1 gp each) and two more javelins (5 sp together) that they can sell later. They also have the three spears that they took from the spear-launching trap, but they don't seem inclined to sell those.
By that time we'd reached the point where one of our players was due to be picked up, so I called a stop there. We're still moving at about the same pace - an encounter or two per two-hour session (with pizza, tacos, or sandwiches in the middle). These encounters went a lot more easily, though -- partly because everybody had leveled up, making them a bit tougher, but also because they didn't try to fight the giant spiders directly, and the kobolds are simply much weaker than the ghouls or hobgoblins were. In addition to that, the party is getting better at working together: I keep hearing words like "flanking" and "helping" and "I have a plan."
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Thursday, May 2, 2019
He's a Ranger, a Rogue, a Campfire Marshmallow
So, as the party's designated Sneaky Guy, my Elvish Rogue/Ranger (3/5) really rather distinguished himself last session. First, he was the only one in the party who didn't end up in a force cage. Then he killed the last of the zombies belonging to the green hag sisters, and annoyed the heck out of them from a safe distance until he ran out of thunderstones, alchemist fire, and the like.
Then he found out that you really shouldn't engage hags in melee combat, because ability drain is a terrible thing to be on the wrong end of and also their fingernails are really sharp. Fortunately, you can still heal someone from inside a force cage. Unfortunately, trying again got us within a mouse's whisker of a total party kill, and only the bard's skill at persuasion and the mermaid's homicidal impatience got them through alive.
So while they were waiting for the remaining Force Cage to release the mermaid sorceress, they checked over the ancient ruins that had been built on top of other, ancienter ruins. And they found a door that bade them to speak the pass phrase or die by fire.
They didn't know the pass phrase. So my elf boldly set out to see what was up with the door.
The door, as it turned out, was magically trapped and would release a Flame Strike every time the trap was set off. But Vendril Bloodthorne was not deterred; he was skilled with traps and locks alike. However, as a slight and very clearly unnecessary nod in the general direction of caution, he did chase everyone else out of the room and quaff a potion of Protection From Fire before he set to work.
Y'all, he set the trap off no less than six times. FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH!
Okay, maybe seven. FWOOSH! Maybe even eight.
But he's a rogue. Well, partly a rogue. So he has Evasion, and his reflexes border on the inhuman. Between that and the potion, he was only very lightly singed when he finished disarming the trap and went to work unlocking the door.
Well, in the next room they found a trap door leading down -- hopefully to the gate that they were seeking. So the bard turned everybody invisible, and they threw open the trap door, and...
...It was completely black. Nobody in this party can see in the dark. So Vendril lights his lantern and looks into the dark.
That was when the spirit naga that was hiding down there Fireballed the whole room.
Well, the invisible bard quickly went down the ladder into the basement. The invisible mermaid sorceress immediately returned fire (::ahem::) with a Fireball of her own, damaging the naga and failing to vaporize our bard. The invisible fighter leaped down into the darkness and landed on... well... his face. So Vendril, with his skill at tumbling and his nearly godlike dexterity, tried to tumbled down to the basement.
He, too, landed on his face.
So at this point both the fighter and the rogue/ranger were prone (but still invisible). The bard was on his feet, but not terribly well equipped to attack a naga, and also still invisible. The mermaid sorceress was still on the ground floor above, and quite visible. So the naga charmed her. ("Awww! We can't hurt her! She's my pet!") It was at this point that Vendril remembered that it was theoretically possible to get to his feet and make a full attack with a successful enough Tumble check.
Y'all, I rolled a natural 20 on that check. Vendril came to his feet like something out The Matrix and murdered the shit out of that naga. ("Dodge this.") ...Then we double-checked the math, and yeah: that natural 20 was absolutely the only way I could have done that. Anything else was too low. So Vendril should really never, ever try that again.
After that we laid to rest the ghost of the little girl, but that... well, that's another story.
Then he found out that you really shouldn't engage hags in melee combat, because ability drain is a terrible thing to be on the wrong end of and also their fingernails are really sharp. Fortunately, you can still heal someone from inside a force cage. Unfortunately, trying again got us within a mouse's whisker of a total party kill, and only the bard's skill at persuasion and the mermaid's homicidal impatience got them through alive.
So while they were waiting for the remaining Force Cage to release the mermaid sorceress, they checked over the ancient ruins that had been built on top of other, ancienter ruins. And they found a door that bade them to speak the pass phrase or die by fire.
They didn't know the pass phrase. So my elf boldly set out to see what was up with the door.
The door, as it turned out, was magically trapped and would release a Flame Strike every time the trap was set off. But Vendril Bloodthorne was not deterred; he was skilled with traps and locks alike. However, as a slight and very clearly unnecessary nod in the general direction of caution, he did chase everyone else out of the room and quaff a potion of Protection From Fire before he set to work.
Y'all, he set the trap off no less than six times. FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH!
Okay, maybe seven. FWOOSH! Maybe even eight.
But he's a rogue. Well, partly a rogue. So he has Evasion, and his reflexes border on the inhuman. Between that and the potion, he was only very lightly singed when he finished disarming the trap and went to work unlocking the door.
Well, in the next room they found a trap door leading down -- hopefully to the gate that they were seeking. So the bard turned everybody invisible, and they threw open the trap door, and...
...It was completely black. Nobody in this party can see in the dark. So Vendril lights his lantern and looks into the dark.
That was when the spirit naga that was hiding down there Fireballed the whole room.
Well, the invisible bard quickly went down the ladder into the basement. The invisible mermaid sorceress immediately returned fire (::ahem::) with a Fireball of her own, damaging the naga and failing to vaporize our bard. The invisible fighter leaped down into the darkness and landed on... well... his face. So Vendril, with his skill at tumbling and his nearly godlike dexterity, tried to tumbled down to the basement.
He, too, landed on his face.
So at this point both the fighter and the rogue/ranger were prone (but still invisible). The bard was on his feet, but not terribly well equipped to attack a naga, and also still invisible. The mermaid sorceress was still on the ground floor above, and quite visible. So the naga charmed her. ("Awww! We can't hurt her! She's my pet!") It was at this point that Vendril remembered that it was theoretically possible to get to his feet and make a full attack with a successful enough Tumble check.
Y'all, I rolled a natural 20 on that check. Vendril came to his feet like something out The Matrix and murdered the shit out of that naga. ("Dodge this.") ...Then we double-checked the math, and yeah: that natural 20 was absolutely the only way I could have done that. Anything else was too low. So Vendril should really never, ever try that again.
After that we laid to rest the ghost of the little girl, but that... well, that's another story.
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Blogging Challenge: Things I wish more books talked about
This is part of the weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews.
I have one big, glaring one and I'm to write it out right now, and maybe if I think of something else I'll come back and add that later.
1. Women have periods. This is... this is one of those weird blind spots. It's one of those Things We Don't Talk About. At least, it is in my reading. And that's deeply weird to me, because we're talking about something perfectly normal that happens to better than half the population at some point, but... {{crickets chirping}} (Like, seriously: I think I've seen it referenced twice - once in a post-zombie-apocalypse comic, and once in the otherwise-completely-horrible movie Showgirls. Oh, and it's an actual plot element in Pitch Black.) But, I mean... We've reached the next stage of the Hunger Games. Does Katniss check the calendar to see if she needs to add some pads to her pack? Our heroine is scouting the Shadow Tower so she can report back to her friends before they enter its fearsome depths. Has she missed a period? Is she worried about it, or is this normal for her? Who the hell knows? I'm not saying it needs to be a major focus, but if you're going to have a go at realistic worldbuilding maybe consider that this is a normal thing that normally happens to normal people on a pretty regular basis? Because I feel like leaving those considerations completely "off screen" just contributes to an unnecessary and harmful taboo.
Late update: Nope, apparently that's it. That's my soapbox issue on this topic.
I have one big, glaring one and I'm to write it out right now, and maybe if I think of something else I'll come back and add that later.
1. Women have periods. This is... this is one of those weird blind spots. It's one of those Things We Don't Talk About. At least, it is in my reading. And that's deeply weird to me, because we're talking about something perfectly normal that happens to better than half the population at some point, but... {{crickets chirping}} (Like, seriously: I think I've seen it referenced twice - once in a post-zombie-apocalypse comic, and once in the otherwise-completely-horrible movie Showgirls. Oh, and it's an actual plot element in Pitch Black.) But, I mean... We've reached the next stage of the Hunger Games. Does Katniss check the calendar to see if she needs to add some pads to her pack? Our heroine is scouting the Shadow Tower so she can report back to her friends before they enter its fearsome depths. Has she missed a period? Is she worried about it, or is this normal for her? Who the hell knows? I'm not saying it needs to be a major focus, but if you're going to have a go at realistic worldbuilding maybe consider that this is a normal thing that normally happens to normal people on a pretty regular basis? Because I feel like leaving those considerations completely "off screen" just contributes to an unnecessary and harmful taboo.
Late update: Nope, apparently that's it. That's my soapbox issue on this topic.
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