25nov2025

So today I thought I would treat y'all to a sort of ‘Goldilocs and the 3 Bears’ set of reviews of three romantasies, which are like fantasy, except geared towards the romance instead of the sf&f market, cuz I guess too many romance readers think sf&f is full of sexist asshats? Which to be fair, there was that sad/rabid puppy kerfluffle, but then women dominated the hugos (sf&f's big award); or mebbe folks looking for sexy fluff are just not in the mood for big, challenging stuff, which to be honest has been my problem all too often of late. N.K. Jemisin's three-peat hugo award winning trilogy Broken Earth is splendid, but, like J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, while I'm super glad I read it, I don't know that I'll ever reread it, and neither is what I'd consider a comfort read (that's just for me, though, serious readers can and do totally reread both these giants of the fantasy genre).

This is looooooooong, so here's the teal deer:

1. Kimberly Lemming's That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf—sweet, consensual (and non racist) porn for those who like their erotic fiction leavened with character development and plot;
2. Travis Baldree's Bookshops & Bonedust—porn free! sweet story of a laid-up orc helping a discouraged shop owner rebuild her book business, just distressingly ignorant of book fantasy's tropes about consequences. Otherwise a charming comfort read (and special kudos for all four of the main characters being female, especially by a male author);
3. Moniquill Blackgoose's To Shape a Dragon's Breath: ah, finally, my sweet spot. The elevator pitch for this would be, what if a Native author wrote her take on Naomi Novik's Temeraire series with a dash of Harry Potter/Hogwarts thrown in, minus that author's bigotries against women and minorities. Still very readable, but not quite as fluffy as the other two; bonus points for a very cool aneurotypical character!

So! First up (this is the order in which I read these, btw) we have Kimberly Lemming's That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf, which I checked from the library cuz it looked like a cute, sweet romance, which indeed it is. There were a lot of things I liked, such as a protag of colour as a matter of fact (you'd hardly know this but for the cover and a comment about hair care half way through the story—this is that, ‘it's not the focus, just something the character is, cuz not every book has to go all angsty on the inequalities of the world’), the consent—in fact, much of the relationship revolves around issues of consent, because the characters like each other from the get-go, but because of the love potion of the title (and I love the influence of those absurdly long titles from Japanese light novels, which honestly, this kind of seems the same...?) the female protag is concerned the potioned werewolf is under the influence.

I do wish there'd been more background. Brie (groooooaaan) is a cheesemonger and the object of her interest is lactose intolerant, and that joke is it for her profession's relevance to the story—I wanted to know more about her career. Frex, there are vegan cheesemongers in NYC that are attempting to replicate the complex fermentation processes using vegan, instead of dairy, sources, and I would've loved to have seen a magical take on this. I don't even recall what the male protag's profession was, besides being a werewolf—sailor, mebbe? (Which if he were, how were they gonna feel about long separations?) Not to mention, they're different species, that's a lot of negotiation between quite differing cultures, but while we do get some interaction between the female protag and her friends (one of whom starred in the first book of the series, and yes, mebbe I would've liked this more if I'd started with that...) we don't really see the matrix of the male characters. (Come to think, I guess he's part of a cohort on a ship magically blown into to the women characters’ part of the world...?)

Anyway. Those are nits.

My biggest issue was with the porn to plot ratio. Papa Bear's bed was too hard (ahem). This book had too much porn, not enough story. To be sure, there is a plot, I just got frustrated plowing through all the sex scenes to get to it. That said, the author seems to be having some fun here: sex scenes are sexy, and nicely and inventively written, if you're into that sort of thing (my fave was the knot, which IIRC is a real thing in dogs, hence my justification about differing species) but this is basically an erotic novel with enough plot and character development to leaven the sexy bits. I think one or two sexy scenes over the course of a romance, to illustrate the developing relationship of the couple, is about my limit, (&, not to be spoilsport, honestly my ideal?) so this was waaaaay too much for me and I finally skipped to the end/DNF.

But if you're looking for super-spicy with consent, plot, and sweet characters, this might just be the book for you. The covers (both versions) are cute too:)

Next up: Mama bear's bed is just too soft—given my complaints the desk clerk at the library recommended Travis Baldree, specifically Bookshops & Bonedust, which is second in his Legends & Lattes series (that being the first, though Bookshops is actually a prequel to it.) No sex! she promised, and indeed this is basically in the ‘kisses’ category, with a bit of hugging and stroking, so no complaints there.

The characters are well drawn, and the author deserves real kudos for the secondary characters, also nicely developed, particularly the mooching, selfish goblin who nevertheless helps save the day, or the super sweet homunculus (though his backstory could admittedly used a bit more development.)

But the lack of consequences! I actually had attempted this book before (it's available DRM free on Kobo, and the wizard bought it) but I stalled when the protag, an undead-skeleton slaughtering orc, decides along with the titular bookshop rattkin (awwww, sweet rats;) owner to resurrect a powerful, evil mage's bag of bones. No, no, no, are you people out of your ever-loving minds?!?

I mean, I get it—the orc character is big, brawny, young, and extremely impulsive, which is how she comes to be laid up in this backwater town while her leg heals up from an injury basically resulting in not following orders. Because I promised the librarian assistant I would read the book, I pushed past my discomfort, and liked the way the author resolved this point. But!

The trio of main characters—orc, rattkin, and dwarven baker love interest—also end up with one of those bags of holdings, also courtesy of the big bad, and Ms Orc decides to appropriate a giant sword—which of course tips off the evil wizard, to whom it currently belongs. This sword clearly had a bad rep even before it was acquired, as it's called Black Blood (or the like, I'm too lazy to look it up) which immediately flashed me on the classic evil sword, Stormbringer, Elric of Melnibone's blade that had to drink blood (i.e. kill someone) once it was drawn.

However, though Ms Orc has a few bad dreams, that's it. No other consequences for stealing this thing—wizard doesn't use her connection to make Our Hero insane, trap the entire group, or anything else particularly dire. I mean, eventually Evil Wizard shows up, but by then, our trio has come up with a plan to deal with her. Again, I liked the resolution of the main climax—it's a refreshing subversion of the great loner bashing the big bad with mighty magical swordfighting—but my overall impression was that the author, while clearly familiar with tropes in video games (I presume, he did that for a living for a decade or more) the origins of these tropes (to be found in, um, books) seemed to have passed him by.

It's rather weird, to see stuff I read as a matter of course when young now mostly erased by the sands of time. Bujold talks about genre as a ‘conversation’, and acknowledgement of genre tropes, such as the evil wizard whomping your ass for messing with their stuff, or the downsides of bonding with evil magical swords, was just entirely absent, and seemingly nearly consequence free. It bugged me. Find a cool thing, keep a cool thing, despite its evil origins. Sorry, folks, that's not how evil works...

When I pointed out these issues, the person recommending the book kept apologizing, and I could not seem to convince her, that actually, I liked the book—enough to actually think about it, and read the first book in the series! But she couldn't be swayed: I had criticisms, therefore the book was unacceptable. (Sigh.) Very fun, charming fantasy/romantasy with good character development, vivid plotting, both with the big bad, but also the slow revitalization of the moldering bookshop, interspersed with lots of very sweet interactions about recommending favourite books, so of course it's gonna appeal to people in libraries or a half-century history of reading sf&f.

So finally we get to my third choice, the just-right Moniquill Blackgoose's To Shape a Dragon's Breath, book 1 in her Nampeshiweisit series. If Naomi Novik's Temeraire alternate history series featuring a draconic air force during the Napoleonic Wars is a cross between Anne McCaffrey's Dragons of Pern and Patrick O'Brien's seafaring Aubrey-Maturin novels with a touch of Jane Austen thrown in, (all whilst attempting to subvert the sexism, colonialism and racism rife in stories of that era) then Blackgoose's first book in her Nampeshiweisit series could be thought of a variation on that theme, as it's told from the point of view of Anequs of the Masquisit people, whose lands, customs, even the people themselves are under threat by the Angle and Viking colonialists.

Written by a member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe, Anequs, in addition to all usual challenges of having to train and tame an infant creature whose breath can render everything around it to ash, must cope with racism, ‘nice white people’ in the form of her roommate, family who question her decision to learn from whites how (magically) to shape her dragon's breath at an academy—shades of Harry Potter, except without all the horrid bigotries being valorized by the author. As with the second book, there are indeed romance subplots (two of them, actually) but the focus is on navigating (sorry...) a school where she's unaware of the many unspoken rules and conventions, and absolutely determined to resist being assimilated into white culture.

I thought it the most successful in terms of character development as driven by environment, and the protagonist's distrust and disgust of her land's occupiers is unsurprisingly very authentically depicted, as are the compromises she's forced to make in order to survive. That is not to say the book isn't readable or appealing—I devoured it, staying up till two in the morning to finish it, which I haven't done in a long, long long time.

Strictly speaking, this book is just fantasy, rather than ‘romantasy’, despite the romantic subplots; so it's perfect for lovers of Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar, Naomi Novik's Temeraire or even Harry Potter or other magical school stories. I will say that, Harry Potter, despite its many, many problems is vivid in its details (e.g. the wands, or potions, or money, or clothes or magical creatures) in a way most other stories simply can't duplicate—so for Dragon's Breath I wanted to know more about spells to shape the dragons’ breath, or the shape of the circle dances of Masquisit (which play an important part in the plot).

Those are nits, however. The next book is due out in just two more months, and I'm really looking forward to it. And oh yes, speaking of waiting, here's that braid I started over a year ago, in Japan.

24nov2025

At last, my flash, flash trigger, and camera are all working together again, so I celebrated by photographing some kumihimo, which had the advantage of being much easier to shoot than transparent and/or shiny reflective glass bead jewelry (especially earrings, ugh, which ideally have to be hung from nearly invisible monofilament). But hey, at least now I can photograph jewelry again, though I expect it will take awhile to remember how.

In the meantime, nice opaque, matte textiles. Yay. Enjoy.

20nov2025

So today is the Day of Trans Remembrance, which is different from the March 31 International Day of Trans Visibility, in that the former is a memorial, whereas the latter is a more celebratory holiday.

I fail utterly to understand why the average cis person finds trans people, who are a tiny minority, so scary, but the most interesting comment I encountered over gender affirming care is that cis (non trans) folks get gender affirming care all the time—breast reconstruction after cancer, for example, or even cosmetic breast enhancement in terms of commonplace surgery, or the steroids that bodybuilders and other elite athletes frequently take on the hormone side. Minoxidil (let alone viagra) also spring to mind as typically male related gender affirming care.

Until I encountered this comparison, I tended to think of the one as ‘gender affirming care’, a trans thing, versus stuff regular people do to make themselves look and feel better. But really, there's not a whole lotta difference, is there?

(Perhaps the most extreme gender affirming care I've heard of is leg lengthening, a process which sounds like it puts any surgeries or hormones used by trans folk to utter shame with regard to pain and expense. Though I suppose trans folk could also do this, but because they're such a tiny part of the population this procedure is typically performed on cis men.)

I admit I can't help feeling that striped flowers kind of fit with today's theme, not least because they can—and do—revert to one colour or the other. Today's example is shima nishiki tree peonies in the original red and white; mine, while still striped (because I keep removing any branches that produce solid coloured flowers) are more of a magenta than red, like the type shown here.

17nov2025

I was all set to do something different this week, say, studio photography of some (relatively) recent kumi. Got the new flash trigger, looked up the strobist site, paired trigger with my godox flash, got it working, mounted the flash on the tripod to start testing it with the camera...

...and promptly cracked the plastic housing on the flash hotshoe contact.

Fortunately, godox does make a replacement part for twenty bucks, so back to B&HPhoto I went to order it. In a perfect world I suppose I could complain about that plastic housing, but a) godox seems (from comments on the intertubes I did not pursue) to have fixed it in later models b) they offer a metal replacement and c) let's be real here, this is a cheap alternative to the brand name flash (which moreover has way more manual controls, which is why strobist recommends it, besides cost).

I really was pleased to be able to (potentially) repair this thing so easily—nothing like the effort the wizard expended to fix my trigger, let alone replacing the battery on his phone, for which he ordered a kit from ifixit, and involves, if I understand correctly, taking a heat gun to the phone (and this is rated a ‘medium difficulty(!)’ repair)...

So. Have another little doodle. At least it's a cute cat.

15nov2025

Happy Friday, er, Saturday...

Guess we're doing tues–sat, instead of mon–fri this week.

Remember when I said organizing all my photographic equipment mgiht actually get me doing studio (i.e. flash) photography again? My flash had been getting increasing flaky for no good reason I could determine, but I thought, after I got everything organized, I could re-read the manual, start fresh from the beginning & see if I could get things to work.

By the time I upgraded to the sony 90 mm macro, er, the A7c, strobist was by now recommending a godox flash, for which a wireless trigger considerably cheaper than the once go-to product, pocket wizards, could also be purchased. Yippee, no more cords. I went all out and got the remote release as well, and this new setup was pretty sweet.

For awhile.

Turns out the problem was not operator error or flagging memory, but bad storage: the alkaline batteries (recommended for this device, as opposed to the rechargeable ones I use in the flash itself) combined with the horrid humidity of my basement, and some forgetfulness on my part equalled a lot of corrosion on the battery contacts.

Worse, when the wizard opened up the case, the circuit board inside was also badly corroded. He carefully cleaned up, I berated myself for stupidity, and ordered a new trigger. But! When he tested the thing with a couple of batteries, the display looked good, so perhaps it's salvageable.

In any event, the moral of the story is: remove batteries at the end of the session, or, at the very least, store electronics upstairs. This has been your PSA for the day:)

Or you could check out another mixed media piece. Perhaps I'll actually get to some studio photography this weekend, and have something different next week.

14nov2025

I wonder how many people will take this shark biologist's message to heart? Anyone with expertise who's been consulted by the media will tell you, they mostly get it wrong, or at least, vastly oversimplified; but even the title, while surely designed to grab your attention (’This animal spared my life’: Biologist bitten in head by shark hopes to meet it again) is not nearly as click-baitey as it could've been, or even as my cliche driven memory thought it was (I added a ‘savagely’—which is completely wrong, as the article makes very clear: the snark did the marine equivalent of snapping at him like a deeply annoyed/frightened dog).

The other part of the story that deeply impressed me was how much preparation and practise counts: his oxygen line was severed, and without experience and staying calm enough to function he still would've drowned. And I suspect his generally positive attitude also contributed to his rapid healing, which amazed his doctors but makes perfect sense: he's motivated to get well, and return to his beloved research, to perhaps have a more amiable interaction with the shark, and since it's tagged (the tagging triggered the bite) that might just happen.

Sharks, the researcher notes, are incredibly important to marine ecosystems (which actually are referenced, albeit subtly, on today's mixedmedia.) I wish both of them well.