Reading, Watching, Playing
Mar. 17th, 2023 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_cubedReading
I caught up on the last (8th) book (it seems) of Sarah Painter's Crow Investigations series. I caught up with book 7 late last year but didn't have this yet, though it was out. A nice finish to a light urban fantasy set in London. I then picked up another urban fantasy series by Tanya Huff. I enjoyed her Blood series a long while back, though didn't like the sequel series. This is a trilogy about a family of mostly women with magical powers. The first one was fun. The second shifted viewpoint character to another member of the family (who was a major character in the first, just not the viewpoint one). That was pretty good, too. The last one had an approaching asteroid probably going to wipe out all life on earth plotline, which I generally don't like. The characters (mostly the same viewpoint as book 2 with some stuff from another character who apeared at the end of book one and was a major character in book 2) kept me going. I persevered with this one and it was a mostly satisfactory end to the series, though I still don't like the approaching asteroid plotline. EDIT: missed one. I then read Eddie Robson's Drunk on All Your Strange New Words. A really enjoyable murder-mystery SF set in a ner-future New York but featuring a young woman from Halifax (the Yorkshire one, not the Nova Scotia one). Nice mix of mis/dis-info and climate-emergency future with contact with a very alien race (not first contact - the book starts with them firmly embedded in Earth Society with ambassadorial connections. The mystery plot is well worked out, too. Really recommended. Now I've started a re-read of Robert Jackson Bennett's Founders Trilogy. I really enjoyed the first two of these and I have the final part so time to re-read/finish the trilogy.
Watching
Continuing The Librarians re-watch with $DAUGHTER. Now onto the final (fourth) season. Also started watching School Spirits with her which is fun so far. Continuing with Wolf Pack (Buffy's Sarah Michelle Gellar's character finally being explained in ep 7). Star Trek: Picard season 3 continues good. Shadow and Bone season 2 just dropped so I'll get to that at some point. Gotham Knights just started and I'll try that with $DAUGHTER. Catching up with the final season of The Flash, which will finish off the Arrowverse. Haven't had time to keep up with Carnival Row with $WIFE but we'll get to it.
Playing
I don't usually go for Visual Novel-style adventure games, but Paranormasight: File 23: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is set where I live (in Sumda Ward in Tokyo, in fact I live in the currently named Honjo area (*)) so I'm playing through that and quite enjoying it as a change of pace from struggling with a tough mini-boss battle in Alan Wake on Nightmare Mode setting (I've got past the mini-boss a couple of times only to be taken out by the ordinary mobs that follow before the next save point, grrr). A mix of youkai and other actual mythology/folklore from the area, in a game partly funded by the local government apparently so my local taxes went into this. Despite the name I don't think there are any other games under the Paranormasight title, though they may be planning this as one of a series. Enjoying it primarily for the interactive fiction content rather than the gameplay which is mostly point-n-click which is slightly irritating on the Switch.
(*) The area to the East of the Sumida River (equivalent to South of the River in London) was originally not part of Edo but was the entertainment district for the capital. It eventually got absorbed into it. Originally, the southern part was called Honjo. In modern Tokyo it became Sumida Ward together with the Northern part (where the SkyTree digital broadcast tower/viewing tower etc. is) which had a different name. The sub-parts have been renamed a few times over the decades/centuries and Honjo is now just a small Northern Part of what used to be Honjo.
I caught up on the last (8th) book (it seems) of Sarah Painter's Crow Investigations series. I caught up with book 7 late last year but didn't have this yet, though it was out. A nice finish to a light urban fantasy set in London. I then picked up another urban fantasy series by Tanya Huff. I enjoyed her Blood series a long while back, though didn't like the sequel series. This is a trilogy about a family of mostly women with magical powers. The first one was fun. The second shifted viewpoint character to another member of the family (who was a major character in the first, just not the viewpoint one). That was pretty good, too. The last one had an approaching asteroid probably going to wipe out all life on earth plotline, which I generally don't like. The characters (mostly the same viewpoint as book 2 with some stuff from another character who apeared at the end of book one and was a major character in book 2) kept me going. I persevered with this one and it was a mostly satisfactory end to the series, though I still don't like the approaching asteroid plotline. EDIT: missed one. I then read Eddie Robson's Drunk on All Your Strange New Words. A really enjoyable murder-mystery SF set in a ner-future New York but featuring a young woman from Halifax (the Yorkshire one, not the Nova Scotia one). Nice mix of mis/dis-info and climate-emergency future with contact with a very alien race (not first contact - the book starts with them firmly embedded in Earth Society with ambassadorial connections. The mystery plot is well worked out, too. Really recommended. Now I've started a re-read of Robert Jackson Bennett's Founders Trilogy. I really enjoyed the first two of these and I have the final part so time to re-read/finish the trilogy.
Watching
Continuing The Librarians re-watch with $DAUGHTER. Now onto the final (fourth) season. Also started watching School Spirits with her which is fun so far. Continuing with Wolf Pack (Buffy's Sarah Michelle Gellar's character finally being explained in ep 7). Star Trek: Picard season 3 continues good. Shadow and Bone season 2 just dropped so I'll get to that at some point. Gotham Knights just started and I'll try that with $DAUGHTER. Catching up with the final season of The Flash, which will finish off the Arrowverse. Haven't had time to keep up with Carnival Row with $WIFE but we'll get to it.
Playing
I don't usually go for Visual Novel-style adventure games, but Paranormasight: File 23: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is set where I live (in Sumda Ward in Tokyo, in fact I live in the currently named Honjo area (*)) so I'm playing through that and quite enjoying it as a change of pace from struggling with a tough mini-boss battle in Alan Wake on Nightmare Mode setting (I've got past the mini-boss a couple of times only to be taken out by the ordinary mobs that follow before the next save point, grrr). A mix of youkai and other actual mythology/folklore from the area, in a game partly funded by the local government apparently so my local taxes went into this. Despite the name I don't think there are any other games under the Paranormasight title, though they may be planning this as one of a series. Enjoying it primarily for the interactive fiction content rather than the gameplay which is mostly point-n-click which is slightly irritating on the Switch.
(*) The area to the East of the Sumida River (equivalent to South of the River in London) was originally not part of Edo but was the entertainment district for the capital. It eventually got absorbed into it. Originally, the southern part was called Honjo. In modern Tokyo it became Sumida Ward together with the Northern part (where the SkyTree digital broadcast tower/viewing tower etc. is) which had a different name. The sub-parts have been renamed a few times over the decades/centuries and Honjo is now just a small Northern Part of what used to be Honjo.
