birdsedge

So while Mr & Mrs Mistle Thrush raise Baby Beak on the neighbour's windowsill overlooking our back yard, there's another pair building a nest on our bedroom windowsill. We get a close up view through the window, so I even cleaned the glass while she was out collecting nest stuffing. Expect more photos.

Now is the time I wish I'd not downgraded from SLR when I went digital - or that I'd invested in a camera with a better lens, but My Samsung P1200 will have to do.

I can't believe how much Beaky has grown in just a few days. The thrushes are thriving. Mum and Dad are still foraging and Baby Beak is getting huge.

Left is Mum and Baby Beak on Wednesday evening.










And by this evening (Friday) he'd grown into this little bruiser (right)














Both Mum and Dad are taking it in turns to feed the chick. One arrives and the other flies off almost instantly as if the baton had been passed. Getting a photo of them all together is rare.

(Left)
Mum and Dad Mistle-Thrush and Baby Beak hiding behind Mum

This combination of mystery and supernatural fantasy is set in the world of silent movies, Hollywood studios and Chinatown. Norah, a First World War widow living miserably in Manchester is swept up into the crazy world of 1923 Hollywood by her deasd husband's sister Chris. Chrysanda Flamande is a silent movie star. living life in the fast lane, but essentially good-hearted. She whisks Norah off to Hollywood as dogsitter for her three Pekes and general companion.

When a pretty young stuntman who stood in for Chris on her last movie is viciously hacked to death, signs point to one of Chris' co-stars on her current movie, but this brutal murder is not in the least straightforward. An elderly Chinese wizard (by his own account), Shang Ko, The Shining Crane, tells them that the necklace Chris (and the stuntman) wore on the last movie is a talisman which has summoned the Rat God of ancient Chinese legend.

No one believes at first, but Chris's life is in danger and with the studio boss treating it as a publicity opportunity it's left to Norah and the camera-man Alec, to protect Chris from the horror that's stalking her.

The characters are nicely drawn, the background detail authentic-seeming and the gently developing romance between Norah and Alec is sweet. Recommended.

Mrs Mistle Thrush has been faithfully sitting on her nest on the neighbour's windowsill - a barn conversion which overlooks our yard - for the past few weeks while Dad has stood sentinel on the ridge of our barn. Photos would only have shown a pile of twigs with a tail sticking up out of it. But today I noticed she was standing on the rim of the nest and there was little Baby Beak bobbing up and down. There seems to be only one chick. I'm not sure when he was hatched - but it can't have been more than 5 days ago as she was still sitting when we had a load of visitors who took some photos of the nest. He seems big for a hatchling. At one point he fluttered about and stretched his embryonic wings before settling back in the nest.

Anyhow my camera doesn't have a very good zoom as you can see from the lack of detail on this, but I did manage to get some pics today from inside the porch through glass.

The sparkly background is the frosted glass of the window.

Johnny Depp is very pretty, even in vampire makeup, but sadly I saw this movie yesterday and have already forgotten most of it. It wasn't convincing. Now, OK, I know it's a movie about an 18th century vampire returning to his old family home and encountering the witch who cursed him into a coffin for 2 centuries. I appreciate there's nothing 'real' in this movie at all, but - see, this is the thing - even the maddest fantasy movie has to feel authentic within its own reality.  You have to believe Superman can fly and you have to believe that a hungry vampire is dangerous. I wasn't looking for cosmic truths, but a bit of verisimilitude would have gone a long way!

I was left feeling neither shaken nor stirred, and if it was supposed to be funny, it totally missed the mark for me. Just watch the trailer and you'll see all the best bits in 30 seconds tops.

Then spend the time you saved by going to see The Avenger movie (again).

I can barely believe how long it's taken me to read this book. I started it on 24th March and eventually finished it on 10th May. I do have one excuse - I always read much more slowly (or not at all) when I'm heavily into writing, but mainly it took me so long because it's not only huge, but it's rich and layered and complex.

By huge I mean – approx – 320k words at least, but the wordcount is not as big as the concept. A medievalish second world fantasy of blood and politics told from multiple viewpoints in encapsulated chapters, this is the story of Westeros, the people who rule it; the people who fight for it and the people who fight over it. And the people who die for it.

The story doesn't belong to any one individual though the Starks and their mortal enemies the Lannisters feature prominently. Ned Stark and his family get the biggest bite of the viewpoint chapters, but we occasionally cut away to Daenerys, exiled heir of the Targaryens, deposed sixteen years ago after a rebellion by Ned and his friend (and now king) Robert Baratheon.

We also get the viewpoint of Tyrion Lannister, known as the Imp, a dwarf born into the most powerful (and beautiful) family in the land. In some ways Tyrion reminds me of Miles Vorkosigan. Physically weak and undersized in a culture that rewards strength and the ability to wield edged weapons, Tyrion (and Miles) have to use brainpower to achieve their ends.

I am in awe of GRRM's writing chops. I think it shows that he's spent part of his career writing scripts for TV. His dialogue is effective and each sliver moves the story on. Even though this book is huge, he never wastes words.

While reading this I watched the HBO TV series through twice. The dialogue from the book translated direct to the screen and the series pretty well followed the format of the book, scene for scene, featuring each viewpoint character in turn. Though this is a review of the book I have to say: much kudos to Sean Bean as Ned Stark and to Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister. And I loved the Yorkshire accents of the characters from Winterfell in the far north. Sean Bean, of course, has a natural Sheffield accent. I was amused by the fact that Lena Headey, who plays the Queen, Cersei Lannister, in an even-toned British RP accent, is probably the only other native Yorkshire speaker in the cast, having been brought up in Yorkshire. (She attended the same school as my daughter, just three miles from here,)

Highly recommended – both the book and the TV series,

There was no movie of the week last week due to H being on holiday in a canal boat. Pity she picked the wrong week, weather-wise. And it was still bucketing it down in sympathy this afternoon when we arrived at Cineworld Wakefield for the eagerly awaited 'Avengers Assemble' or 'Marvel Avengers Assemble' if you want the true UK title because apparently the movie execs finally cottoned on to the fact that if you say Avengers to most Brits of a certain age and they immediately think of Steed and Emma Peel.

Both H and I had been looking forward to this for weeks and we were not disappointed. Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Thor on one side and Loki on the other. Yes, you're right, with those odds I wouldn't fancy Loki's chances either, except he has some pretty badass aliens on his side, too. This is obviously meant to be the start of a series that could run and run, given the success of this outing.

And with Joss Whedon at the helm it was everything you might expect: smart and sassy with plenty of testosterone-fuelled infighting between the main characters. I've never yet seen anything of Joss' that I didn't like. It was also interesting to note som of Joss Whedon's favourite TV actors with bit-parts: Alexis Denisov (Buffy and Angel) and Enver Gjokaj (Dollhouse).

Though this was an ensemble cast, Robert Downey Jnr as Tony Stark/Iron Man pretty well stole the show, but special mention to Mark Ruffalo who did an exceptional job of playing Bruce Banner/The Hulk. That character has had a couple of pretty duff movies but I think Ruffalo could pull off a decent Hulk movie.

If you haven't seen it yet - do go. As is our usual preference we saw the 2D version of this, so I can't say anything about the 3D effects. The 2D effects were pretty damn fine splendid as well, but it was the characters and the story that made this so good. The CGI and effects were the icing on the cake.

A thrush has built a nest on the windowledge of our neighbour's house which overlooks our yard. (It's a barn conversion.) Since it's a frosted glass window (non opening) they probably haven't even noticed. Mrs Thrush is sitting on the nest and Mr Thrush is spending a lot of time on the ridge of our barn, keeping watch.

Since it's nesting on a windowledge I'm presuming it should be a mistle thrush but when I listen to the mp3s of British birds oin the web it sounds more like a song thrush. Anyone know how to tell the difference?

Here's the official invitation letter as sent out by secretary Liz Williams. Last I heard there were only three places left, so if you're interested please contact Liz without delay.

MILFORD 2012

Dear Writer,

You are cordially invited to join the Milford SF Writer’s Conference, held at the Trigonos Centre in Snowdonia.  The dates are Saturday 22nd September to Saturday 29th September 2012 inclusive (leaving on the morning of Saturday 29th).

If you’ve attended a previous British Milford, you will know more or less what to expect and can go straight to the booking form.  If not, then a brief introduction may be in order. Milford is a gathering of professional authors, loosely linked by science fiction or fantasy writing.  It is not a school for beginners, and there are no ‘teachers’ or ‘students.’ However, neither is it an elitist in-group: we welcome new participants, and invitations are extended to authors who have only sold the minimum requirement of 1 published piece as well as those among us who only dimly recall what rejection slips look like (HAH! – ed).  Writers who have not attended a previous Milford are particularly welcome.  

The conference has been a regular, more or less annual event since 1972, drawing members from Britain, Europe, America and Australia.  Over the years it has settled down to a comfortable workable format: demanding and exhausting, with much hard work being done, but it’s also convivial, with a lot of sitting and talking about doing hard work. There's no bar, but you are encouraged to bring your tipple of choice and we have a comfy social space in Trigonos' library. It’s thus a social as well as a literary event.

Here’s a brief generalised programme of the week:

• Saturday: turn up late afternoon, bringing manuscripts for discussion during the week if you have not already sent them via email. There's no programme, but around mid-evening we convene and get to know one another over a meal.
• Sunday to Thursday: the main working days. Morning is the time to read manuscripts and prepare notes. Afternoons are workshop sessions, at which the day's quota of material is discussed as forthrightly and constructively as possible, with fairly strict time limits to encourage brevity and allow even the shyest member's voice to be heard. Evenings are for more relaxed conversation and discussion, punctuated by occasional silly literary games.
• Friday: depending on the workload, this can be the time for a further workshop, a semi-formal discussion, exploring the vicinity of the centre, or just resting. In the evening we unwind with a special dinner.

The centre
Trigonos is situated on the shores of Lake Nantlle in Snowdonia, among the mountains of the Snowdonia National Park. It is about 10 miles from Caernarvon, which is accessible from Bangor railway station by a frequent bus service. Full travel details will be sent to participants. The centre is comprised of an old Victorian house and converted barns, and has a committed approach to sustainable land development and environmental restoration.

The centre runs many courses and workshops, and there may be smaller other groups during the time that we will be there. It is full board (breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks) and caters to both vegetarians and non-vegetarians, and can cater for vegan guests also.  The centre grows much of its own organic produce.

Costs: for the whole week, you will pay £560 (minus your deposit) - a flat rate for:

• accommodation
• full board (plus tea/coffee breaks)
• meeting room hire

What you have to bring:
1 or 2 pieces of unpublished work, not exceeding more than 15,000 words in total.  We strongly encourage you to send these in advance and we will set up a small email group for that purpose. If you have not sent them in advance please bring sufficient copies for each participant.  One of these copies is also to be handed to Jacey Bedford (acting Chair) or Liz Williams (Secretary) on the night of arrival so that we can organise the reading schedule, but you’ll get that back.

A typical Milford has anything from 10 - 15 participants, and works best with a full timetable and minimal slack - this year there will be a ceiling of 15 members on a ‘first come, first served’ basis, plus a waiting list which you can join by paying the registration fee and room deposit.  The treasurer will hold this until the booking is either confirmed or cancelled.

To book, please complete the application form (here) and return it to Liz at the address on the form, with a cheque or sterling money order, made payable to Milford SF Writers' Conference for a total of £115  -- £105 pound centre deposit; deductible from your final bill, and £10 conference registration fee. (Regulars will note that the deposit has risen in price: this is because Trigonos have had a number of no-shows and although they know Milford well, they have had to institute a blanket policy of all deposits up front. Since Milford is a non-profit organisation, we need to make sure that we have enough in the coffers to pay this initial lump sum). Cancellations will mean a loss of deposit unless we can re-sell your space.  At least one progress report, with members’ names and further information (such as how to get there!) will be issued in the summer/early autumn.

Hope to see you there!

The committee:
Sue Thomason (Chair)
Jacey Bedford (Minister without Portfolio)
Liz Williams (Secretary)
Steve Kilbane (Treasurer)

Well, it's Aardman animation - so it should be good - we're big Wallace and Gromit fans - but I expected more laugh-out-loud and all I got was sit-and-smile.

The animation is superb, of course, and the voice cast is majestic: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, David Tennant, Imelda Staunton and the obligatory appearance by Brian Blessed as the Pirate King.

The storyline is neat: Pirate Captain (Grant) sets out on a mission to defeat his overachieving rivals for the Pirate of the Year Award and has the misfortune to meet up with Charles Darwin (Tennant) who has an eye on Polly, the rather strange parrot, much beloved of the pirate crew. Adventures ensue, mostly in foggy London involving Queen Victoria (Staunton) and... err... scientists.

It's warm hearted and probably lovely for kids, but what's missing are the belly-laughs and the little tickling in-jokes that the Wallace and Gromit stories deliver for the adults in the audience.

No movie last week because of the snow, so this week we went to see Mirror Mirror a week late. It's school holidays and the cinema was filled with apparently incontinent youngsters judging by the number who bobbed up and down in front of the screen on loo trips mid-movie, but despite that the movie was sweet and sometimes funny though never a laugh-a-minute. It's a retelling of Snow White of course, with Julia Roberts as the wicked queen who has taken over the kingdom and is trying to marry the prince for his money. Snow has been confined to quarters for most of her life, but on her eighteenth birthday finally learns to stand up for herself. The seven dwarves are not Disneyfied, thank goodness and are perhaps the best thing about this movie. Julia Roberts is suitably wicked as the trying-not-to-show-her-age queen and there's a nice surprise at the end.

Just back from Eastercon held this year at Heathrow and featuring guests George R R Martin and Paul Cornell, amongst others. Lovely to see so many friends. Mentioning everyone by name would be next to impossible, but I flew down from Manchester with John and Sara Moran and arranged to meet up with charlieallery, tina_anghelatos and heleninwales (and despite the weirdgeography of the hotel actually managed to do that).

mevennen was there with the lovely T and their Witchcraft Shop stall in the dealers room and I ran into no end of writers I know from Milford, some of whom I haven't seen for a few years.

Panels were great, with many interesting ones on various aspects of books/writing/publishing. Special kudos to Joe Abercrombie who, despite his books being dark, gritty and full of entrails, proved to be a funny and charming panellist and not at all inclined to wield edged weapons. One of the best panels of the whole weekend was 'There's a hole in my plot' which, despite Joe Abercrombie bouncing laughs off the rest of the panellists for the whole fifty minutes, still managed to deliver some useful insights about plotting.

George R.R. Martin and Paul Cornell were both hugely entertaining and seemed like jolly nice chaps.

I volunteered for panels this year - first time ever - and was pleased to be invited to sit on a panel called 'How pseudo do you like your Medieval?' A nice little session (I thought) discussing the use of historical periods as a setting for your fantasy book. I didn't find out who the other panellists were until a bare couple of weeks beforehand: George R R Martin, Juliet McKenna, Anne Lyle and Anne C Perry (moderator). And instead of being in a little room it was on the main stage in the big Commonwealth auditorium with cameras and a video screen (and also streamed live over the net) and a full audience of several hundred. I have to say that Anne C Perry did an amazing job of moderating it. Everyone got a fair turn and the questions kept us all right on track. I managed to get a couple of laughs and a ripple of applause which was very gratifying. I must have said something pertinent, though for the life of me I can't remember what. I don't think it was recorded, but if anyone finds it on youtube, please let me know.

The Easterecon committee did a fabulous job or orgaising and delivered four days of excellent programming. The only thing that let the con down was the hotel, or aspects of it. The rooms were fine and the beds comfortable, so I could forgive almost everything else, however there wasn't enough social space (apparently one of their bars was out of action) and the available spaces (the Bijou Bar or the Atrium) were extremely noisy. The Bijou Bar having thump-thump music which increased in volume as the night progressed and the Atrium being a huge open space with acoustics like a swimming pool and very little seating. The con food - which was very reasonably priced at a tenner for two courses - offered no choice of menu, do if you didn't happen to like beef stroganoff served with minted potatoes, you were left with the restaurant at between £13 and £22 for a main course or Bijou Bar prices at £11.50 for a burger. One thing which did rankle in the Bijou Bar was £7.50 plus a service charge for one cappucino and one half-full cups of coffee which took fifteen minutes to make. I do appreciate that there are a limited number of hotels big enough to take a convention of 1400 people, so I have no problems with the committee's choice of venue.

What I have decided is that after a somewhat shaky and bemused start at the rescue con at Chester a few years ago, where I felt totally out of my depth, I like Eastercon and will be signing up annually. Birmingham last year was hugely enjoyable and Heathrow this year has clnched it. la_marquise_de_ is one of the organising committee who recently got the go-ahead for Eastercon 2013 in Bradford, so I've paid up for that. I'm told that the hotel is lovely and very welcoming to Eastercon, and it has the advantage of being close to home. Already looking forward to it.

I wanted to say thank you to those people who who boosted the signal and donated towards the emergency fund for Mzwandile's air ticket home to attend his brother's funeral. We managed to get him home in time for the funeral and back again. I said I'd keep you informed and so here is is and the finances currently stand like this:

Mzwandile's flight cost £753. Through donations from yourselves and from musicians from the Britfolk list we managed to raise £576 in total leaving only a balance of £177 for the Zulus to find - a much less daunting prospect than trying to raise £753.

Donations came from all over the UK and from as far away as Australia, the USA and Eastern Europe. Everyone who donated should now have received their thank-you CD from me of a Zulu Tradition CD

Once again, many thanks. You know who you are.

Well, what can I say? I enjoyed the first book and they've actually stayed very true to the story while adapting it for the screen. The casting was excellent, especially Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) who doesn't get much screen time in the first part of the trilogy but makes it all count. The real revelation was Woody Harrelson as Haymitch. He was not at all how I imagined Haymitch-in-the-book, but he actually made sense of the character and made him a lot more sympathetic while not exactly nice. In the book I could barely believe Haymitch had been a winner, but this Haymitch had an underlying streak of 'win', for sure

There were bits missed out, of course: the runaways in the wood at the beginning and the avox girl in the capital didn't appear - though 'avox girl' is down as a character in the imdb cast list. The training period was shortened, but still managed to be effective, and the interviews with Caesar were telescoped, but they still served the same story purpose. There wasn't enough time to do anything much with the character of Effie Trinkett and she was little more than a pantomime-dame of a character, but IIRC she doesn't really show any feelings in the first book anyway.

Special mention for Amandla Stenberg as Rue and for Lenny Kravitz as Cinna - complete with gold eyeliner. Cinna doesn't get much screen time but it's imporant that he be the human antidote to Effie and make that essential connection with Katniss. Oh, and I have to say: kudos to Seneca's (Wes Bentley) beard. That should definitely set a new fashion.

A film worth seeing if you enjoyed the book and even if you haven't read the book judging by my cinebuddy, H's reaction. She came into this cold and enjoyed it very much.

The Assassini Trilogy #1

Vampires and werewolves (though not as you might expect) in a 15th century Venice with slimy, dark magic! What's not to like?

Venice is ruled by Duke Marco, Prince of Serenissima, but he's a simpleton and so his uncle, Prince Alonzo the Regent, vies for power with his sister, Marco's mother, Duchess Alexa. Atilo, spy, assassin and head of the Assissini is past his prime, but he's driven to find his own successor in the wake of a battle with krieghunds, the shapechanging warriors of Leopold, the German emperor's bastard son, in which he loses most of his trained assassins.

Into this brutally Machiavellian setting comes a strangely beautiful pale boy, discovered shackled with silver and walled up in the hold of a Mamluk pirate ship. He's strong, fast and agile, can absorb peoples' thoughts and knowledge, has a strange hunger, burns in the daylight and fears to give in to the full moon.

His only memories are of a northern village where he was an orphan and a slave, and then of falling through fire... but it seems that was a hundred years ago. While in hiding the boy discovers and forms an attachment to Giulietta, Duke Marco's cousin and a marriage pawn. When Giulietta is abducted, supposedly by Mamluks Venice begins to slide towards war.

Atilo discovers the pale faced boy at the scene of a kill and the boy's speed and agility make him realise that if only he can find him, tame him and train him, he might have found the successor he's been looking for. He names the boy Tycho. The twists and turns in this story take Tycho from being Atilo's prisoner to his apprentice until he finds Giulietta once again and falls foul of Venetain justice.

This is the first book in the Assassini trilogy, so we do find a little bit about Tycho's history, but there are plenty more mysteries to look forward to in the next installment. The Fallen Blade is edgy and gritty, smelly, bloody and damp, but remains a darkly beautiful book full of twists and turns, plots and sub-plots and well rounded characters both major and minor. You'll need a strong stomach to counter its casual cruelty, but it's still a book wth flashes of real warmth and sensitivity, mainly because of the character of Tycho who has neither soul nor heart, but who still manages some personal integrity despite being used to commit terrible murders on behalf of his masters.

It's compelling but oh, so complex and therefore not a fast light fictional feast, but something that needs to be sipped slowly and savoured. If anything it takes a little while to build up steam because Tycho, doesn't really come to the fore until a third of the way in and a fair amount of the early section of the book is Roderigo, captain of the Dogana, penniless since he refuses to take bribes from smugglers. Since Roderigo drops out of the last part of the book I can only assume that his importance lies in the rest of the trilogy and I wait with interest to see what happens to him along with Tycho, Atilo, Giulietta and Desdaio – Roderigo's love and Atilo's betrothed.

This is my first Jon Courtenay Grimwood. It won't be my last.

The first outing for this twelve-year-old super-villain genius who despite his best (or worst) intentions can't quite bring himself to be utterly evil. Artemis is left in sole charge when his father goes missing and his mother descends into her own insulated fantasy. Feeling that it's up to him and his bodyguard/sidekick/retainer, the large and dangerous Butler, to restore the family fortunes Artemis targets fairy gold, via the kidnap and ransom route. But his plans begin to unravel when he captures a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit, (Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance). The Lower Elements (magical creatures) live underground, having been driven there by the Mud People – the humans – and intend to stay unnoticed by those on the surface. There's Holly's captain, the gruff Julius Root, and the centaur Foaly who is the fairy police version of James Bond's Q, i.e. the man (centaur) with the gadgets and technlogy.

Artemis bites off more than he can chew when the fairies come after Holly, armed with a time-bubble, a troll and a dwarf who burrows underground much like an earthworm does, ingesting the rock in his way and excreting it behind him. (There are rather too many fart jokes – though maybe not if you're a ten year old boy.)

I didn’t like Artemis at first, but gradually we see that despite trying very hard he's not a cold hearted villain and I did warm to him a little by the end. There was another issue I found a little off-putting. Colfer hammers the environmental message a bit too hard, hits it with a brick, in fact. The Mud People are destroying the earth and only the fairies have respect for the planet.

I like reading (good) children's books and though I don't think the Harry Potter books are particularly well written they did catch a wave and were equally readable by adults and children. Despite it's huge commercial success, Artemis doesn't really do it for me. I might try one more just to see if this series improves after the first one, but I'm not bubbling over with eagerness.

Set in Sherwood Smith's fantasy world of Sartorias-deles, The Trouble With Kings seems to be a one-off (so far) although there are enough loose ends to wonder if there's a follow-on planned. I haven't read all of Sherwood's books yet, though I am working my way through them. I like to read chronologically when an author has a lot of books in the same world, but I think I may well have skipped ahead on this one, so pardon me if there's some earlier tie-in with this book that I'm not aware of.

Flian awakes to find herself with a set of bruises, a hell of a headache and no memory. A man introduces himself as her favourite cousin Garian, king of Drath, and proceeds to whisk her off to his castle and look after her. There he feeds her a collection of half-truths and outright lies combined with a heavy sedative in the guise of healing medicine, and persuades her to go through with the marriage she has already agreed to - to the austere king of neighbouring Ralanor Veleth, Jason Szinzar. While not recognising any feelings for Jason she's bamboozled into agreeing, only to be abducted at the altar  by Jason's rebellious younger brother, Jaim, and his volatile sister, Jewel. They warn her that once Jason had got his hands on her lands and money he intended to kill her. It turns out that she's not only a princess of Lygiera, she's a very rich princess. Once she gets her memory back, she realises that a major part of her life has so far been avoiding suitors who want her money. Despite being royal she has very low self-esteem and prefers to lose herself in her music rather than brave the intrigues of the court.

She makes it back home, but behaps a better title for this would have been 'The Trouble with Abductions' because poor Flian never seems to be able to stay in one place for long without someone snatching her. But despite being an intovert, much happier with her own music than the barbs of the court, and having a pretty low opinion of her own looks and worth she manages to acquit herself well, grow in confidence and step up to her royal responsibilities. She begins as a very passive character - becomes more active, learning to trust her own judgement. She's not a kick-ass warrior princess - and never will be - but she does show extreme courage, which in its own way is a gentle examination of the nature of heroism.

And since this is a romance as well as a fantasy, she gets the right man in the end - though for much of the book it's unclear as to who that right man might be. Sherwood Smith cleverly throws in something which deflects the reader from what might almost be an obvious conclusion if this were a standard romance with standard romance tropes.

The ending feels as though there were other stories to be written. There are a couple of strands undeveloped in this book, which might well be a sign that Sherwood Smith intends to revisit this particular corner of her well-developed fantasy world. One is Markham, Jason's liegeman who, it seems, has his own story to tell. It's tantalisingly set up from the early part of the book but when Flian finally asks him, we never get to hear the full story. It sounds like it may well be a book in itself - and that's a book I'd like to read. The other undeveloped strand is Flian's embryonic magical talent of seeing faces in water or fire. But she mostly does it accidentally and this never really develops as a plot mover. Is this a talent she might pass on to her children and will we see them in some future book? There are definite possibilities for ore books.

For cmcmck and anghara for different reasons.

This is my friend Eileen McGann who is blessed with one of the finest voices on the planet. As an added bonus the artwork in the video is all hers, too. Yes, she's Canadian. Can you tell from the subject matter?

Well, what can you expect from an Edgar Rice Burroughs character made into a movie by Disney? Yes, that's right, light entertainment with fantasy worldbuilding and excellent CGI aliens and monsters. Nothing to rave about, but nothing to dislike either. Pretty much in the same vein as Flash Gordon (sadly without the Queen soundtrack). Civil War veteran, John Carter is magically transported to Barsoom (that's Mars to you and me) where he discovers that (because of the difference in gravity yada-yada) he's much stronger and can jump so far that he can almost fly. He immediately gets involved with a warlike race of four-armed, tall, green aliens (excellent mo-cap/CGI) and a couple of warring hunanoid factions. Yeah, there's a pretty princess trying to escape a dynastic marriage to a thuggish cardboard villain, some amoral manipulators, a couple of monsters and a comedy dog (well, not quite a dog but it fills the same role) and I wouldn't be giving away much if I said it all turned out well in the end (Hey, It's Disney!)

Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins make a pleasant enough leading pair (both were in X-Men Origins, Wolverine, but it took me a while to place them). James Purefoy has a very small role with only one good scene which he steals from Kitsch with relish. Mark Strong has such a great face for a villain and is extremely sinister as a the amoral, villainous manipulator, stirring up trouble.

Verdict: Froth, but I enjoyed it way more than I expected.

I've just joined Goodreads and started out by copying over my book log reviews (about 150 of them so far). I'm still getting used to it and finding my way around, but if anyone here is on Goodreads, I'm there under my own name, Jacey Bedford, please 'friend' me. Thanks.

The fun history of underwear for children, useful for ages 7 – 10, or even slightly older, depending on the child, of course. Underwear isn't a subject you can find much source material on, especially for this age range, so this is a welcome addition to books on costume even if it does have a jokey approach and cartoon illustrations that are more about appeal than accuracy. It offers a pretty good outline of different types of underwear for men and women through the ages. There was one glaring omission in women's body shapes/corsetry. The timeline jumped from 18th century panniers to 19th century Victorian hooped skirts and completely missed out the more relaxed Regency styles and shapes, which was a short but important fashion period. That apart it seemed to cover most points from loin-cloths via jockstraps to boxers and from corsets via bloomers to thongs.

Disappointingly a short story that had nothing to do with circuses. With the Circus Tresaulti book still spinning round my head I picked it from the titles on my Kindle believing it to be a novel, but downloaded from Project Gutenberg it turned out to be a circular tale of a humanoid alien trying to convince an author to help him tell people he's from an alternate universe very similar, but not quite the same as our earth. Does the author believe him? He sure does. Can he help to get his story out there? Unlikely. Why? No one will believe him. The author shows the alien his latest story and it's exactly the story the alien had just told him. Sadly this story has not aged well.

What can I say? It's Orange Wednersdays 2 for 1, so if we're not otherwise occupied, Wednesday is our girls-afternoon-out, wich means movie afternoon for H and I. It was a thin week for movies this week, though. It was eaither Journey 2 or This Means War - which has apparently had terrible reviews. Having seen the previous outing, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, in 3D, we did, of course opt for the 2D version of Journey 2 Mysterious Island. (I'm not sure exploding volcanoes and giant spiders in 3D would have been very pleasant.)

I suppose this movie was OK if you take intro account it's 'family entertainment'. I guess kids might not notice the plot holes big enough to drive a fleet of double-decker buses through. On the other hand, kids are really smart. Smarter than the script-writers? I hope so. The techno-babble about tectonic plates was truly eye-watering. This island (Atlantis?) is supposed to sink into the ocean and rise again on a regular basis, but whole new species of flora and fauna seem to have evolved into a complete and complex ecosystem since the last emergence, with miniature elephants, giant spiders and bees you can hitch a ride on. Does this happen every time? And why did the deserted city, supposedly age-old, crumble as the island sank this time? Are we supposed to believe that it has surived other inundations, but not this one?

Stangely enough the giant ride-on bees irritated me a lot less than the tectonic plate rubbish. I really wish they hadn't tried to sound scientific.

Well, what can I find to say about this movie that's good? It's fun, light, frothy, it moves along fairly briskly. It doesn't have a car chase (yay, score ten points). Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson is actually not as bad as I expected (if you ignore the pretty revolting pec-popping - don't ask!). Sadly Josh Hutcherson is immediately forgettable and Michael Caine, playing the feckless explorer grandad, looks as though he's only in it for the money. (Come on, Mr. C, you can't be that short of job offers.)

What else was good? Err... the Nautilus (yes, this is all things Jules Vernian, remember) was a lovely piece of CGI artwork, though recharging 120 year old batteries with the power from a giant electric eel is... well, just about as unbelievable as the rest of it really, so I shouldn't carp.

Vertdict? Slightly better than a slap in the face with a wet kipper, but if you have a choice go and see Woman in Black or Marigold Hotel or maybe even the Muppets Movie.

A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to the Zulu emergency fund. Mzwandile send his thanks to everyone, too. And a special thanks to those of you who boosted the signal. It's still not too late if you feel inclined.

The target is £753 for the flight to get Mzwandile home to South Africa for his brother's funeral (and to get him back to the UK again).

Details of what and why are here.

So far we've raised (between us all) £322.10 with another £50 promised and another (unspecified) amount promised.

Thank you CDs are on their way to people who have contributed. Shout out if you've got yours already and like it. I think my favourite track is Ingwe, but I also love their version of Shosholoza. Yes there are still mre thank you CDs available.

So I eventually managed to google a number for DPD in London - 0845 950 5505 if you ever need it - and finally managed to get a department that could help me sort out the mysterious 'sorry-we-missed-you' note through the door.

But it created even more of a mystery.

The young woman (let's call her YW) insisted that the note had been left thriugh my door on Friday. Nope, not Friday, I tell her. The note arrived this morning, around 11, at more or less the same time as the post. YW asked if I might have missed it or if it might have been stuck in the letterbox. No way. I had post on Saturday, for a start, and our letterbox is a straight-through opening in the door.

I asked if she could tell me where the parcel was from? Germany, apparently. OK, so I'm not really expecting packages from Germany but my printing (which I am expecting) usually comes from Holland, so, hey, it's anyone's guess.

We go around in circles for a while and then I say: Look, there's no confusion between 10 Park Head and 10 Park Lane is there? Because we do both (very unfortunately) have the same postcode. There's a pause. This package is for 10 Park Lane. But there's no recipient's name on the system. (Note: a package being addressed to 10 Park Lane does not necessarily mean it's not for me, as a company often believes its own postcode database over an address that I have entered personally - and 10 Park Lane sounds so much more like a real address than 10 Park Head.)

So I sak: Why has the we-missed-you card been put through the letterbox of 10 Park Head this mornng? It wasn't, the YW insists. The drver left it on Friday. I give her credit for stickng to her guns, even if they were pointing the wrong way.

So according to the YW the package will be redilivered between 2 and 3 today. To 10 Park Head or 10 Park Lane? Who knows?

So I call long-suffering Lesley at 10 Park Lane who has already had her gas and electricity supply hijacked by my power supply company and has been the recipient of any number of letters and packages for me over the years.

No, she knows nothing about it. No she hasn't put the we-missed-you card through my door and no she's not expecting any packages from Germany, but yes, she was out last Friday if anyone had tried to deliver to her.

Now, if Lesley didn't do it there's NO WAY that anyone else can have put the w-m-y card though my door other than the delivery company because it's a generic unaddressed card. Only someone in possession of the paperwork could have put it through my door (or Lesley's). And that someone, despite what the office in London says, did so this morning.

So... it's 2.15. Lesley has kindly agreed not to go out to the shops until after 3 to give the mystery parcel the opportunity of being delivered to 10 Park Lane. I am, of course, exactly, as usual, sitting in the office which is by the front door, with a bloody big doorbell relay direct to the room.

DPD has 45 minutes left to get it right.

What are the odds?

To DPD: Kudos to your delivery driver. He managed to sneak up to my front door and put through a 'sorry we missed you' card while I was sitting withn ten feet of said door. He did not ring the doorbell and if he knocked did so extremely quietly. Do you pay him overtime for having to come out again tomorrow?

Also kudos to your automated telephone system and to your website which manages not to let me telephone a real person to complain to.

DPD, this is a rubbish service. I don't even know what you were trying to deliver, or from where, but when my package eventualy arrives (if it ever does) I will contact the sender and advise them to use a different delivery company.

It was fine and mild a couple of days ago and I got the camera out at last, so here's Eska Puppy in the back garden. She's now 18 weeks old.

Black dogs are awfully difficult to photograph properly because their features  tend to merge into a black blob, but I got lucky with this one.

She's very sweet natured, though very boisterous.

She's almost totally black (so far) though has little foxy tips to her ear hair and if you look closely sandy hair between her toes. There's also a little white dot on her chest. And of course, the thing that always stands out in a photo is the pink tongue.

Charlie Allery, this is your fault:

Apparently, using a chunk from my children's book in progress:

This is not altogether displeasing - though I would have been happier with Diana Wynne Jones - however when I punched in a chunk of my alt.history fantasy the result I got was:

So I tried a third piece, science fiction this time, and got:

...which is ever-so-slightly worrying. So I punched in another bit from the same piece and got:

Now that's scary. I think this novel is toast!

So I tried my alt-history Polish novel and this time the result was a little more encouraging.

However just to check consistency I punched in another bit of the same novel and got:

So I think I'd better stop there.

Except... I got an email the other day that was obviously written by someone who was virtually illiterate, so I put that in and...

Sorry, Cory. I am absolutely sure you know the difference between there, they're and their and would be unlikely to use any of them in the same way as my correspondent.

This book has a plot, it does, it surely does, but the presentation obscures the action almost-but-not-quite to the point where it swallows it whole, for the tale is told in first, second and third person and also in the story's present and its past. Confusing? Yes.

Absorbing? Yes. Frustrating? Most certainly. Brilliant? Possibly. Flawed? I think so. Whether the flaws outweigh the brilliance is yet to be decided.

I bought this book for my Kindle because it's on the Nebula shortlist for best novel and I thought I should try to catch up with at least some of the listed books. The reviews I've read seem to think it's a masterpiece debut novel and - indeed - it is remarkable. But does it deserve to be Best Novel of 2011? I'll have to read all the others to find out.

The viewpoint switches are dizzying at first - maybe deliberately so in the way it spins you up into the air and then drops you suddenly as if you are actually a participant in the high-flying trapeze act that is this book. Little George is the first person narrator, but having settled into that idea, Valentine rips you out of your comfort zone and drops you immediately into third person. Unused to such confusing switches, it takes a while to realise that you are in someone else's head now. The head-hopping is something you just have to get used to because the whole book continues in like mode (with many snippets of backstory told in parenthesis).

It's disorienting and disturbing. Do not read unless you actually like to be disturbed by your fiction.

And the plot? A bunch of magically and mechanically enhanced circus performers travel from place to place across a dystopian landscape, a land destroyed by war. Not quite post-apocalypse because the apocalypse is not yet over. Cities have been reduced to rubble, the people reduced to soldiers or citizens surviving on the soldiers' goodwill, and there isn't much goodwill around.

The circus exists out of time. The performers have died, some many times, but are not yet dead. Boss, herself created by tragedy, magically transforms bones and bodies with copper wire and bits of junk. This could be classed as steampunk, but it's not really. The disparate performers have all come to the circus as a refuge and despite themselves they have become a family, though dysfunctional in the extreme. Little George is the only one amongst them who is still more-or-less human. When he walks out on brass mechanical legs to paste up the posters announcing the circus is in town they are a casing for his own human limbs. Not so Big George, whose metal arms have become a living trapeze for cruel Elena's troupe of aerialists.

When the Government Man sees the circus performers as a template for a new breed of soldier if only he can find out how they are made he takes Boss in for questioning and the dysfunctional family must decide whether to continue travelling as she has instructed or to stage a rescue, for no one ever returns from being questioned by the Givernment Man.

Beneath this main story arc are numerous stories of how the performers originally came to submit to Boss' alterations from the musical director who is nothing more than a severed head on a mechanical orchestra, to Bird who came only for the wings - the wings that Boss once made for her lover, Alec, who chose to die for real rather than continue to wear the brass and bone feathers with the terrible secret.

There are many things to admire about this book, but it's neither a comfortable nor an easy read. It's confusing and frustrating, but does eventually reach a climax, though there were times when I wondered whether it was going to. It is, however very effective in creating an impression of this broken world full of broken people.

The books I'm reading:
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine (on Kindle) (Nebula nominated)
The Fallen Blade by John Courtney Grimwood
Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

Books I'm writing:
The Winterwood Choice (Adult historical fantasy, in submission)
Your Horse Sees Dead People (MG fantasy in revision)

The book I love the most:
Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
But lots of books run it a close second and I really couldn't choose between them.

The last book I received as a gift:
My family don't buy me books, they know I prefer to buy my own (and they don't know what I have already), but Christmas 2010 (pre-Kindle) I received Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn in hardback because I dropped very heavy hints

The last book I bought for myself:
Lucifer Falling (a short story collection) by Julian Flood

The last book I gave as a gift:
Christmas 2011;  Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism by Rudolf Wittkower
and This is Not My Snowman
(not to the same recipient)

The Nearest Book
My kindle is on my desk with over 100 books tucked inside it, otherwise:
River, an anthology edited by Alma Alexander (containing my story, Floodlust)
The First Cadfael Omnibus by Ellis Peters (bought but not yet read)
New York Public Library Science Desk Reference
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
and Plain Country Friends, the Quakers of High Flatts (a local history book) by Bower and Knight

I can probably sum up this movie in one word: delightful!

With a cast of venerable English actors of a certain age including: Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup and Celia Imrie it has everything going for it right from the start, but add Dev Patel as the wildly overoptimistic manager of the crumbling, but also venerable, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (catering for elderly and beautiful) and you have a winning mixture.

Gentle, funny and serious all in one package this really is a feelgood movie where the new residents of the hotel seem to get what they need, if not what they expected. Some tie up the loose ends of their lives while others undergo a sea-change or make new beginnings.

And it's sure to leave us with a new catchphrase: 'Everything will be all right in the end, and if it's not all right, it isn't the end.'

Highly recommended.

Thanks to everyone who has posted cheques or sent a donation by email so far for the Zulu emergency fund to get Mzwandile home to South Africa for his brother's funeral (and back again). It's only been 2 days and we've raised £219.02 so far. Only another £533.98 to go. (The odd pennies are because of conversion rates from other currencies.)

A huge thank you to those of you who have already contributed and also to those who have boosted the signal. You know who you are

So far CDs have gone to Australia, the USA and the Czech Republic as well as to the UK.

I've done a CD cover (here) and a track list. There are sixteen songs on the CD including Shosholoza. And I'm listening as I type. Lovely stuff.

For anyone who wants to check out the original appeal or boost the signal the post is here. It's a really good cause, do help if you can.

I saw crocuses (white and purple) growing on the grass verge down the road into Huddersfield thids afternoon (the ones up here are still in bud, but on their way). They made me smile. Spring is coming!

The bad news... the reason for the trip into Huddersfield was to take BB to A&E. He managed to trap the end of his index finger in the car door this morning. Self-inflicted, he admits, but... Big Ouchie. It's pretty well mushed up his finger-end and nail and the doc had to remove a flap of his finger tip. That's gotta hurt.

I was intrigued by the trailers for this film, shown way back around Christmas, or maybe even before, but then frustrated when despite the trailers the film never appeared at my local Cineworld in Wakefield. Maybe they figured the film was too arty for us northerners, who knows, but once it started winning awards, guess what. Yes, better late than never, Cineworld.

So... a black and white silent movie about the coming of the talkies and what happens to one rising star and one falling one. A Star is Born crossed with Singing in the Rain, (but very, very quiet). Jean Dujardin (as George Valentin) even looks like Gene Kelly. And there's a dog.

I loved it. The lack of dialogue proved to be of no detrement to the story at all. The whole thing seemed to have space to breathe and the story unfolded narurally, artistically, poignantly. Special kudos for the nightmare sequence where George, worried that the coming of the talkies will be the end of his hugely successful career, dreams that he can hear everything - all the little sounds of day to day living - but when he tries to speak his voice is silent.

And when, right at the end, the director says 'Cut' it actually takes you a moment or two to realise that the movie has changed from silent mode. That's when you realise you didn't actually miss the dialogue.

It's a very clever film. Clever, entertaining and utterly charming. I'm not surprised it's scooped up tons of awards. If you haven't seen it yet, seek it out.

In a friendslocked post earlier today, I posted to say that the wonderful group of singers and dancers 'Zulu Tradition' (currently in the UK and based in Huddersfield) just received the bed news that the brother of one of their number has died in South Africa. Mzwandile's brother leaves behind three children, and Mzwandile's mum is distraught and wants her boy home for the funeral.

That's Mzwandile Ngema top left in the picture with the blue background. Front is Bongi Gwala. The other three are l - r Thandanani Gumede, Buhle Mhlongo and Khethukuthula Kheswa.

These Zulus had a particularly hard time with a previous manager a couple of years ago. I can't say much about that because there's a court case ongoing to try and get recompense for them. Suffice it to say that raising the money to get Mzwandile home in time for the funeral is going to be almost impossible for them. I've secured him a ticket with my credit card, and he flies tomorrow morning, early, but the cost is £753 just for the air fare, not counting incidental expenses. They've promised to repay me, but it's going to be hard for them.

The wonderful la_marquise_de_ offered to make a contribution to a Zulu emergency fund to get Mzwandile home (and back again). While I heartily appreciate anyone offering to make a contribution, because the Zulu guys have had a very rough deal. I don't want to beg something for nothing, they wouldn't feel happy about that, and neither would I, however if any of you would like a very fine CD of Zulu singing in exchange for a contribution towards Mzwandile's trip, I would be delighted.

I won't set a price, (send as muich as you like or as little as you can afford), but if it were a commercial release it would not sell for less than £13.50 including postage. I'll pay for the postage and anything you send will all go to Mzwandile. Post me a cheque or pay me by paypal and without giving away who contributed what I'll keep you all informed as to how much we manage to raise. The target is £753, but anything we can raise towards that would be brilliant. My LJ flist is not large, so feel free to boost the signal if you wish.

Post your cheques payable to 'Zulu Tradition' to me, Jacey Bedford at 10 Park Head, Birdsedge, Huddersfield, HD8 8XW. Anyone not in the UK can pay me by paypal. email me on agency(at)jacey-bedford.com for details. Don't forget to include your postal address for a CD by return of post.

You will receive a CD recorded in BB's studio when the Zulus were with their previous manager. (And I hasten to add, it was made before BB and I knew how difficult that relationship was for the Zulus.)  I see no reason why the recording shouldn't be used to help them out now. It's a set of songs that never had commercial release, but here's Shosholoza.as a taster.

You can read more about the Zulus, now working as 'ZULU Tradition', here.

Bought as an e-book, this turned out to be closer to a long short story or perhaps novella length (difficult to judge when reading it on Kindle), but it was just what I needed after taking almost a month to read the last two of Sherwood Smith's Inda novels, i.e. light and slight with just enough bite to keep me turning pages. It's basically a science fiction romance. The families who rule this world are 'kinsmen' originally biologically enhanced and now denying kinsman genes to outsiders by marrying only within the families.

Meli' Galdes' life was crushed when she was rejected by her (arranged marriage) fiancé. She officially renounced her kinsman family, disappearing into the shadows and developing her lethal skills as an assassin to kill for them. Now she's earned the right to retire, but they have one final job for her, and this time the target is her former fiancé. Celino Carvanna took his freedom from his hateful arranged marriage and ran with it, becoming a razor-sharp financial predator and guiding the family fortune ever upwards. His success more than threatens the Galdes family with insolvency. He's cruel, hard and sharp with a coterie of bodyguards and his own phenomenal talent with a blade. No normal assassin could get close, but Meli knows how to get to her target. She plans to make him fall in love with her, then reject him, before killing him. Predictably it doesn't go according to plan.

Yes the ending was flagged up a mile away, and no, it didn't matter. This is a pleasant bit of froth. Soft futuristic SF, sex, romance and assassination. What's not to like for £1.39 on my Kindle?

This is the final book in the Inda quartet. Phew, what a marathon! I reckon at least 250,000, possibly more, words in just this final book alone. We've followed Inda since he was a child of ten and here he is, still a young man, having achieved his wildest dream, to be Harskialdna – war leader – to his childhood friend, now King Evred of Iasca-Leror. At the end of  King's Shield (book 3) it seemed that Inda's story had run its course. And so it might have ended there with Inda running the academy and second only to Evred, but the Venn, repelled but not defeated, mass for another attack, driven by Erkric, chief dag (mage) of the Venn, who has seized ultimate power by taking over the mind and will of Rajnir, the new king. Erkric has enemies In his own camp, including some of the mages and good-sort naval commander Fulla Durasnir, but it isn't until Erkric overstretches himself with this sea-attack to take over the all-important strait that he becomes vulnerable.

It's the sea attack that brings Inda back into the forefront of conflict. As Elgar the Fox (book 2) he had established a fearsome reputation as a sea-commander who never lost a fight. The countries around the straight will unite to fight the Venn, but only under Elgar's command. It's inda's return to the sea that finally brings his old friend Fox, now commander of Inda's Fox-Banner fleet, back into the Marlovan fold as the Fox banner Fleet becomes the Marlovan navy.

How Inda and Fox defeat Dag Erkric and allow the Venn to return home to put their own house in order is long and complex, and presents Inda with a huge moral dilemma, seemingly impossible to solve, at the end of it. Is he going to betray his friends or be foresworn and disobey his king? The final segment of the book wraps up everyone's story arcs, actually telling the happy-ever-afters, which, like life, are filled with ups and downs, but mostly happier than not.

Inda's story, through four books, is mammoth. Though he remains the commander who never loses a battle, sometimes the win comes from an entirely unexpected element in the whole million-piece jigsaw puzzle that Sherwood Smith has fitted together so elegantly. The characters have way more dimensions than three and even the minor characters are important. Relationships matter and death in battle leaves painful gaping holes in people's lives.  Inda is a rare puzzle of a character all by himself, dedicated to his own personal truths, but deeply damaged not only by childhood trauma, but by battle wounds. There is always a price to pay for victory and Inda, who never loses, often pays the biggest price of all, mentally as well as physically.

This is a completely realised world that the author has been nurturing in various timelines since she was a child, and the depth of imagination shows. There's no handwaving, everything is thought out carefully and fits together with not a piece out of place. This is a fantasy tour-de-force. Highly recommended.

No MOTW last week because H was away but this week, half term notwithstanding, we took ourselves off to Wakefield to see Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe in Woman in Black. This may end up being a review of the movie via a review of the audience. We seemed to be surrounded by twelve year old girls who started off giggly and then screamed at every shock-horror flash of the eponymous ghost. By the time we reached the fright night section when Arthur Kipps is alone (except for the dog)  in the gloomy old house, the girlies had reached frenzy stage. Two had to suddenly rush off to the loo because, presumably, all the shocks were endangering their underwear or else they were too scared to stay and watch.

Truly, it wasn't knicker-wettingly scary (at least not unless you're twelve) but the tension was well done, going for creepiness instead of gore with the required near-subliminal flashes of a face at a window or reflected in a mirror and some nicely shuddery Victorian mechanical toys..

Audience apart, the film was actually very good. Radcliffe made a sympathetic protagonist who didn't actually look too young to be a widower with a four year old son. Hammer (House of Horror) has gone upmarket - and the cinematography was nice. I'd like to know where it was filmed.  It was supposed to be set on the North east coast but it was a bit unspecific. The countryside could have been Yorkshire Dales, but I wonder if the house cut off when the causeway flooded at high tide was inspired by Lindisfarne.

Kudos to the music, too. It wasn't overpowering and didn't flag up the fright-to-come. It was used (and not-usef)  sensitively.

I haven't read the book or seen the stage play (though I'd like to now) but I gather that there was also a TV dramatisation some years ago, but the ending was changed. I liked this ending. I thought it worked and it was nice to hear the twelve year olds discussing it on their way out of the cinema.

Thumbs up. Go see it.

Left: Here's Eska at five weeks old still at her breeder's and looking more like a mole than a German Shepherd




Right: And here she is at 4 months old. Fluffy black dog meets white snow for the first time. She couldn't believe all this white tickly stuff falling on her head. First order of business: eat it, then snuffle in it, roll over in it and finally, play it cool. But, hey, puppy, what's that on your nose?

This was supposed to be a comedy drama but the comedy passed me by. There were some quirky moments, but no real laughs. OK now that's out of the way it was still a good movie about a family trying to come to terms with a mother in a (terminal) coma and a father who has never been more than a 'back-up parent'. Just when you think it's about as bad as it can get for the father (George Clooney) and his two daughters - aged 10 and 17, the elder daughter drops the bombshell that she knew Mom was having an affair.

Comedy? Hardly, but there's a kind of lightness when Clooney sets off to find his wife's lover, ostensibly to tell hom she's dying and to give him chance to say goodbye. He could do it by phone, of course, but he wants to see the guy's face for himself, believing it will tell him something about his wife or gve hiom some insight into why she cheated on him.

The emotional range in this is brilliant. Clooney is pitch-perfect as the grieving but betrayed and angry husband and the young actresses playing the girls are both terrific, especially Shailene Woodley as Alexandra "Alex" King, the seventeen year old daughter. It's a thoughtful piece and though Mom's death is inevitable, it's poignant rather than dark.

The film has already collected a ton of awards and may yet collect more. Pretty well deserved, I'd say.

7) 31/1/12
Sherwood Smith: King's Shield

A mighty book in many ways. Long, yes, all 687 ages of it. Complex in depth and far-reaching in scope this is still Inda's story but the other characters aren't forgotten and we spend a lot of this book seeing Inda through other eyes.. When Inda returns home from the sea to warn his once best friend and now king, Evred, of an impending attack by the Venn he's accompanied by shipmates, the beautiful Tau and his (to her own thinking) plain lover Jeje and Inda's own lover the much older Venn mage, Signi.

Though there is grief when Inda learns his older brother has been murdered in his absence and his father has faded to the status of a cabbage, Inda finally gets his heart's desire. His exile is ended, his trumped up crime of eight or nine years ago is forgotten and his trusted friends are all happy to see him back, especially Evred who almost immediately makes Inda his war-leader. Lest that seem a little overly convenient for Inda's advancement, all the experienced war leaders have already been eliminated in a 'night-of-the-long-knives' coup and counter-coup in the previous book, The Fox. Inda, known for having 'plans' in his academy days, and always being capable of seeing the bigger picture in any military engagement, has shown he can lead a fleet to victory at sea. Now all he has to do is relearn the art of fighting on land.

So Inda comes home in time to put his best friends into the worst jeopardy of their lives, with the Venn invasion force already waiting to land an army of thousands and a long march through the Andahi pass to command the high ground first in the coming battle. Inda's learning curve is as steep and rocky as the sides of the pass, but Evred was right to put his trust in him even though the cost is great.

The human stories are intertwined with the military one: Evred's secret passion for Inda, recognised only by Tau and by Tdor, Inda's future wife; Tdor's anxiety about Inda's lover, Signi, and how her presence will affect their arranged marriage; Inda's ongoing nightmares from previous traumas; Jeje's inferiority complex which causes her to leave before Tau can get tired of her; Tau's sense of loss over Jeje because though he's had many lovers, so few of them have been friends as well. There are new characters: the doomed defenders of Castle Andahi and their children, sent to the mountains for safety, struggling to survive. We see the academy boys from the first book, Inda, now grown to men and fulfilling their promise - or not. Special mention for the beautifully drawn cameo of Noddy Toraca, somewhat goofy and turtle-like as a child, but now strong and steady, already a father, and questioning the sense of war while giving everything when asked. There's a human cost of war, not just in the dead, but the maimed as well. Inda and his chums were children in the first book. The idea of war was an exciting adventure, a war game. Now they are men, and war is no longer a game.

There is much to admire in Sherwood Smith's writing. The worldbuilding is completely believable and within the context of fiction, totally real. The characterisation is excellent. She makes you care about all of them, even the annoying ones. The plot is never predictable, the pace always page-turning. After three mammoth books what can be left in Inda's life to write about? He's already achieved the pinnacle of success. But there is another book, Treason's Shore, and I'm having to stop myself from dashing off to start reading. I have some work to do first...

It's taken me a while to get to read brownnicky's 2011 book from Bloomsbury, Wolf Blood. I held off while I was revising my magic pirate book because I knew she had a wolf shapechanger in her story and I didn't wan t to be unconsciously influenced when writing my wolf shapechanger. With the current popularity of werewolf books in urban fantasy it's hugely refreshing to find a werewolf that's very different from all the hunky, hairy beasties as seen in the Kitty books and even Patricia Briggs' excellent Mercy Thompson books (which I love BTW.) And Nicky's book is hardly urban.

Set in first century Britain as the Roman legions are advancing, It's beautifully and engagingly drawn with a tight focus on the two main characters, Trista, a British warrior seeress, and Morcant, half British, half Roman and as the story begins, a soldier in Rome's army. But that's about to change because Morcant, although he may not know it or like it, is a wolf shapechanger. The point of view, told in first person, shifts between Trista and Morcant though Trista probably tells at least two thirds of the tale.

It opens with Trista, a trained warrior woman, currently a slave of a rival tribe where she disguises her combat skills and bides her time until she can escape. Free at last Trista stumbles through the dangerously cold winter night and, exhausted, comes across two Roman soldiers, one of whom is Morcant. Trista can see the wolf, but Morcant is unaware of what he is until things come to a head. With the wolf inside him free and getting stronger, Morcant can't return to his legion so the two go on the run together, uneasy companions at first, fearing both Roman and British.

There's plenty of action and a fair amount of bloody carnage as Trista and Morcant battle their way through dangerous situations to reach Caratacus, leader of the British, and take a stand against the Romans. The plotting is tight and exciting, but it's the characters and developing relationship between Trista and Morcant that's at the heart of this story. Trista has been damaged by her dark visions, the loss of her husband in battle and her subsequent captivity and ill-treatment. Morcant, although legally a citizen of Rome, is neither accepted by his father's people nor his mother's. As a shapechanger people fear him and as a wolf he's also outside the pack. Trista and Morcant have more in common with each other than with anyone else, though their road isn't smooth.

I think this is supposed to be for the 10 -12 age range, but it reads more like a YA. Though this isn't unusual as N. M. Browne's other excellent historical fantasies, (Warriors of Alavna etc.) similarly read 'older' to me. This is beautiful, literate and very focused writing with a remarkable amount of realistic detail and absolutely believable magic. The description, while never laboured, is so sensual that you can almost taste and smell this book.

I've recently re-read Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth trilogy and N. M. Browne is easily the modern day inheritor of Sutcliff's historical-literary crown.

This hard-to-categorise book probably should come under the heading of just plain weird. Weird but fascinating. Alan appears to be human but isn't. His father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine and his six brothers are, variously: a seer, an island, an undead homicidal maniac and a set of three Russian nesting dolls. All their names change sentence by sentence. Alan may be Ashton, or Abe or anything beginning with A. The seer brother has a range of names beginning with B and so on and so forth.

There are various different plot strands involving Alan and his present life in modern Toronto and his childhood living in a cave inside his father in remote Kapuskasing in Northern Ontario. In the present Alan works with his punk friend, Kurt, to set up a wireless network to give free internet access to the residents of his home area in Toronto using only reclaimed technology recovered during Kurt's dumpster diving expeditions. We also meet Alan's house-sharing neighbours, a bunch of disaffected youngsters, and also see Alan's childhood in flashbacks. We learn about Danny's (literally) murderous behaviour and how Alan feels responsible. When Danny (Dave, Don, Dwight or anything beginning with D) comes back from the dead and starts to stalk Alan and threaten Alan's friends and family, something has to be done.

In the meantime Alan has become involved in the problems of the neighbours, in particular Mimi who, like Alan, isn't quite human, (she has wings), and Krishna her unpleasant boyfriend who is one of the few who recognises the not-quite-humans trying to fit in to society.

The plot strands do mesh, but only in the messiest, most chaotic way, pretty much like life. There is a revelation at the end, but that part feels a bit rushed. It's not a comfortable read. Despite some minor gripes it's fascinating and totally original and kept me turning pages.

Now that I've finished it, however, I think I need a little lie down in a darkened room. My brain is still spinning.

Today I'm a guest on Mary Victoria's blog in her 'Place as Person' series.
http://maryvictoria.net/?p=3364

Today's sub ... to Asimov's.

Two responses t query letters. One story never received, please resubmit. (Done.) And one negative - but at least it means I can send it elsewhere. In truth it's already been sold once, so I'm only looking for reprint markets somewhat half-heartedly..

Despite having reservations about the book, the film was lovely. Spectacular camera work. My eyes leaked all the way through it, of course, but horses get me every time.

Kudos to the seven horses who played Joey. Thanks to good makeup they were indistinguishable from each other.on screen. I assume 'no horses were harmed in the making of this movie' (the usual disclaimer) in which case I'd be really interested to know how they managed some of the shots, especially one where the horse jumps a trench, misses his landing and falls backwards into it. Stunt horse? Very clever CGI?  I don't know, but it was certainly extremely realistic.

My main reservation about the book was the horse point of view, very Black Beauty with not even a pretence that the horse is anything less than human in outlook and knowledge. The movie, of course, removed this completely. The horse is a horse and we see everything through the eye of the camera not the horse.

So for those of you who don't know, it's the story of Joey, a thoroughbred-type horse who is raised by Albert on a farm in Devon and sold to the cavalry by Albert's impoverished dad when the First World War breaks out. Albert swears to find Joey again once he's old enough to join up. The film follows Joey through the war and the lives of the people he touches on both sides of No Man's Land.

There are a few diversions from the book, but the movie plot is pretty close in feel and the major events are in there even if they are arrived at in a slightly roundabout way. I haven't seen the stage play so the movie might be closer to that than the book. The story highlights the horrors of war and the small kindnesses that emphasise humanity. Yes, it's got a sentimental streak a mile wide, and even in its darkest hour you just know that it's not going to end up with Joey as meat, but there are plenty of twists and turns before Albert makes good on his promise.

My one disappointment was that I had hoped that some of John Tams' music might have made it from the stage play to the movie. Sadly, it didn't. I'd love to see the stage play if it comes on tour.

Four short story subs today:

Times Two to Glimmer Train
Absolution Pass to Scape
Reasonable Behaviour to Comets and Criminals
Murder of Crows to Lore

And several queries sent to tardy magazines.

(Edited to add one more sub.)

The third of Rosemary Sutcliff's books to feature a descendant of that first Marcus from Eagle of the Ninth, this time Aquila, the owner of the family's flawed Dolphin ring and a soldier of Rome in Britain goes 'wilful mising' when the last legion is pulled out of Britain. Aquila's loyalty to Rome doesn't overrule his loyalty to Britain and his family so he lets the last galley sail without him, setting the Rutupia light ablaze one last time in defiance of what he's lost and a light against the darkness which is surely to come. His return to family at the villa on the Downland is harshly interrupted by a Saxon raid which leaves his family dead, the farm lost, his sister captured and Aquila himself a thrall in Juteland. It's only chance that brings him back to Britain's shores where he discovers his sister already absorbed into the Saxon camp, with a child and a man of her own. Though she helps him to escape, and returns the flawed dolphin ring, she won't come with him and he feels utterly let down.

Bitter and looking for revenge on the Lantern Bearer who betrayed his family Marcus stumbles across Brother Ninnias and is instead directed towards Ambrosius, of the house of Constantine, the last hope of Britain and of what's left of Rome in Britain - Roman and native Briton united against the Saxon sea-wolves. His father suported Ambrosius and so lacking any cause of his own he takes up his father's, and proves very adept, an excellent sildier with all of Rome's training behind him.

Thus begins Aquila's service with Ambrosius against Vortigern and the Saxons, and his connection with Artos (Arthur), the bastard son on Ambrosious' brother Utha. It's many years and many experiences before Aquila, the Dolphin, begins to understand and forgive his sister and to understand his place in the grand scheme of things, making peace with his past and coming to terms with his own family.

Aquila is a much more flawed character than Sutcliff's other Romans, Marcus and Justin in Eagle of the Ninth and The Silver Branch. He's deeply damaged by his experiences and doesn't always make life easy for those he cares for. ('It's not what you do, it's the way that you do them!' his wife tells him more than once.) He harbours a grudge against the Saxons for his sister and carries resentment with him until he's suddenly able to send his sister a gift that denotes forgiveness and understanding. It takes him half a lifetime, but he gets there in the end.

I know there's a fourth book, Frontier Wolf, set during the Roman occupation of Britain and featuring another yourg Roman with the dolphin ring but I haven't been able to finda copy at a reasonable price. I believe that it was written later than this Eagle of the Ninth trilogy.

Set some time after Eagle of the Ninth but tied to it because the main characters are probably a descended from Marcus and we return to the farm on the Downs that Marcus was granted after recovering the Eagle.

It's 100 years before the last legion will leave Britain, but already the great days of Rome are over. Carausius is the Roman emperor in Britain and may be the one to hold back the dark, but he's betrayed and usurped by Allectus the Traitor.

Justin, an army surgeon with the legions, is posted to Britain for the first time, though his Grandfather was born there. One of the first people he meets is Flavius who has the flawed Dolphin ring of the first Marcus and it proves that they are (somewhat distant) cousins and destined to become good friends.

When they uncover Allectus' plot to betray Carausius they try and warn the emperor, but it seems their warning is unheeded and they are bundled off to the Northern wall together, feeling that they are in disgrace. A chance meeting with a tribesman, Evicatos of the Spear leads them to believe that Allectus is about to close the trap on Carausius and they set off to warn him again, but they are too late and with Allectus self-declared emperor they are in danger.

They are on their way back to rejoin the Roman legions in Europe when they meet Paulinus and become part of his resistance organisation - channelling soldiers loyal to Rome away from Allectus and back to the legions in the hope that one day the legions will come back and overthrow Allectus and restore Rome in Britain.

As Allectus allies himself with Saxon thugs, Justin and Flavius find themselves back at the farm on the Downland training their own legion of deserters and loyal Britons until the day comes when Rome returns and they can join the fight against Allectus. The rally under the standard of a battered wingless Eagle found in the hypercaust of the house in Calleva where Marcus left his dishonoured Eagle of the Ninth.

This novel was the Carnegie Medal Winner for 1959 - over fifty years ago - yet it's still fresh. Sutclifff handles the history with a light hand whilst seeming superbly well researched. Personally my favourite of Sutcliff's three Rome in Britain stories is still Eagle of the Ninth, but this is still a good read. I knew very little about Carausius and Allectus, real historical figures, of course, so I got a smattering of education as well as entertainment.