Book 9: "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters" by G.W. Dahlquist

in case you had not noticed, Harschmort is a house of masks and mirrors and lies, of unscrupulous, brutal advantage. We cannot afford illusion - about ourselves least of all, for this is what our enemies exploit most of all. I have seen notorious things, I promise you, and notorious things have been done to me.

A steampunk adventure in which three disparate people (a hired killer, a jilted woman, and a doctor whose job is to keep a dissolute prince out of trouble) come together to investigate a secret cabal. It was rather long and could easily have been edited to a more manageable length. In my opinion the reader doesn't really need to have the same time period covered in tortuous detail not once but three times (from the point of view of each of the protagonists). And just how many times did the baddies leave someone to kill one of the protagonists and assume they were dead, only to have them escape and pop up just as the baddies are gloating over their death? More times than your average James Bond movie, I reckon!

But I still enjoyed it, even though it took me well over a fortnight to slog my way through it.

Nottingham Light Night

How did I not know that Light Night was happening? Apparently there was one last year too. I think I had better start watching the local news occasionally instead of checking the headlines on teletext.

On Friday I was walking up from Broad Marsh to Weekday Cross on my way home from work, when I noticed that there was a big screen in the window of the still under construction arts centre (the one with the lace-patterned wall panels for those of you who came on the Nottingham Bookcrossing walk), but I didn't stop to watch the display as my attention was caught by something going on further down High Pavement. The front steps of the Galleries of Justice had been turned into a theatre, and there were people on stilts (kind of spring-loaded stilts that made them about ten feet tall, rather than the really tall stilts) and lots of teenagers and younger children in costume. There were a couple of people dressed up as hanged men (with a rope round their necks and about a metre of rope standing up above their heads, and a tall white ghost lurking by the church gates. The churchyard and trees were all lit up too. I asked one of the marshalls what was happening and they said there would be a play at about 7 o'clock, so I carried on home, had tea and came out again at about 6:50. The play was a series of non-too serious scenes about murderers, resurrection men and transportation to Australia - which was relevant to the setting, since the narrator was standing on the site of the gallows where people used to be hanged in the days when there were still public hangings.

If I had known that Light Night involved the whole of central Nottingham, I would have gone for a wander after the play, but as it was I went home and watched TV.