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isclaimer: My poor little cat is in the vet’s care this weekend, attempting to recover from a kidney disorder. I’m aching in love for my cat (in particular) and all cats (in general). With a confusing week behind me and a massive book still underway (The Man in the Iron Mask), I found myself with nothing to review. This morning when I woke up, I considered my options and reached over to Jurassic’s The End (a wonderful collection of short stories produced by a closing publishing house). Flipped open this vast leather volume to the next story beneath the bookmark […]

nd so ends, the series that started with Three Musketeers, proceeded through Twenty Years After, then into The Vicomte of Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, and Louise de la Vallière. By my estimates, it took 4000 pages to arrive at this point. And after three years and something like 100 books and short stories later, I’m ready to conclude this saga with The Man in the Iron Mask. I’ve written how the eternal bonds formed in the first book, of three (then four) common soldiers were unified by friendship and duty. I’ve also noted (in later books) how the four have […]

nother one from the used book shop, this time a military-grade page turner about… shipboard life on a starship. I thought this was a book of an ongoing series (turns out it’s the first one, I think) – Lieutenant Jodenny Scott survived a horrific terrorist attack on her last ship, one that left her burned and burdened with survivors’ guilt. And just as it takes her a while to return to active service (don’t worry – we don’t get dragged through her convalescence – she didn’t like it any more than we would have), it takes us a while to […]

eah, yeah, so it’s a cartoon, and one that I had no interest in watching until a friend coaxed me into it. I’d seen some things about it in the early 2000’s when it first came out. Little bald kid with an arrow tattooed on his forehead. I didn’t give it a second thought. Anyway, it’s classic storytelling. In this fantasy world, there are four “bender” classes: earth, wind, fire and air, each forming their own nations. However, there is always an “Avatar”, one who can bend all four, the peacekeeping force. In this case, it’s Aang, a goofy little […]