schneefink

No lectures in February! I was wondering why it still felt like I don't have that much free time (apart from staying longer at work), and then I remembered that I read books and played games and had extra choir practices and did other stuff I couldn't have done the month before, that explains things. DD also told me to blame her, which at first I found silly, but having to do all the housework and shopping by myself because she can't does add up eventually.

Games I played:
In our last few D&D sessions we were great at avoiding battles, which is both smart and also a little disappointing when we were looking forward to fun fights. Instead of killing the slaver captain, we bought the slaves to save their lives, and he even agreed to hand himself in for a cut of his own bounty. Then we went to rescue a trespassing elven tribe from a demi-god of destruction, and instead of fighting him we had a chat and then persuaded the elves to abandon their goal and leave because fighting him would have been too dangerous. Then we stumbled across a plot point the DM had meant for later, which meant research and long discussions if we could infiltrate this demon's fortress before concluding that we're not strong enough yet. Then we went to rescue some friends from some black orcs, and because half the party was missing we again concluded that the encounter would be too dangerous and fled instead (narrowly avoiding an ambush.) The last two times at least afterwards we picked a smaller quest from the guild questboard, just so we could at least fight something, and we killed a necromancer and a giant spider, those were okay consolation prizes.

For my birthday I got the boardgame Village Attacks from LB. It's a lot of fun! We only managed to complete first mission so far, so there's room for improvement. It feels a bit like D&D in boardgame form: everyone plays different characters, you level up with experience and get more abilities, you have different missions, there are status effects and melee and ranged attacks etc. etc. Later on there will be traps and events and town heroes and trolls and more, we haven't gotten that far yet but I look forward to it. I can't remember playing cooperative boardgames as a child, but I've tried several in the past few years and I enjoyed them a lot.

Books I read:
The Last Sun + The Hanged Man, K.D. Edwards
These were fun, especially the worldbuilding and the adventure and action scenes. It took me longer than I expected to become invested in the Rune&Brand relationship – they're loyal to each other, yes, but in the beginning everything else about them, like if they even like each other, was too much tell and not enough show for me – but I did eventually, and the rest of the cast was fun too. The power structures/hierarchy in New Atlantis and the world as a whole is interesting and I hope will be further developed. The first book was entertaining, the second one even more so.

Spoilers: I did not expect Rune's ascension to come so soon, and I'm very excited about it, because instead of more time "developing his powers," when we all know that he's going to end up super strong because he's the protagonist, now hopefully we'll see him deal more with politics and logistics and administration, which I find fascinating.

The Outside – Ada Hoffmann
I almost didn't finish this book because I got bored halfway through. It really emphasized for me that to connect with a character I need that character to have interesting relationships with other people, and Yasira didn't have that. Her relationships with her girlfriend, her mentor, and the angels were all not very interesting to me (and I disliked how often she thought of her girlfriend Tiv as a "good girl," that came across very condescending.) Akavi did have interesting relationships, but I was disappointed with where his character arc ended up. The plot was confusing and the ending not satisfying either.

Because I went to Worldcon in Dublin, I can nominate books for this year's Hugo awards. The only thing I know for sure I'm going to nominate is "Children of Ruin" for best novel. I'm planning to only read books published last year until the end of March, there are several already on my list ("The Priory of the Orange Tree," "Fleet of Knives," "Deeplight" – I know several people rec'd "A Memory Called Empire" and "Gideon the Ninth" but I'm currently not in the mood for either.) I'm going on skiing vacation starting tomorrow, hopefully I'll have a lot of time to read.