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Life Update and Steampunk
Sep. 6th, 2011 07:44 pmI spent the weekend visiting with the family of a friend in North Florida. Overall, a good time, though I think I may have managed to catch a bug and am going by the grace of Dayquil at present.
Some years back I went to DragonCon and took pictures of people in costumes. Once that was done, spurred on by a friend, I set out to tag the images. One was vaguely cyberpunkish, and made me curious:
Turns out, the charming young lady is depicting a character called "Astrid Blauvelt" from a free audiobook / podcast called The Gearheart. Cool, I figured, and downloaded the bunch, and listened to a few, and let it languish.
On the drive back through Florida, however, the podcasts were on my memory card, so I went ahead and listened to one. And a second. And so forth through the drive.
The plot and writing have plenty of flaws. New characters and events come seemingly out of thin air, and there's plenty of melodrama worthy of a fanfic, and there's plenty of emo. However, I like the readers, and the production is quite good, and for whatever reason I found the series worthwhile (so far I'm on episode 23, so this may yet change.) So, if you think it's something possibly up your alley, check it out. I hope the crew keeps at it, as they clearly have the potential to produce really excellent fiction.
Also, I finished Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light by Tanya Huff. It's a short novel, or long novella, in the urban fantasy genre. It's one of her early works, which shows, but the slightly amateurish and naive tone somehow came across endearing, and I ended up rather liking it as well. It is, much as the Keeper series, worlds apart from her military fiction, but if you like the Keeper books, check this one out as well. The perhaps notable feature is that one of the protagonists is a developmentally challenged person, and it works remarkably well with fairies and ghost about.
Some years back I went to DragonCon and took pictures of people in costumes. Once that was done, spurred on by a friend, I set out to tag the images. One was vaguely cyberpunkish, and made me curious:
Turns out, the charming young lady is depicting a character called "Astrid Blauvelt" from a free audiobook / podcast called The Gearheart. Cool, I figured, and downloaded the bunch, and listened to a few, and let it languish.
On the drive back through Florida, however, the podcasts were on my memory card, so I went ahead and listened to one. And a second. And so forth through the drive.
The plot and writing have plenty of flaws. New characters and events come seemingly out of thin air, and there's plenty of melodrama worthy of a fanfic, and there's plenty of emo. However, I like the readers, and the production is quite good, and for whatever reason I found the series worthwhile (so far I'm on episode 23, so this may yet change.) So, if you think it's something possibly up your alley, check it out. I hope the crew keeps at it, as they clearly have the potential to produce really excellent fiction.
Also, I finished Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light by Tanya Huff. It's a short novel, or long novella, in the urban fantasy genre. It's one of her early works, which shows, but the slightly amateurish and naive tone somehow came across endearing, and I ended up rather liking it as well. It is, much as the Keeper series, worlds apart from her military fiction, but if you like the Keeper books, check this one out as well. The perhaps notable feature is that one of the protagonists is a developmentally challenged person, and it works remarkably well with fairies and ghost about.
