Finished Devices and Desires by KJ Parker. It's "high fantasy" that is devoid of any magic. At first it was very interesting. Really caught my attention and in fact I did no writing for 4 days because of it. But increasingly it became bogged down in uninteresting details. And the characters aren't very interesting. And the stuff I kept turning the pages to get to... when it finally came was just glossed over, not well done.

A neat idea for the Mezentarians. An engineer society that is highly dogmatic. But still not much depth. And the same with the Vadani and Eremanians(sp). Certainly an attempt at depth was made with the book king Fashion and Lady Reason and much detail about various rituals, but somehow still manages to lack depth. Possible because it has very few characters. The is no description of "the common people". It went way downhill and I have no interest in reading book two or three.

In the interview at the end Parker says, "Basically it's a love story, which is why tens of thosands die, cities are torched, nations overthrown, and everybody betrays everydoby else at least once. It's also a sotry about a very ordianry man who's forced, through no fault of his own to do extraordianry things in order to achieve a very simple, everyday objective.
Furthermoe an exploration of the nature of manufacture, artifice and fabrication--the things we make, the reasons we make them, the ambivalence of everything we create, and the effects on other people of what we make. Ambitious, or what?"

It's not much at all of a love story. Ziani and his lady never even interact the entire book. Valens and Veatrix only exchange some letters. Perhaps just subjectively that's a problem for me. Very seriously not a fan of relationships that consist solely of letters.... Anyway: "or what". Didn't find it particularly ambitious.

Also finished Mythago Wood, which again, lost me in large part because the main character was a buffoon.

I suppose once again, a "hero" motivated by love. I guess that just doesn't work for me and I suppose that could just be me. Yet, certainly Hobb's Fitz very much had a love interest. But his was real. There was substance there. That worked. Valens is just writing letters to someone he liked the looks of when he was young and in heat. Ziani's love interest is a complete blank. The Mythago Wood guy....? I guess it was literally a woman created from his subonscious so undoubtedly there would be a strong "hormonal" based love. Which is meaningless. If he was intelligent enough to have even the slightest understanding of what was going on, it could have been interesting. But he wasn't.

Prince of Thorns was better in that it stuck to plain old revenge, lots of killing. The least relevant/most escapist. Aimed the lowest and didn't fail.

In a good mood. Successfully "bending but not breaking." Work is good. Sort of liking the cold weather. As long as my treadmill doesn't break. Although only running a max of 25 miles a week. Just too many other things to do.... Guess I could really try to do a few more on the weekend though....

I feel as if I have something to look forward to, but not really. The next weekend. The next night out with friends, next holiday. Increasing my cello playing on the weekends, usually. Really working on extended position. Which considering I've been playing for 3 years now I really should be better at.

Sick of football. What junk. Stupid announcers. Really just an all around stupid sport. I'm happier when I don't watch it. It's on right now, but no sound and I don't care about the game....