robert.admin – Page 137 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

September 17, 2017

Pipers (Review)

nother one from the collection Four Summoner’s Tales, the second of the set. You’ll remember my review of the first one of this group, Suffer the Children, and how I thought that was going to be pretty much the sorts of stories we were going to go through in this necromancy collection (people of the past raising their dead out of Salem graveyards or the like). Well, Pipers blew that assumption out of the water. So in this novella, Zeke is a practical rancher down in a Texas border town. He lost his wife years back and so his world […]

September 16, 2017

OpsLog – WBRR – 9/16/2017

ur club does a lot of ops. We started with Mother-May-I on our N-trak modules a quarter century ago. Since then, we’ve built an empire at our clubhouse which we’ve run every month for years and years. And back in the day we ran ops every Monday at various members’ houses in round-robin fashion. Yeah, so we’re good. We’re really good. And that’s why we get invited to go halfway across the state (that’s longways, too) to run on Al Sohl’s Western Bay. It’s a cool 1930’s narrow gauge with scenery that will make your eyes bleed, it’s that good. […]

September 13, 2017

Scared Shitless (DOG EAR)

Scared Shitless (DOG EAR) p until the 50s, heroes were never scared. When faced with a wave a Zulus or an airship unraveling beneath their boots, heroes would clench their lantern jaws (whatever that means), tighten their fingers around their bold-action rifles and think of England. But never, never ever were they scared. In the 60s, Louis L’Amour would occasionally mention fear in his stories, but it was usually the secondary character chattering his teeth while the blunt hero would tell him it was natural to be frightened. Not that we’d witness the hero’s own fears, just that he would […]

September 10, 2017

Moonfleet (Review)

often root for old books. I want them to be good, even better than novels of the current day, just to throw something in the face of people who assume that people of the past were simplistic clods who suffered because they didn’t have access to the likes of Clive Cussler. And now I’m delighted that I found an old book of 1898 vintage, Moonfleet, that tops everything. No, it’s not a book about spaceships. Moonfleet is a story of youth along the southern coast of England, of 1757, of smugglers slipping in past the watch, of barrels unloaded on […]

September 7, 2017

Emotional (DOG EAR)

kay, so it’s been a hard couple of months. It started with something at work resembling a North Korean prison, working 140 hours of overtime in five weeks. This was while we were making organizational changes and a toxic person was stirring things up behind my back. Then there was the strange thing with my hand, the little null-spot, which doctors took three weeks to casually examine before announcing that, no, it wasn’t a degenerative disease. We also had a national train convention in town and our club was high on the host list. I had to run ops sessions, […]

September 3, 2017

Suffer the Children (Review)

his is the first review from the Four Summoner’s Tales collective, which is an audio book we brought with us on our long vacation drive. In a nutshell, it’s four novellas that follow a loose format – the tales have to involve a stranger who can raise the dead. We’ve got three of the four down and are looking forward to taking on the last one for the drive back. Since these are novellas (i.e. spacious tales with far more legroom than mere short stories) I’ll review each in turn. And in an advanced rating, I’m going to tell you […]

August 31, 2017

Rest (DOG EAR)

t’s been a tough couple of months. I suffered a month of nonstop overtime, only working or sleeping for five weeks in a row. And all this went largely unrecognized. Then there was the scare that I might have a degenerative disorder, something that might lead to my crippling or death. We had a train convention in town and I had to work like a dog to get us through that. And then my beloved cat’s kidney packed up, and we did everything we could (including painful things) to save her but failed, and ended up burying her in the […]

August 27, 2017

This Census-Taker (Review)

ong-time readers of my reviews know that my favorite living author is China Meville (it’s a love-hate relationship – this guy writes like I should write). I’ve got pretty much every book of his on my shelves. A lot of them are crazy-weird but leave me haunted and thoughtful. And This Census-Taker, it’s the craziest (and deepest) of the bunch. So this boy lives in an almost dreamlike house high on a windy hill overlooking a town, sometime in a sort of steam-punk post-greatness era. And the tale begins with him dashing down to the city in the valley below, […]

August 25, 2017

OpsLog – LM&O – 8/23/2017

’ve gassed long and loud about all the physical improvements across the division (Calypso Yard, Martin Yard, the Zanesville alignments). I’ve also talked about our increasing membership and how new (and returned) club members are filling our ranks. What I haven’t mentioned is how everyone is expanding their roles on the pike. This session, I was really happy with seeing members pushing their abilities and learning new things. Bruce (after getting slugged down in Mingo a few months ago) rattled out of the yard with the Mingo cut again, off to slay dragons. Both Dwaine and Craig rose from the […]

August 24, 2017

Backlogged (DOG EAR)

ne of the only positive things to come out of the last few weeks (while I watched my feline companion slowly wither to nothing, during which time I inflicted pain to hydrate her and endlessly bothered her to eat) was my reading. There were a number of things I did to escape from the tragedy taking place. When Mookie was awake and about, I’d tend to her and coo over her. But when she slept, I diverted myself. Writing? Not a chance. I couldn’t put two thoughts together (and the thoughts that I might have put together were darker than […]