Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 2 and a Rose

Hello again !

Advent Day 2 sees my favourite character from The Last Jedi appear :

Kelly Marie Tran put a lot into that character and really brought Rose to life. Hopefully the Rose character will get lots of screen time in the 9th film, that character is fun.

Books today ? A slightly deviant right to left.

First up is David Weber's Path of the Fury ... I have very little memory of this book ! From reading the Wiki entry, I think I've read it but can't remember it. (Could have read it during Concussion Number 1 where my memory became rather damaged) It's another space scifi book set in another independent universe, separate from the Honorverse which David Weber is known for most. A retired commando wants revenge and a supernatural entity is very keen to help her out. They then find an AI enhanced super ship and set out for mayhem.

I think I have read this one .... think I may have to add it to the list to read again at some point ! David Weber's books are usually pretty good and draw you into their tale. His Honorverse was excellent but kinda outgrew past the fun space battle drama and started getting infected by boring politics and other make it up as you go along espionage stuff.

I'm sure there will be a few more David Weber books getting featured this month .....

Next up is Waterdeep by Richard Awlinson. The author's name is a pseudonym for 3 authors, with Troy Denning penning this entry in the series. It's the third in the original Avatar trilogy set in the Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign world.

It's quite a rich world and this book takes its characters on a tour of the Realms. The gods have fallen from the skies and have been incarnated as avatars upon the Realms. They are still powerful but can be killed .... and a number of them do find their end in this series with catastrophic results.

This series is a defining addition to the Forgotten Realms lore, with descriptions of quite a wide swathe of locations and important characters plus the changing of the pantheon of gods looking over the world. Many characters that become key are introduced in this series like Midnight, Ciric and Kelemvor.

It's a great finish to the series and (with the other two, Shadowdale and Tantras) is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in or playing in the D&D Forgotten Realms setting. Not quite as good as the R.A. Salvatore Drizzt novels .... but still pretty good and enjoyable.

Last and best .... an ancient classic.

It's The Time Machine by HG Wells.
(Post edit note - yep. It's Around the World in 80 Days and I was sure it was a different book ! I know one of the books I'll be talking about tomorrow !)

You know the story here .... an inventor has created a machine that lets him go backwards or forwards in time. He finds himself going far into the future, past the world wars, past an apocalyptic war that buries him and his machine and eventually stops at a far distant future with the Eloi and Morlocks. The Eloi have an idyllic as gatherers, the Morlocks are terrifying creatures living underground.

Our inventor falls in love with one of the Eloi ... who disappears into the realm of the Morlocks. Can our inventor save the lady ?

One of THE classic books, a foundation piece for modern scifi. A book that has to be read if only to experience one of the great authors and it's actually a good, fun read as well.

Oh and my copy has an extra bit at the back, a short story that is an educational piece where a gentleman idly wishes that the world would stop because it's getting too much for him. An entity agrees ... and makes it happen. The world stops turning ... but everything on the world doesn't. Cue mayhem and destruction !

So there we go :

Path of the Fury - another decent book from the very prolific David Weber;
Waterdeep by Troy Denning - essential for any player or DM using the Forgotten Realms setting.
The Time Machine - a timeless classic.