I picked up this book, Kushiel's Scion, to have something to read while the TV was unhooked, and I finished it on Friday night.

Kushiel's Scion follows the adolescence of Prince Imriel nó Montrève de la Courcel (accenting omitted because I don't want to start a trend), who is the adopted son of Phèdre nó Delaunay, Kushiel's Chosen.

Maybe I should back up a bit.

This book is the fourth written by Jaqueline Carey in this specific world of historical fantasy. The first three books in the Kushiel's Legacy series - Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, and Kushiel's Avatar - were all about Phèdre, Imriel's adopted mother. Imriel actually appears in the third book as a child that Phèdre rescues from this terrible place called Daršanga, where everyone is excessively tortured for the pleasure of its ruler, the Mahrkagir. In this new book, Imriel is Kushiel's Scion (perhaps?), and the story is told in his voice rather than Phèdre's.

There is a good bit I like about the stories. For whatever reason, I've grown an attraction to Carey's storytelling, even if it is a little flowery for my tastes. I'll simply attribute that to the nature of the people who are the main characters in her stories.

If this book has a flaw, it's that it recounts the tales of the first three books far too often. I think that the other books in the series could stand on their own if they had to. By comparison, you cannot read Kushiel's Scion and appreciate it as well, because it seems as though Imriel is always recounting one of Phèdre's stories to someone. That's fine, but it doesn't do a lot for his story, which unfolds over the course of the book. I found myself constantly waiting for him to remove himself from the protection of the Montreve household and venture out on his own.

But overlooking that, the book offers a lot. The world that Carey sets here is quite beautiful. Very much it exists in fantasy, but it is very real and alive in her mind, and you can tell. You can even imagine that the places that people allude to in the book have rich histories, even if they are only mentioned in passing. Evidence of this exists in the multitude of Wikipedia entries for the Kushiel books.

My favorite parts of the book are when Imriel finally does get out on his own, and starts to become involved in affairs in Tiberium. I enjoyed his sessions with Claudia, and they left myself yearning for my own lessons in covertcy (also known as "spycraft"). And no, to you who have read the book, I do not mean that in the dirty way that you're thinking. Well, ok, fine, that wouldn't be so bad either.

As always, the central myth of Elua and his precept, Love as thou wilt, is personally very alluring. Being able to make decisions, as the characters in the book did, using mostly this ideal would make for quite the perfect rationale. I think it's details such as these that really help with understanding the motivations of the people in the novel, and give the whole story coherency and credibility.

The basics of the plot show Imriel growing into manhood on Phèdre's family estate. While travelling to court to entertain the queen's desires, some notice arrives that Imriel's mother (a traitor throughout the first three books - and there I've just ruined them for you) has escaped her self-imposed imprisonment/sanctuary and can't be found. Some aspersions are cast on Imriel at court which he finds difficult to reconcile in his adolescent mind, and he wonders about his inner desires, which conflict with the terrible deeds done to him in Daršanga.

There is a complex web of marriages and alliances that sends Imriel to Tiberium where he takes up study with his friend Eammon, and meets some new allies. There is some trouble during his new friend's weeding that causes Imriel to really come into his own.

Throughout the story Imriel is unsure of his desires, whether it's for the queen's daughter, Sidonie, or for the Tiberium Senator's wife, Claudia. He searches for answers to some questions left unanswered by Phèdre in the first three books, and comes away with some success.

Thankfully, the end is left open for another book. Hopefully there will continue to be more in this series.

I really enjoyed reading Kushiel's Scion, and recommend the series if you're into fantasy.

With an overwhelming majority of votes (that's funny, folks) I have been elected as this week's Philly Future Featured Blog!

I'm not sure exactly what duties I'll be expected to perform during my week of honor (and if it's picking up trash with a poker around the Philly Future headquarters, I totally got a raw deal). Still, this is my first time my blog has been recognized as worth reading in 6.5 years of blogging, and I plan to attribute to it all of the gravity that it deserves.

Thanks to everyone who voted, not just for me, but for the other nominees who are doing a swell job on their blogs, too. Special thanks to Albert for the nomination, Howard for the spiffy introduction, and all the folks that keep Philly Future running. Hopefully new visitors will find my content worthy of their browsing time.

I was having a conversation with my brother the other day that meandered through different discrete topics concerning computer security; security in the sense of protecting your computer from data loss.

Obviously, this is part of what he does for work and I would expect that he would know the field better than I would, but it's still frustrating that I had really no knowledge in the field. I decided that it might be better to take up pottery, since at least with a bit of practice I would know it better than him and then wouldn't sound so stupid in our converstaions, at least if we were talking about pottery.

Though wouldn't it be neat to have extensive knowledge of a single specific topic? Such complete knowledge that people seek you out for advice or training on the topic would be pretty neat. I mean, I'm sick of the idea that someone out there knows more than me - allow me to pick one topic and be the person that knows more than everyone else.

How would I choose a topic, and how would I learn everything there is to know about it?

Well, I'm not sure pottery is the best way to go. Pottery has been around for ages, and there are probably tribes of jungle people with primitive kilns that would know more about pottery just by having their genetic makeup than I would ever learn by study. So that's probably not the best topic.

I guess I'm looking for something newer, so that there aren't entire cultures of people who have subsisted on the idea. Like, "cooking" is probably out. And at the same time, I think anything really technological will we difficult to amass knowledge in.

There's the unlikely issue, really- Is there a topic that is easy to master that not so many people have mastered already, such that you could become the premier expert in that field?

Juggling seems unlikely. Have you seen the YouTube videos? So much for mastering that.

Seems I'm a bit late for Ninja training, though possibly not too late to learn a bit more about spycraft.

Bah.

Maybe it's enough to be the expert in my own circles (whatever those happen to be), and to that extent maybe pottery is ok. Maybe I should pick a topic that nobody I know knows, and then I'll be the expert amongst my peers. I wonder if that would satisfy me.

Ah well, rumination on this is tedious. Unless I actually choose a topic to master and report on my progress, it's not worthwhile to discuss it beyond the abstract, "I think it would be nice to be well-known for something."

Any ideas about what I could become good at? I think I'm just going to pick something and start researching.

I believe one day, that everyone, everywhere will know the wonders of my nipples.

On Ken's recommendation, I picked up a book by Christopher Moore. Not familiar enough with his work to spend all the money on the hardback edition of his new book, I settled on one of his many other books, Fluke. It was a bestseller afterall, so even if it wasn't "good" it would still be palatable, as are other mainstream bestseller books.

Fluke is about this whale researcher, Nathan Quinn, and his photographer partner, Clay Democodus, and their adventures in researching the meaning of the songs of the humpback whale.

Ok, if you've read the book, you know that that description is a load of crap, but I can't very well tell you what the book is really about without giving too much away, can I? Well, let's see...

Clay hires an assistant, Kona, who is as much a native to their research station's Hawaiian home as a Jersey bridge and tunnel dweller. And then there's beautiful, mysterious, and somehow awkwardly dated Amy, the unpaid intern, who Nate can't take his eyes off, but knows better, having been divorced from prior research assistants more than once.

Nate's ex-wife appears in the story, and the story of how she left him is shockingly and humorously fantastic. Yes, she became a lesbian, but it wasn't just out of the blue, and it certainly wasn't always in her somewhere.

Moore's writing style is oddly very much like mine when I'm in my best-focused humor mode. It's a kind of dry staccato, with lots of contradictions. And maybe it's odd, maybe not, but I kind of like my own writing, and so it follows that I also like his.

There isn't much bad to say about this book. The end slows down a little, and I felt that while he characters might not have known what was going on, the author could have given us a more omniscient view to keep us entertained. The very end also left a few things untidy. Did Nate and Amy get to see each other every few months? I read the last two pages several times and still couldn't figure out what was going on there, and I feel slightly ripped-off after having read the rest of the novel.

Apart from these things, which don't amount to much, the book was a very entertaining read, and although not entirely based in science, had just enough information about whales to make the topic much more entertaining than a dull Discovery Channel special on whale songs.

My only worry here is that because this was apparently a "special" book by Moore's standards (being that this one seems written to direct the reader's attention toward whale conservation issues, in much the way that Live Aid would direct your attention toward Ethiopian famine), his other books won't be as quality. But I more get the impression that it would lean the other way - his other books may be superior because they are not laiden with the burden of drawing attention to anything but themselves.

For that reason, I think I may just pick up that hardback.

I've already started the next book that was recommended on that post, Shadow of the Wind, but I'm only a few pages in and don't have a good impression of it yet.