Humouress adventures at home in 2023 - thread 3

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September

✔    46) Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erickson (1999)
✔     45) The False Princess by Eilis O'Neal (2011)
✔     44) A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor (2013)
✔       43) The Proper Way to Stop a Wedding (in Seven Days or Less) by Victoria Alexander (2017)
✔       42) Closer to Home by Mercedes Lackey (2014)

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August

✔    41) Well Played by Jen De Luca (2020)
✔       40) Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland (2017)
✔    39) Bastion by Mercedes Lackey (2013)
✔     38) Ruler of Naught by Sherwood Smith & Dave Trowbridge (1993/ 2011)
✔   37) The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope (1894)
✔     36) Well Met by Jen De Luca (2019)
✔   35) The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan
✔       34) Stuck With You by Ali Hazelwood (2022)
✔     33) Happy Place by Emily Henry (2023)
✔     32) The Phoenix in Flight by Sherwood Smith & Dave Trowbridge (1993/ 2011)

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July

✔     31) The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry
✔     30) The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman (2023)
✔     29) The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (2019)
✔       28) King of Ashes by Raymond E. Feist (2018)

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June

 27) Mort by Terry Pratchett
 26) Belgarath the Sorcerer by Leigh & David Eddings
✔     25) Welcome to the Real World by Carole Matthews (2008)
✔     24) Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren (2018)
✔     23) The Apothecary's Poison by C.J. Archer (2017)
✔     22) You and Me on Vacation by Emily Henry (2021)
 21) The Clockwork Crown by Beth Cato (2015)
✔       20) The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato (2014)

May

✔       19) The High Mountain Court by A.K. Mulford (2022)
✔       18) The Mapmaker's Apprentice by C.J. Archer (2016)
✔    17) Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett (2018)

April

 16) The Watchmaker's Daughter by C.J. Archer
 15) The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

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March

10) Book Lovers by Emily Henry
11) Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

February

✔       9) The Wicked Wit of Queen Elizabeth II by Karen Dolby (audio)(2018)
✔       8) Into the Void by Tim Lebbon (2013)
✔     7) The Kings of Clonmel by John Flanagan (2008)
✔       6) The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato (2014)

January

5) Seeress of Kell by David Eddings
 4) The Glasswrights' Apprentice by Mindy Klasky (2000)
 3) Spinning Silver by Naomi Novak
 2) Unforgettable Fifth at Trebizon by Anne Digby (1994)
 1) Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

But you know who’s behind Barrodagh? He’s only a front. He’s run by those crazy Dol’jharians. In fact, he’s no less than the front for their king, or chief, or whatever ‘Avatar’ means—Jerrode Eusabian. And it’s for one of their revenge customs.”
“Revenge?” Palmar had asked, wondering how in the Five Hells you got revenge by stealing a ball from a bunch of bugs.
“What we’re doing, right now, this is what the Dol’jharians call a paliach,” Mother had gone on to say. “It’s a formal vengeance, where the enemy has to symbolically take part in his own destruction. Using the ParcelNet is probably part of it, too, since the nicks run that, so it’s sort of like having the Panarch deliver it himself.” Mother cackled. “Not that this Avatar is really taking much of a chance. Even the Spider and her Invisibles can’t intercept something on the ParcelNet.”

But you know who’s behind Barrodagh? He’s only a front. He’s run by those crazy Dol’jharians. In fact, he’s no less than the front for their king, or chief, or whatever ‘Avatar’ means—Jerrode Eusabian. And it’s for one of their revenge customs.”
“Revenge?” Palmar had asked, wondering how in the Five Hells you got revenge by stealing a ball from a bunch of bugs.
“What we’re doing, right now, this is what the Dol’jharians call a paliach,” Mother had gone on to say. “It’s a formal vengeance, where the enemy has to symbolically take part in his own destruction. Using the ParcelNet is probably part of it, too, since the nicks run that, so it’s sort of like having the Panarch deliver it himself.” Mother cackled. “Not that this Avatar is really taking much of a chance. Even the Spider and her Invisibles can’t intercept something on the ParcelNet.”

My friends: willowy, honey-haired Sabrina and wisp of a waif Cleo, with her tiny silver septum piercing and dip-dyed box braids. My two favourite people on the planet since our freshman year at Mattingly College
...
I couldn't have imagined being any happier, loving anywhere else as much.
Not until Sabrina brought us here, to her family's summer home on the coast of Maine. Not until I met Wyn.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
Down long valleys the wind swept, valleys blue with morning mist hanging in the air, some forested with evergreens, some bare where grasses and wildflowers would soon spring up. It howled across half-buried ruins and broken monuments, all as forgotten as those who had built them. It moaned in the passes, weatherworn cuts between peaks capped with snow that never melted. Thick clouds clung to the mountaintops so that snow and white billows seemed one.

Lightning streaked across the sky, three jagged bolts together, casting a stark light over a narrow house that seemed to have bunches of herbs hanging in the windows, and a shop, shut up tight, but a potter's from the sign with its bowls and plates. Yawning. he hunched his shoulders against the driving rain and tried to pull his boots out of the clinging mud more quickly.
"I think I can forget about this part of the city, Thom,"

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
Down long valleys the wind swept, valleys blue with morning mist hanging in the air, some forested with evergreens, some bare where grasses and wildflowers would soon spring up. It howled across half-buried ruins and broken monuments, all as forgotten as those who had built them. It moaned in the passes, weatherworn cuts between peaks capped with snow that never melted. Thick clouds clung to the mountaintops so that snow and white billows seemed one.

Lightning streaked across the sky, three jagged bolts together, casting a stark light over a narrow house that seemed to have bunches of herbs hanging in the windows, and a shop, shut up tight, but a potter's from the sign with its bowls and plates. Yawning. he hunched his shoulders against the driving rain and tried to pull his boots out of the clinging mud more quickly.
"I think I can forget about this part of the city, Thom,"

For he fought a duel (it was considered highly well-bred of him to waive all question of his rank) with a nobleman, well known in the society of the day, not only for his own merits, but as the husband of a very beautiful wife. In that duel Prince Rudolf received a severe wound, and, recovering therefrom, was adroitly smuggled off by the Ruritanian ambassador, who had found him a pretty handful. The nobleman was not wounded in the duel; but the morning being raw and damp on the occasion of the meeting, he contracted a severe chill, and, failing to throw it off, he died some six months after the departure of Prince Rudolf, without having found leisure to adjust his relations with his wife--who, after another two months, bore an heir to the title and estates of the family of Burlesdon. This lady was the Countess Amelia, whose picture my sister-in-law wished to remove from the drawing-room in Park Lane; and her husband was James, fifth Earl of Burlesdon and twenty-second Baron Rassendyll, both in the peerage of England, and a Knight of the Garter. As for Rudolf, he went back to Ruritania, married a wife, and ascended the throne, whereon his progeny in the direct line have sat from then till this very hour- with one short interval. And, finally, if you walk through the picture-galleries at Burlesdon, among the fifty portraits or so of the last century-and-a-half, you will find five or six, including that of the sixth earl, distinguished by long, sharp, straight noses and a quantity of dark-red hair; these five or six have also blue eyes, whereas among the Rassendylls dark eyes are the commoner.

So pretty Rose left us in dudgeon; and Burlesdon, lighting a cigarette, looked at me still with that curious gaze.
'That picture in the paper -' he said.
'Well, what of it? It shows that the King of Ruritania and your humble servant are as like as two peas.'
My brother shook his head. 'I suppose so,' he said. But I should know you from the man in the photograph.'
'And not from the picture in the paper?'
'I should know the photograph from the picture: the picture's very like the photograph, but -'
'Well?
'It's more like you,' said my brother.
My brother is a good man and true so that, for all that he is a married man and mighty fond of his wife, he should know any secret of mine. But this secret was not mine, and I could not tell it to him.
'I don't think it's so much like me as the photograph,' said I boldly. 'But anyhow, Bob, I won't go to Strelsau.'

For he fought a duel (it was considered highly well-bred of him to waive all question of his rank) with a nobleman, well known in the society of the day, not only for his own merits, but as the husband of a very beautiful wife. In that duel Prince Rudolf received a severe wound, and, recovering therefrom, was adroitly smuggled off by the Ruritanian ambassador, who had found him a pretty handful. The nobleman was not wounded in the duel; but the morning being raw and damp on the occasion of the meeting, he contracted a severe chill, and, failing to throw it off, he died some six months after the departure of Prince Rudolf, without having found leisure to adjust his relations with his wife--who, after another two months, bore an heir to the title and estates of the family of Burlesdon. This lady was the Countess Amelia, whose picture my sister-in-law wished to remove from the drawing-room in Park Lane; and her husband was James, fifth Earl of Burlesdon and twenty-second Baron Rassendyll, both in the peerage of England, and a Knight of the Garter. As for Rudolf, he went back to Ruritania, married a wife, and ascended the throne, whereon his progeny in the direct line have sat from then till this very hour- with one short interval. And, finally, if you walk through the picture-galleries at Burlesdon, among the fifty portraits or so of the last century-and-a-half, you will find five or six, including that of the sixth earl, distinguished by long, sharp, straight noses and a quantity of dark-red hair; these five or six have also blue eyes, whereas among the Rassendylls dark eyes are the commoner.

So pretty Rose left us in dudgeon; and Burlesdon, lighting a cigarette, looked at me still with that curious gaze.
'That picture in the paper -' he said.
'Well, what of it? It shows that the King of Ruritania and your humble servant are as like as two peas.'
My brother shook his head. 'I suppose so,' he said. But I should know you from the man in the photograph.'
'And not from the picture in the paper?'
'I should know the photograph from the picture: the picture's very like the photograph, but -'
'Well?
'It's more like you,' said my brother.
My brother is a good man and true so that, for all that he is a married man and mighty fond of his wife, he should know any secret of mine. But this secret was not mine, and I could not tell it to him.
'I don't think it's so much like me as the photograph,' said I boldly. 'But anyhow, Bob, I won't go to Strelsau.'

'Now, I reckon if ye think on't, ye'll get why I need all of ye t'be eyes an' ears all over town,' he said, gravely, as if they were adults. Because, really, these children were not children at all, for exactly the same reason that he had never been a child. From the time they had been old enough to walk and talk, they'd been doing some form of work or another. And when they lost their parents - however that had happened - the only way they kept food in their mouths was by their own efforts. There was no 'childhood' for younglings such as these. Only varying degrees of work.
So they understood him almost as well as adults would. They thought ahead, and considered what they were going to do, almost as well as adults.

People think we historians are lightweights. They think we whizz up and down the timeline, document a couple of battles or the odd revolution, swan back to St Mary's, and spend the night in the bar. To some extent, that's true. However, when it goes wrong for us, it really goes wrong.

No incident, however seemingly trivial, is unimportant in the scheme of things.
One event leads to another, which triggers something else and before you know where you are, the ramifications spread far and wide throughout History. Echoing down the ages. Getting fainter and fainter, but never completely dying away. They talk of the Harmony of the Spheres, but History is A Symphony of Echoes. Every little action has huge consequences. They're not always apparent, and sometimes, in our game, sometimes effect comes before cause, not after.

People think we historians are lightweights. They think we whizz up and down the timeline, document a couple of battles or the odd revolution, swan back to St Mary's, and spend the night in the bar. To some extent, that's true. However, when it goes wrong for us, it really goes wrong.

No incident, however seemingly trivial, is unimportant in the scheme of things.
One event leads to another, which triggers something else and before you know where you are, the ramifications spread far and wide throughout History. Echoing down the ages. Getting fainter and fainter, but never completely dying away. They talk of the Harmony of the Spheres, but History is A Symphony of Echoes. Every little action has huge consequences. They're not always apparent, and sometimes, in our game, sometimes effect comes before cause, not after.

There was a question I had wanted to ask, but it kept getting stuck somewhere in my mouth before I could speak. Finally, though, with the ring of the bell still in my ears, I forced it out. "How is my ... the queen. How is the queen?"
Nalia looked down at her lap. "She misses you, I think. She doesn't talk about you - neither of them do. But I caught her crying once, when she thought she was alone. I was standing just outside the doorway, where she couldn't see me. I was about to go in to her, but then my ... then the king came. He held her shoulders and I heard him say that she had to bear it. That she had known, that there was nothing else they could have done. She stopped crying for him, but she still looked sad."

'I see you've made no effort to improve on courtesy, Captain - I admit I understand nothing of the Adjunct's faith in you.'
'Don't lose sleep over it, Topper. Now you've found me, what is the message?' The man scowled. 'She's with the Bridgeburners. Outside Pale.'
'The siege continues? How old is your information?'
'Less than a week, which is as long as I've been hunting you. In any case,' he continued, 'the deadlock is about to be broken.'
Paran grunted. Then he frowned. 'Which squad?'
'You know them all?'
'Yes,' Paran asserted.
Topper's scowl deepened, then he raised a hand and began examining his rings. 'Whiskeyjack's. She's one of his recruits.'
Paran closed his eyes. It should not have surprised him. The gods are playing with me. Question is, which gods? Oh, Whiskeyjack. You once commanded an army, back when Laseen was named Surly, back when you could have listened to your companion, when you could have made a choice. You could've stopped Surly. Hell, perhaps you could have stopped me. But now you command a squad, just a squad, and she's the Empress. And me? I'm a fool who followed his dream, and now all I desire is its end.

Kallor said: 'I walked this land when the T'lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?'
'Yes,' said Caladan Brood, 'you never leam.'

pull out. Find a place I know. I'll meet you there.'
'Where are you going?'
'After the saboteurs.' Kalam wiped sweat from his face. 'Pull out the city map when you can, Quick Ben.' The assassin's eyes were tight with fear. 'Check the legend on it. We've planted mines at every major intersection. It's the main valves - don't you see?' He waved an arm. 'The Greyfaces! The gas, Quick Ben!'
Kalam whirled and crossed the patio. A moment later he disappeared into the estate house.
Quick Ben stared after him. The gas? His eyes widened. 'We'll all go sky high,' he whispered. 'The whole
damn city!'

Kallor said: 'I walked this land when the T'lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?'
'Yes,' said Caladan Brood, 'you never leam.'

'it's not all bad. Despite all the distrust between us, I'm feeling things for you I haven't felt for anyone in - well, in some time.' She smiled sadly. 'I don't know what that's worth, Captain, but I'm glad I said it anyway.' ...
Her shoulders slumped. 'I'm sorry, but I'm exhausted.' ...
Paran spoke close behind her. 'Tattersail, how thorough is your exhaustion?' She felt the heat in his words triggering a smouldering fire beneath her stomach, and her gaze slid away from the Deck as she turned to face the captain. Though she voiced no reply to his question, her answer was clear.

pull out. Find a place I know. I'll meet you there.'
'Where are you going?'
'After the saboteurs.' Kalam wiped sweat from his face. 'Pull out the city map when you can, Quick Ben.' The assassin's eyes were tight with fear. 'Check the legend on it. We've planted mines at every major intersection. It's the main valves - don't you see?' He waved an arm. 'The Greyfaces! The gas, Quick Ben!'
Kalam whirled and crossed the patio. A moment later he disappeared into the estate house.
Quick Ben stared after him. The gas? His eyes widened. 'We'll all go sky high,' he whispered. 'The whole
damn city!'

'I see you've made no effort to improve on courtesy, Captain - I admit I understand nothing of the Adjunct's faith in you.'
'Don't lose sleep over it, Topper. Now you've found me, what is the message?' The man scowled. 'She's with the Bridgeburners. Outside Pale.'
'The siege continues? How old is your information?'
'Less than a week, which is as long as I've been hunting you. In any case,' he continued, 'the deadlock is about to be broken.'
Paran grunted. Then he frowned. 'Which squad?'
'You know them all?'
'Yes,' Paran asserted.
Topper's scowl deepened, then he raised a hand and began examining his rings. 'Whiskeyjack's. She's one of his recruits.'
Paran closed his eyes. It should not have surprised him. The gods are playing with me. Question is, which gods? Oh, Whiskeyjack. You once commanded an army, back when Laseen was named Surly, back when you could have listened to your companion, when you could have made a choice. You could've stopped Surly. Hell, perhaps you could have stopped me. But now you command a squad, just a squad, and she's the Empress. And me? I'm a fool who followed his dream, and now all I desire is its end.