It's three months 'till Xmas

Yup. Three months. Xmas cards and decorations have been available in some stores since August. In one case, I saw a store carrying some in July.

Truly the world has gone mad.

Happy Autumnal Equinox

So begins the Fall.

Muahahahahaha!

Thoughts on "The Dagger and the Coin" series by Daniel Abrams

I finished book five of "The Dagger and the Coin", a fantasy series written by Daniel Abraham. Yes, the Daniel Abraham who is one of the two writers who make up the pseudonym of James S.A. Corey, who wrote "The Expanse" series.

With "The Expanse" done, I was hungry for a series. All my favorite authors are... not cranking the stuff out... and Abraham was recommended to me.

I got "The Dragon's Path", book one of his "The Dagger and the Coin" series and quite enjoyed it. I think I was a third of the way in when I got the other four books: "The King's Blood", "The Tyrant's Law", "The Widow's House", and "The Spider's War".

The series is written in a style similar to "The Expanse" or the "Song of Ice and Fire" books (remember those?). Each chapter is told from the point-of-view of a character.

The main characters are:

• Cithrin bel Sarcour, an orphan half-breed child raised by the great bank. Turns out she's got a genius for banking and a wild, impulsive, inclination for risks.
• Marcus Wester, a bleak-mannered and aging mercenary captain whose wife and daughter were burned alive before him. He's killed kings and doesn't have a lot of patience for shit.
• Geder Pallinko, a somewhat-nerdy nobleman who is thrust into power. A shame he's also a bit of a sociopath, a tyrant, and a mass-murderer.
• Kit, a master actor with quite the secret in his past.
• Clara Kalliam, the wife of Baron Dawson Kalliam and a woman who goes through all kinds of hell to save her family and her homeland.

All told, I found the series to be a fun read. Abraham created a fascinating world. Once ruled by dragons, the human race were bred as slaves. Multiple ofshoot races were bred for specific purposes and after the dragons fell, the various races of humanity inherited the world and get along about as well as you'd expect. I like the protagonists of the series. They're engaging, flawed, but not so much so that I didn't want to read about what they were going through. While I personally loathed Geder Pallinko, his character arc was fascinating. Abraham did a marvelous job of showing how we're all heroes in our personal narratives. Especially delusional sociopaths.

The politics were well-written and while the racial stuff got a bit heavy-handed at times, it rang quite true. Disturbingly-so given the times we're in.

There were a few cons. I thought some of the "war is hell" narratives dragged on a bit too long. I could have done without the dragons. I find it odd to say that for a fantasy series, but the whole dragon thing felt a bit shoehorned in and didn't really flow well with the plot, to my mind. And that's kind of funny given the dragons are kind of central, though in a removed way. The series does conclude, but the conclusion feels rushed, a bit overly-contrived, and oddly-abrupt. Lots of threads were left hanging, making me wonder if he's planning a sequel series.

If he writes it, I'll read it.

Rebranding

I love how fanny packs have been rebranded as "sling bags".

En-compass-ing thoughts

If you could only hear the laugh track I hear!

Anyway, I saw a post on another blog I enjoy and realized that I, too, had backed the referenced Kickstarter. And that made me think of yet another fancy compass I've obtained. So, without further ado, let me speak of compasses. Compassi? What is the plural for compass? Meh, I don't care. Moving on...

The Sailor's Compass by Oceanus Brass

I keep saying I'm going to quit Kickstarter and I never do. Oceanus Brass is one of those Kickstarter creators that make it difficult, if not impossible, for me to ever truly quit. They do nautical-themed things. Doodads. Brass utility knives and sailing gear. They came out with a Kickstarter for their Sailor's Compass and the next thing I knew, I was backing it. Despite the pandemic madness, they sent out the compass pretty quickly. It's a neat little thing. I mean, it's a compass, so it's not like it fires lasers or cuts boxes, but it's a simple, beautiful, functional tool It looks a bit like the sort of ladies' compact my grandmother used to carry about. It's about two inches in diameter and has a glow insert for use in poor or no lighting. I keep it in my "Go Bag", mostly because I think it's too gorgeous to just sit on a shelf and collect dust.

Heirloom Dual Sapphire Titanium Compass

On the topic of gorgeous things, at some point not long after I got the Oceanus Brass compass, I was perusing CountyComm's website, as I am wont to do, and lo, among the new items, was the Heirloom Dual Sapphire Titanium Compass. I couldn't tell you why I succumbed, exactly. It could have been "retail therapy" due to isolation and madness from the COVID Pandemic. It could have been because this compass is just so damn gorgeous. It could have been both. Oh, I bet it was probably both. Anyway, I got one. This compass is about half the size of the Sailor's Compass. It looks mainly like a sort of fob one might have when wearing an old-fashioned waistcoat or vest. It looks a little like a small pocketwatch, to be honest. And I love those, so that might have been part of the appeal. Like the Sailor's Compass, the Heirloom Compass is a functional thing that's also beautiful. The north indicator on the needle glows in the dark, should one need to know north without lights, and it comes (came?) with a little leather sleeve to hold it. I have to admit that every now and again, I'll carry this compass around, even though I don't need one in an urban area. It's just a fun little bauble to carry around.

I suppose I'm good to find north, provided I'm away from strong magnets and the like. And, if anything, I've got some lovely things to talk about.

Stranger Things - the best 80s nostalgia

I just finished watching season 4 of "Stranger Things" and it left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling of weird nostalgia for the 80s (a decade I didn't especially enjoy when I lived through it).

I gather that Season 5 will conclude the series, though spin-offs are apparently still on the table. I hope that one of those spin-offs have Dustin and Steve off doing side adventures, 'cause those two are hilariously-awesome. I'd also take good time to watch the adventures of Max and Eleven doing whatever those two feel like doing. They should bring in Erika Sinclair in for maximum awesome, though.

All told, I have a number of hopes for season five of the show:

• More Max being awesome. I've decided that Sadie Sink's portrayal of Max Mayfield has made her my favorite character.
• More Steve and Dustin. For the most part, I'm inclined to think the male characters of "Stranger Things" get the short end of the stick in terms of meaty roles, but Joe Keery and Gaten Matarazzo have been given a gift from the writers with Steve Harrington and Dustin Henderson.
• Give Maya Hawke's Robin Buckley a happy ending. Her character rocks. It's the 80s and not a good time for a girl to come out of the closet, so indulge in fantasy and give her a happy time, eh?
• I'm rooting for Caleb McLaughlin's Lucas Sinclair and Sadie Sink's Max Mayfield, but for the love of Cthulhu, I wish the writers woudl give McLaughlin more to do.
• On the topic of characters who need more to do... good lord. Finn Wolfhard's Mike Wheeler, Noah Schnapp's Will Byers, and Charlie Heaton's Jonathan Byers were nothing more than pointless oxygen consuption and wasted screen time in the last two seasons. I really hope the writers can come up with something for these characters to do that's useful. It was painful to watch Will Byers do his pining over Mike and it did little to move the plot forward. Jonathan Byers did exactly nothing of use in the season other than be a sort of love-interest for Natalia Dyer's Nancy Wheeler (who is SO FAR out of his league it's painful). And, while I feel bad for Finn Wolfhard. The character of Mike Wheeler has been sidelined to the point of being... uh... pointless for the last two seasons. The writers really need to think of something for the character to do other than be "heart".

I feel sad for the Hawkins, Indiana tourist board.

Deconstruction of Heroes - a really annoying trend

I found it was really getting to me when Steven Moffatt took over "Doctor Who".

"Doctor Who" had transitioned from the Russell T. Davies reboot to Moffatt, who had written some of the best, and most haunting, episodes during the Davies tenure.

Under Davies, there was a fair amount of deconstruction of the Doctor's character and personality. A lot of trying to get into the character's head and part the mystery, but for some reason, I didn't find it too much. Then Moffatt stepped in and just kept going bonkers with incomprehensible story arcs that just orbited the Doctor in a bonkers fashion. And he went further in trying to deconstruct the character and break apart all the mystery that made the Doctor so interesting. He even invented an entire incarnation (the "War Doctor") to go nuts on the mythology.

I would up giving up on the show after a while. I've read a bit about what Chris Chibnall has done for the show's mythology and... no regrets from walking away.



Then Rogue One: A Star Wars Story came out.

I have to admit, I didn't think Rogue One was a bad story, exactly. It was just... unnecessary. I honestly didn't need an entire rambling caper telling me how the Rebels got the plans to the Death Star. And having watched the movie, with the really insanely contrived plot twists, it didn't do the story any favors, imho.



Then came the Han Solo movie. I watched a trailer and... nope. I really didn't need an entire movie trying to pidgeonhole in all of Han's backstory so we could see the Kessel Run and how he won the Millennium Falcon. Honestly, that much naked Disney greed to milk more and more out of the fanbase was too much for me.



Around the same time, I think Rian Johnson's The Force Awakens came out and we got treated to PTSD Luke Skywalker, with his addiction to alien blue milk, fresh from the alien teat.

Wow. Yeah.

Watching the heroic Jedi from Return of the Jedi turned into a broken old man with a milk fetish was way over-the-line. I was somewhat annoyed that Abrams had turned Han and Leia into a divorced couple, with Han a scrounger on the run, but given the plot thread of killing off Han, it seemed pointless to get irriated. Turning Luke into an attempted child-murderer and weirdo hermit was just way too much.

I was done with Star Wars at that point.



"The Mandalorian" came along and, I gotta admit, I found myself hooked on the franchise again. Then they did "The Book of Boba Fett" and... really? I mean, making the cool character from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi return was... okay, I guess? Turning him into a weirdly-broken, weak, and kind of pathetic wanna-be sheriff/boss on Tatooine was really unnecessary. If the show hadn't jumped to the Mandalorian for a bit, I'd have written the whole thing off as a waste of time.



And now we've got "Obi-Wan Kenobi".

So, honestly, I never saw a point to telling a story of Obi-Wan's time in exile. There was no way he was doing anything especially-noteworthy during his time as a desert hermit, right?

I'll admit, what they've got going is somewhat-intriguing. A side-quest to rescue young Leia is intriguing. It's unclear if she knows who he is and the attention paid to some details has been fun, but honestly I really don't need to see broken Ben Kenobi, cowering in the shadows. And there's a lot of that, three episodes in.



This trend to take heroic characters from various series and put them through some kind of blender to squeeze some kind of drama from their past tales - stories told after the character's performed their main heroic arc - is demeaning to the character and kinda lazy storytelling. It's a really irritating trend, and I really wish it would stop.

I'm enjoying parts of "Obi-Wan Kenobi". I have to admit, I like the new villain characters. The girl playing young Leia is awesome. Bringing back Owen Lars was well-done. I'm ambivalent about the return of Darth Vader. Seems kind of pandering, but I suppose the entire series is that.