Month: September 2021

The Quest calendar (continues)… part 13

Having helped extinguish fires in Ironfell, Faris seeks out Edvarius for the return trip to West Haven. Unfortunately, Edvarius isn’t quite done with his local tasks yet.

I sought out Edvarius the following morning, to see if he could leave now that the giant had been dispatched. I talked him into an extra bit of coin for dealing with the giant, and he asked me to travel south to see what was poisoning the water. I reluctantly agreed – with a promise of payment – and set off with my mule and boat to explore various branches off the river. I gathered more tasselroot as I was able, eventually finding a small cave with a terrible odor emanating from within.

I gathered some fresh herbs, tucked them into a cloth, and covered my nose before proceeding into the cave. My boat slid quietly through the water into the darkness. I heard a strange noise just before three toothy monsters dropped into my boat from above, and was bitten by one of them. I slayed them and rapidly retrieved my belongings from the sinking boat, leaving the mule waiting for my return.

My animal companions followed me into a series of rooms within the cave. I found a dwarven corpse, reminding me of how perilous this cave was. I stuck close to the river path after that, noting that he also carried a vial of dragon egg ooze, though broken.

Upon reaching the deepest cavern, I found hundreds of slimy eggs in the water. The eggs themselves were transparent, clearly showing some kind of insects inside. The film on the eggs was causing the water to foam, and that foam was flowing out to the river. I carefully transplanted the eggs to the firm ground near the back of the cave, then judiciously set them all on fire to eliminate this plague upon the river. As I finished, a loud screech echoed throughout the cave, and a massive insect came lumbering towards me.

I dashed in, striking the giant beast, dodging its vicious mandibles. It almost grabbed me with its pincers once, but Richard swooped down and stunned it. It spit acid on me; I recovered and slayed it with my next strike.

That done, I retrieved my mule and began the walk back to Ironfell. A man passed me with a rowboat, but refused me a ride. As I walked, I harvested more tasselroot and munched some rations. On my eventual return to Ironfell, I sought out Edvarius again. He paid me the agreed upon amount and we arranged to meet the next morning to depart for West Haven.

Have you considered your What Ifs?

Between watching Loki and What If…?, I’ve spent a bit of time considering significant choices in my life that would have altered where I am today. Unlike Marvel, I don’t know what my alternate timelines would have been, but I can certainly identify major decisions I made. I’m only considering actual decisions that I made, rather than my parents’ decisions in my youth or things outside my control.

When I started college, I intended to follow my undergraduate degree with law school. Over the years, I wavered on that, considering a graduate focus on international studies instead. Then I took more computer classes. And wrote up a resume for the first time, which included many computer skills. In my final undergraduate semester, I made the decision to take the GRE rather than the LSAT and apply for a graduate program in computers. Either would have been an interesting path.

As I finished graduate school, I interviewed with several companies on campus, and one flew me into the Chicago O’Hare airport just before Thanksgiving for an interview. If you’ve never flown into Chicago, it’s pretty amazing to see from the air how much green space there is because of the many forest preserves. Once on the ground, all I saw was the route to my hotel, from there to the interview (not far at all), and then back to the airport. But I flew home with a job offer and a reasonably good impression of the area. A couple months later, I was able to explore a little while selecting an apartment, and I’ve stayed in the Chicagoland area since then.

An important what if for me is what if I hadn’t gone to that first local gaming convention, so many years ago? Except I realized, that wasn’t the right what if. It was actually at GenCon that summer, when I kept returning to the Out of the Box Publishing booth to play Shipwrecked, even after I bought the game. One of those times, a couple playing with me handed me a flyer to a Thanksgiving weekend gaming convention. Attending that convention resulted in joining my current role-playing group, meeting my ex-husband, and most importantly, the eventual birth of my daughter. All because I enjoyed a game.

Thoughts on For the Wolf

This was a fairly recent review, published in the May 1, 2021 issue of Booklist. I appreciated the reimagining of fairy tales in this story, the first in the Wilderwood series, and am looking forward to seeing which other fairy tales Whitten pulls into the series.

Red’s tragic destiny kicks off Hannah Whitten’s debut novel, For the Wolf, as she prepares to enter the Wilderwood. Second daughters of the royal family are expected to sacrifice themselves to the Wolf when they turn twenty. Red arrives haggard, attacked by the forest itself, at a castle, discovering that the famed Wolf is actually a man, as the fairy tale suddenly transitions from Little Red Riding Hood to Beauty and the Beast. The Wolf’s attempts to contain her to the castle are a guilt-ridden, Herculean effort to shelter her from the woods; he failed to protect the previous second daughters. But Red’s magic makes her a powerful ally as he struggles to repair the woods, preventing the arrival of dark creatures from the Shadowlands. They are hampered by Red’s sister, Neve, and her betrothed, unsuspecting accomplices of an evil priestess seeking to release the Five Kings, mistakenly believed to be gods, from the Shadowlands. Whitten reaches a satisfying, yet unexpected, conclusion while setting up the next book in the Wilderwood series.

Thoughts on 10,000 Bones

Every so often, I look back at the books I’ve reviewed and am surprised at some of the reviews I’ve forgotten to share here. This review of 10,000 Bones by Joe Ollinger was originally published in the February 1, 2019 issue of Booklist. Yes, really, more than 2 years ago. 10,000 Bones is such an easy read, focusing on the character development and culture with light glimpses at the science, I’m considering re-reading it in the near future.

A couple centuries in the future, in 10,000 Bones, Joe Ollinger has spread humanity across the far reaches of the galaxy, colonizing a dozen habitable planets. This particular planet, Brink has minimal calcium, so the government declared it to be the official currency. This has led to other governments suppressing calcium shipments in order to maintain favorable exchange rates, illnesses relating to calcium deficiencies, and a government agency responsible for finding black market calcium and recovering it. Taryn Dare is a Collections Agent, collecting a bonus based on the weight of the illegally circulated calcium she recovers, as seen in her opening salvo when she chases down a busboy who is stealing chicken bones from his work. Bones are processed by genetically engineered chalk weevils that extract the calcium. Not surprisingly, there’s a black market for human remains as well, and a simple corpse recovery turns into Taryn’s biggest case yet. Taryn teams up with a Commerce Board auditor who’s investigating a calcium shortfall in the system, uncovering a vast conspiracy that places both of their lives in danger.