laceblade

This book is the second in Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy (I talked about the first, Westmark, here).

I don't really want to take the time to discuss spoilers, so I'll try not to be too detailed. It took me a little while to get into the plot of this novel, but by the time I got to the middle, I found it very difficult to put this book down. The old themes from the first novel are still present, although politics and war are even more prominent in this book.

Unlike many fantasy authors (especially YA), Lloyd Alexander does not glorify violence. The hero is not fearlessly killing people with a magic sword for the sake of all that is glorious and true. The violence is not glossed over as a necessity to making a great story. The violence is shocking, gruesome, and affects every character in a profound and different way. The hero, Theo, especially struggles with witnessing and committing acts of violence, and by the end of the book, many characters are so mentally broken by the war that I'm not sure they will ever recover.

I like that in addition to violence never being an easy concept to cope with, political questions are not easily solved either. The "good guys" (grey) are fighting the "bad guys," but should they continue all the way, and abolish the monarchy they live under? It's an interesting question for the reader, considering the fact that the queen is a sympathetic main character.

Also! Florian is totally Enjolras, from Les Miserables.

While the first novel wasn't bad, I wasn't thrilled with it, either. The Kestrel, however makes me eager to read the last volume of the trilogy, The Beggar Queen. This is unfortunate, because I probably won't have time to do so until I am finished with school.

I haven't had much to say lately, because I've just been at work and reading lots of books.

Fooding
I baked cookies a few nights ago. They looked like they had been cooked too long, but I did it exactly as long as the recipe told me to, and they're supposed to be a "crispy" recipe. Also, they were really small. Still, Antoine and I thought that they tasted really, really good.

I also just made soup on a whim. I was going to boil some Asian dumplings, but the back of the box told me I could cut up vegetables and throw them in too, to make soup. "I can do that!" I thought, and I did! Onions, mushrooms, green onions, some spices, and some chili sauce. It turned out all right, I guess, but I think I'll try and find a soup recipe before I try again, :)

Why don't people tell patients about potential side effects? THAT'D BE GREAT, KTHX
While I was at my parents' house during break, my dad assured me that Prilosec is meant to be a short-term drug, and I had been taking it for about 6 months. He told me to stop taking it, and if I still had problems, I should see a doctor. So, I stopped taking it for about five days. Every day, I felt terrible, no matter what food I ate. It felt like I was constantly about to throw up, but not in my stomach - more in my chest and throat. Dad told me to start taking the Prilosec again and see a doctor ASAP.

So, that's what I did on Thursday. After explaining things to him, his theory is that the acne medication I had been taking since either high school or middle school (minocyclene) has the potential to chemically burn a person's esophagus in the long-term, and that that is what happened. Fortunately, a couple weeks before this meeting, my dermatologist had prescribed a different acne medication for me, as minocyclene was doing jack, and I've been very unhappy with my face lately!

So now, I have to take Prilosec for 2 months straight (which is scary to me, as both the doctor and my father have explained to me why taking Prilosec long-term is really bad for you!) to get rid of anything bad, and let everything settle down, and allow my body to adjust to the new acne medication. If the pain immediately starts again after I stop taking Prilosec, or while I'm still taking it, then I need to go to the doctor so that they can stick a long thingie down my throat and see if I have a stomach or esophagus ulcer. WTF ULCER. How do people even get ulcers? I don't know.

I don't get squeamish about blood or broken bones, but the thought of people sticking cameras down my throat makes me want to throw up. I asked the doctor if they could knock me out, and he said no, because they want my gag reflex in case something goes wrong. THAT MAKES ME FEEL SO MUCH BETTER.

Yay!
Anyway, the high today is 0 degrees, but Anime Club (well, hopefully, anyway! It better not be just me!) is going to put up some fliers on State Street, and then watch some anime. Hopefully I don't die in the cold.

Media Update
I hope to write more extensively about these things at a later date, but for now, an update on the things I've been watching and reading:
--Volume 1 of Ex Machina comic by Brian K. Vaughan = win, but based on first volumes alone, I prefer Y: The Last Man

--I read the Magic Knight Rayearth manga. I have to say, I wasn't very impressed. I don't think that the series does anything that Sailor Moon doesn't do better. Speaking of Sailor Moon, I'd really like to reread it sometime soon. Since I've been going on a manga binge, reading all kinds of stuff, I'd like to see how well it holds up. (Please note that the Sailor Moon manga is much better than the anime!).

--I burned through the second Song of the Lioness book by Tamora Pierce - the series is so fun! But, I'm kind of slogging through the second Westmark book by Lloyd Alexander, The Kestrel. I have yet to see any of the dealings with PTSD that everyone was raving about, so I hope the second half pwns the first half.

--Buffy and Angel have both been really, really good lately. I wouldn't have thought that vampire flashbacks would be so fun. Bethany, you might want to check out Angel, season 2 (or at least, the first two discs so far!). Lots of stuff about Darla and Angel's past. It's pretty cool.

Today was very relaxing, which was a nice change compared to the last few days. I was in my pajamas for most of it, which always helps. My dad and I bought a space heater, so hopefully now when I go back to Madison, I won't feel like dying from coldness in my room all the time. Julie and her kids came to our house for dinner (steak and potatoes), and afterwards I went to Chad's house for a while, to spend time with him, Kristy, and a couple of other people.

I spent time doing some blog maintenance, too. While I originally thought that it would be too much of a pain in the ass to keep a heinously organized tagging system of labels for posts, I've since decided that it's quite useful. So, the LiveJournal tag list has been weeded through and organized, and I cleaned up the sidebar of the journal. As for the blog version of this blog, the tags list is still a bit of a work on progress, but can be found here.

Last night, I was also at Chad's while he entertained friends of his parents for dinner (delicious). After they left, Kristy, Chad, Dave, and I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which is the movie sequel to my favorite video game of all time, Final Fantasy VII. Kristy had played the game a long time ago, so I wanted her to see it for closure. From an outsiders' perspective (Chad's, Dave's), and even from an insiders' perspective, the movie was pretty lol. Chad kept asking if there was a plot, and if Sephiroth was going to show up, while we all laughed at at the improbable physics, and the cutting-in-half of a motorcycle with a sword. What got made fun of the most, though, was the English dub. I hadn't watched it all the way through in the dub yet, so I didn't know how poor it was. There were a lot of sentences that had unnecessarily large pauses in the middle of them, and I don't even know where all of that "dilly dally, shilly shally" crap came from. It gave me lots of game nostalgia, though. I should check out the special features on that DVD.

Speaking of movies, I've seen a number of ones for kids in the last few days, with my sister's kids. Among them are "Meet the Robinsons," "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," and "Night at the Museum." All of them were all right, although "Meet the Robinsons" was probably my favorite of the three.

Westmark
I finished read Lloyd Alexander's Westmark today. It is the first novel in the Westmark trilogy. I've never read anything by Lloyd Alexander before, but he seems well-known and respected in the Wiscon crowd for having been an author who wrote lots of YA fantasy that included strong female characters. Westmark was quite bleak in its reflections on human nature and society, and I quite liked it.

One thing that I definitely liked about the book was that Alexander doesn't take forever doing his world-building. His prose is sparse and to the point. Action, plot, dialogue. There is no lag. A pleasant change from, say, the endless reflections that plague the Libba Bray books.

( I have other thoughts that are spoilery )

I have the next book, The Kestrel, checked out, but I have some other things I need to read first. I'm looking forward to it, though, as many people say that The Kestrel had a profound impact on them.

rilina on Westmark here (Spoilers)

oyceter on The Westmark Trilogy as a whole here (No Spoilers)

Anyway, it's time for a bit of reading, and then bed. I'll be at the Packer game tomorrow with my dad, sister, and brother-in-law. I find it amusing that many households that live near Lambeau Field plow their lawns of snow (often to the point of completely covering their windows and siding with blasted snow) in order to be able to park more cars on their property, and make money.

Current Music: Dante - Fullmetal Alchemist OST

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

Entries tagged with a: alexander lloyd

The Kestrel

I LIVE

And now it's time for my Cesare Borgia manga

Profile

November 2023

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags