Covenants: A Borderlands Novel by Lorna Freeman

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451459806/103-7107803-4288653?v=glance&n=283155
A summary review here


Great book. I loved this one. Like the guy who wrote the review on Amazon, I thought for sure the author had many published books. Turns out this is her first and a second was just published in Feb.'06.

No romance in this one, yay. Just great characters (some are female btw), the main chararacters life in the military, meeting up w/ a magical being and many political court politics. Standard fantasy fare but the delivery is good. I loved how the main character thinks asides in parens. A writer after my own heart.

Rabbit, the main character has run away from the Border to join the army. He's been in the army for 5 yrs. Just a farmer boy is his line. He doesn't really let on about his past growing up in the Border towns. The Border towns are thought to be half myth, half backwards hicks out there. The myths are that there are magicals living there. Talking trees, talking animals, elves, fairies, the works. Well, there are. The denizens don't really believe it tho and Rabbit doesn't force the issue ever. He's the youngest son of a family of 8 kids, he is the 7th child. His parents left court to become farmers and yes, he is in line for the throne but has been raised to be just a farmers kid. His parents left court to live a simple life and so he feels the same.

Rabbit is found by a Magical (a large talking cat) who makes a convenent with him for food. Simple eh? Not so, as all of a sudden Rabbit is thrust into a role he's never wanted, attention from the court. Compounding his unwillingness to be anything more than a simple farm boy is his mage powers beginning to manifest. He is feared by his old company because of his new found Cat friend and his new powers that appear willy-nilly. He is bewildered and uncomfortable with all of the court intrigue and also finds himself the target of a number of assinations. All fail.

The band finds plots within plots and must travel back to the Borders to treaty with yet another king...an elvin king.

Yes, Rabbit survives all of the intrigue and find out many answers to his past as well as the countries past.

Young Miles by Mcmaster Bujold

The Warrior's Apprentice, Mountains of Mourning, and The Vor Game: all three books in one volume. I was going to wait til I didn't have anything else to read and that came faster than I thought.

The three books work pretty well together. From Miles trying to enter military school to commanding his own fleet in the first book to a educating the masses of their ignorance (Miles must investigate an infants murder. Infant ws deformed) to Miles graduating from military school: earning his stripes not from nepotism but by deed. He again meets up with the fleet he commandeered back in the Warriors Apprentice.

Swashbuckling once again, liked this better than Cordlia's Honor. Less love relationships, more adventure. The only issue is that Miles never fails ever. He can turn any situation to his side no matter how large the situation, how much experience another might have (which is sizable when a 17 yr old beats out a 50 yr old vet on a regular basis) or working around an intelligence organization, of which there are many.

These are simple books, I'd probably put them in the young adult section. Too adult for young teens but older teens would like them. Miles is a good character, independent with a will-do attitude.

Get this line of books thru a used book store rather than paying full price. Although I must say for 838 pages, you can't beat the price.

Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

By Elizabeth Gilbert. ">Eat Pray Love at Amazon

I just started this book today. I chose it for Book Club (which is coming up). A memoir, the book is sectioned in three parts: Italy, India and Indonesia. Within each section the author Glibert has 36 stories. As she explains in the first chapter, like beads in a mala (a string of beads for prayer, similar to a rosary: it preceeds the rosary by centuries).

Gilbert has left her marriage, found a love affair, and leaves it in a search to heal herself. She decides to go to Italy to live and learn the language. Then on to India for spiritual reasons and then Indonesia because she's been told (by a medicine man) that she'll spend 4 months in Indonesia.

This review will take some time because the book is deliciously good, so easy to read that I finished the Italy section in just a few hours. If I continue to read it I'll have it read by tonight. And with 10 days til book club it will be too early.

Gilberts time in Italy is spent making friends (of which she has a particular talent), eating simple food that sends her reeling into gastronomical heaven. It did me, just her simple descriptions made me hungry to both gastronimical sustenance but also the sustenance of the soul by sharing food with good friends. She's learned the language well enough to speak to natives, to be able to travel on her own to different parts of Italy. So far, I see myself as her friend, wanting to travel with her, to see what she sees, to discover what she's discovered. Pretty heady stuff since I'm feeling particularly stressed right now with the MIL's situation and having to stand by and watch. It's a good lesson in surrender and it's good to watch the author slowly relax and live instead of watching her own life scurry (as you saw in her opening chapters).

As I finish each section I'll add to this review.

8-5-06: This even after the house was pretty much done I sat down to finish the book. I was going to post a section at a time but rather than stop and post and start reading again, I read the rest of it.

India ~ I would actually love to go to India, to practice yoga and to sit in meditation. I read plenty of blogs of people who've traveled to India specifically for yoga and it's on my wish list of things to do. It isn't likely it will happen tho.

Gilbert spends 4 months at an Ashram, the guru there is not present during the time she is there but her teachings permeate the people and the physical location. She makes many friends there, most who have wise words for her. She has trouble meditating (who doesn't?), her monkey mind is jumping hither and yon - mostly over her ex husband and her ex boyfriend. Her monkey mind (the ego) puts up barrier after barrier as she learns to listen within. The barriers begin to drop, she begins to Be, she begins to forgive and practice compassion. She finds happiness at the Ashram.

This section is close to my heart even tho I'm not in India, not practicing silence (as per their 10 day no sound retreats) but I understand the search, the monkey mind, the silence and the fullness of that silence. I much anticipate that there will be some resistance to this chapter by some of the girls in book club. Maybe not, maybe Gilberts words can convey to them what I cannot.

Indonesia ~ the section on balance and love. Gilbert travels to Bali because 2 yrs prior to her departure for Italy a medicine man of Bali tells her she will come back to live in Bali for 4 months, to come back and see him. She arrives with no plan, no idea of where the medicine man lives, only the city where he lives. The next day she meets a hotel clerk who knows who he is and where he lives and he takes her there. At first the medicine man doesn't remember her. When she finally tells him she is a writer, recognition dawns in his eyes and he tells her she looks so different. Before she was ugly and sad and now, she is beautiful and happy. She begins to visit him daily. Soon she makes a few other friends and slides into the rhythm of Bali.

She attends a party of expats and meets 2 men she likes. One is near her age and she is attracted to him. They decide to allow the Gods to decide when or if they meet again. That same night she meets Fillipe, a south american divorced man who is 52 to her 35. They become friends and eventually (despite her resistance) lovers. This chapter IS about balance. For her entire trip she's been austere, effort going into her spiritual developement and her hesitation of having a relationship is something she thought long and hard about. She finds a balance and as she leaves Bali to return to the states it's with a whole different heart, healed and full.

This is a memoir of spiritual awakening, of paths that often the western mind recoils from...in some ways it feels like magic, or third world ignorance. But if one listens one hears the truth of it.

In each country Gilbert gives a lot of information about the country and it's culture and I find it fascinating. I's fascinating that we in the west, in the developed feel superior to less developed counties, yet in both of those counties the magic of the spiritual search is part of daily living. Both counties seem more welcoming that I imagine my community would be to anyone just landing at an airport and walking into the community.

I loved the book, it felt open and grand.

Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

Cordelia's Honor
Lois McMaster Bujold at B&N

This is two books in one. Orignally written in the early 80's as 2 separate books. Both books won Hugos back in the day.

I very much enjoyed her fantasy books that I wrote about a week or so ago. This book, Cordelia's Honor (and the 9 or so others in the series) are straight up sci-fi. Swashbuckling sci fi.

Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan come from two different planets, and meet in the midst of war. Aral captures Cordelia and another of her staff on a planet where Aral's world has a rather large cache of supplies...more of a base than a cache as Cordelia finds out.

The two travel on foot to the cache, finding love in those first few chapters. Now, I'm all for love and relationships but this book left me cold. I'm looking for adventure and I get a relationship book. There are some great characters in the book and I loved those guys but I guess the love relationship wasn't in my brain when I picked up the book. The bulk of the book deals with their relationship and finally getting together and the child that comes of it.

There are government intrigues, Aral is slated to become the Regent for the new emperor who is a 5 yr old child. A coup happens and the child of Aral and Cordelia figures heavily in the resolution of the coup.

I do have the next book in the series. I might just leave it alone for a while save it for a day when I don't have anything to read. Despite the fact that it took me about 5 days to read this, it's an easy read and if it held my interest better it would have been a 2 day book. The other series: World of Chalion Series, is better. More tightly written.

Cross posting, ignore them

I just invited someone who doesn't know me to check out this blog and then realized I have those 2 cross posts: Mediocre and Stem Cell posts still here. Ignore them, go past them. LOL, unless you want to post comments in them. They actually do appear in my main blog, I just forgot to delete them in a timely manner.

I'm a dork who can't remember to check the dashboard before I post. But now they've got comments so I don't want to delete them from here.

Carry on.

mediocre

I think me, B and Z are going to Backstreet for dinner tonight.

I've started my 3rd book since Monday. It's too hot but do do anything but read.

The MIL has never called me to tell me she talked to the Neurologist. I asked her to call me after she had so am assuming she hasn't.

Since we've been back from vacation Zoe has babysat twice and made a total of 50 bucks. SHe's slated to babysit again next Wed for 2 families at the same time. Jeez, she's making more money than I am.

The days of my life are oh so mediocre.

Stem cell research

The bill didn't pass by the senate, missed by 2 votes. Bush vowed to veto if it came across his desk. Interesting over 70% of people polled are for stem cell research.

Yesterday Bush vetoed the bill. Idiot.

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

11:07 pm July 18, 2006: I've just started reading a book that seems so familiar. Not the book itself but the tale. A 7th son of a 7th son has 7 children but the 7th child is a girl, not a son.

Life was idillyc (sp) growing up and the girl was loved and well protected by her brothers. Her father a widower, her mother died in birthing her. They live deep in the forest where the Tuatha de Danann (the fairy folk) are said to reside and sometimes play tricks on wanderers in the forest. The father is a great leader/warrior who eventually remarries. The woman is fair of face but evil and cunning underneath. Most of the brothers see it, the daughter also. Each brother has a skill (warrior, scribe (druid), animal husbandry, lightheartedness, etc. The girl is a healer. The stepmother curses the children but the daughter escapes. She pleads to the Lady of the Forest who appears and tells her how to break the enchantment.

I'm sure I've read the tale but cannot put my finger on the title or the author of the tale I'm sure I've read. At the moment the daughter is working on breaking the enchantment but it will be a long road, and she is only at the beginning of that road.

I finished the book late last night and found it to be a beautiful version of the tale. The story is chock full of fairy folk, good Christian folk, good Old Way folk, the Irish and the Britons war, deception, spells, loves lost and found and family.

The family is the head family of a settlement and they each protect and nurture the people of the settlement. It is a time of war and skirmishes. Each child with a will and a way of their own each help and sometimes hinder their fathers campaigns. Finbar, the closest brother to Sorcha does not agree with the killing/dispatching of caught enemies and he secretly releases a captured Briton who has been tortured with in an inch of his life. Sorcha secretly helps him and soon is tending to the injured man without her father and most of her brothers knowledge. She and the injured man are nearly caught and Sorcha must leave the man before he is fully healed. Sorcha does not know it but she's left a great impression on the man.

Sorcha is the daugher deemed strong enough to travel the path to save her 6 brothers from an enchantment laid by their evil stepmother. All of the brothers have been turned to swans and she can break the enchantment by never speaking a word, keeping the story of the enchantment from anyone who asks and is told to weave 6 shirts made from a plant that is full of thorns. The materials for the shirts must be collected, prepared and woven by Sorcha alone. Sorcha hides in the forest spending a full year working at her task. She is 15.

She is driven from her hiding spot by men who rape her and her 6 brothers appearance (they come to her twice a year, able to spend one night in human form. At dawn they return to their swan forms). The fairy queen appears to her with a boat and tells her to leave; the boat will take her to a new destination.

She is weak and reeling during her flight and is soon spotted by 3 men fleeing who save her from drowning. They take pity on her and she is lifted into arms and go with them. She cannot speak, they argue about what to do with the frightened fey girlchild.

The leader of the three is Red who is injured and Sorcha tends to his wounds even tho he is a Briton, an enemy. Red is visited by the fairy king and queen and after one night, they are rescued and make their way by sea to Briton.

Sorcha is thrust into a household where she is the enemy, Red tries to protect her from everyone who sees her as the enemy. She spends one year there, making a few friends but overall is ignored, bullied and ill-treated by most of the household.

The uncle of Red sees her as an important player in his personal quest to gain land in Ireland. He bullies and verbally abuses her, thinking he is safe from anyone knowing what he says because of Sorcha's silence.

Sorcha's protector Red was on her island searching for his missing brother, reported to be dead. Sorcha cannot tell Red about her nursing his brother but Red is slowly realizing that Sorcha might know something but her enchantment does not allow her to help him. She is driven to weaving her odd shirts and he allows her to complete the task by his grace.

After a time Red must leave again to look for his brother, he gives Sorcha a token, a ring and they are married to keep Sorcha safe while he is gone. The plan doesn't work as well as they'd hoped; the uncle plots and plans and Sorcha is eventually accused of sorcery and is destined to burn.

The Curse of Chalion Lois McMaster Bujold

I got this first book of the series Sunday night after dinner w/ the family. Read it last night and this morning. Once again, Bujold did not disappoint. If you read further down the blog you'll see the sketchy reviews I did of the other two books that I read out of order.

I was expecting to find out more of the rules of how the people within the books became either saints, or possessed by souls but this book did not answser the question. In fact this book had no talk of souls until after the first 200 pages. The souls that inhabited the characters were either god granted or transferred by something called death magic. It seems the other two books were more fully realized in terms of the soul magic by the author.

No matter, what was great was that the books did not strictly need to be read in sequencial order.

Blink : The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink

A good book, a good companion to The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference which I read not too long ago and reviewed here.

Gladwell outlines how snap judgements, the judgements we make in a blink of an eye can be (and often are) exactly right on. But when we try to think about why we made that judgement we flounder and cannot pinpoint exactly why we made the decision.

It's all about the momentary facial expressions that flit across our faces before we're even aware of the expression. We can't necessarily stop the expressive frame as our facial muscles react instantanously and then are replaced by more concious facial muscle masks. It's pretty fascinating in that I know I have, what I call gut reactions that I cannot explain to others I just know it's right. The trouble begins when others want empirical evidence when it's not there yet and one can't put their fingers on exactly how one knows what they know.

Ok, so this is a sucky review so just take my word for it, good book worth a read.

The Hallowed Hunt and Paladin of Souls

I read these 2 books out of order. I read The Hallowed Hunt first, loved it and went back to the store to get Paladin of Souls. There is another book thats actually the first book in the series (The Curse of Chalion) that I'll have to read even tho I've already figured out who's who and what's what). No matter, the books stand on their own and I didn't even realize it was a series since the same characters do not appear in these two books. It seems to be more of a series of a particular land with it's particular set of rules.

The Hallowed Hunt
Lois McMaster Bujold


Paladin of Souls
Lois McMaster Bujold


The characters are well drawn, and sometimes quite formal. Both stories deal with humans carrying the souls of animals which for some, the religous can be a mark of favor from the Gods (of which there are 5) or for the non-religous - a charge of possesion. I suppose the first book would probably give me the rules on why the two groups have different rules about housing animal souls.

There are lots of books that deal with people incorporating the essence of an animal. For the most part it gives them a second sight; different from their own human sight, the essence of their animal. It's usually cooperative. Here it's not always cooperative. Sometimes the animal soul rides the human and sometimes the human rides the animal. Riding the animal soul is preferable, as the other way the human becomes like the base animal without empathy.

Both books are mysteries of a sort. In Paladin of Souls, a woman *accidently* travels finding 2 brothers who live near the border of hostile people, with an odd problem. One brother is bedridden with a mysterious illness, only waking briefly each day to take some food and water. He is wasting away. The other brother is hale and hearty yet when he sleeps a wound on his shoulder weeps blood only to close up and heal once he wakes. The mystery is why and how these 2 brothers are intertwined by others around them; both family and enemies.

In The Hallowed Hunt, a woman is being held as a murderer of a royal person. An attempted rape she does indeed kill the man who was set on raping her. In the melee and apparent magical transference of an animal soul she is now possessed of a leopard soul and in danger of being put to death because of it. Her escort, a man who has been pardoned of his possession believes her story of possession and begins to unravel the mystery of his own past possession as his animal soul becomes unbound.

Lois McMaster Bujold writes beautifully. I savored these books and now I have to go find other books by her, she's got quite a few under her belt.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

It's hard to believe that as recent as 1951 Yeo women were still binding their feet and writing in a secret womans language. I can't tell the year of this book (it is never referenced other than one uprising I'd have to look up*) but it does give you an idea of what the chinese are about, their culture and daily living. This is much better than Memoirs of a Geisha too. It does not glamorize (as Geisha did) the lifestyle of someone with Lotus feet.

Most interesting to me was the foot binding, the obedience to culture/men and the disobedience of the women shown by the women handing down from generation to generation the traditon of Nu Shu: secret womens writing.

"Obey, obey, Obey and then do what you want" is simlar to It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Although for most of us, that doesn't inculde being disgraced and your status lowered or even turned out.

Lisa See's book, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

A Wiki entry about Nu Shu

A Wiki entry about foot binding



*The Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864) the character Lily was in her 30's during this rebellion. She died in her 80's.