The Reading Corner.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah - some of the appeal is a happy ending after all the bleakness.

[Rusty Edge]

Oh! This is why I love reading novel series!

Yeah, I know, not all authors and series are created equal, and lesser ones are "same guy/different crap", but Dresden Chronicles is an example of why I invest the time and money into a series. Things tie together into larger plots. The conversations, the villains, etc. from earlier novels turn out not to be red herring or isolated incident you thought they were.

Just finished a re-read over the summer, and there are a couple characters I see coming back in the future and one chance encounter along with a comment from Lea in a much later book that I'm really looking forward to how it comes back around. 

Cold Days is probably my favorite of the series, with Changes and Skin Game being tied for second.  But, my favorite scene among the books is still the doughnut.

That was pretty awesome...

I just read- "[I started counting to three hundred and briefly wondered why I kept running into repeat uses of various locations around town. This wasn’t the first time I’d dealt with the bad guys choosing to reuse a location different bad guys had used before them. Maybe there was a Villainous Time-share Association. Maybe my life was actually a basic-cable television show, and they couldn’t afford to spend money on new sets all the time.

Butcher, Jim (2012-11-27). Cold Days (The Dresden Files, Book 14) (p. 366). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition. /i]

The scene where Harry and Molly picked up Mouse with the Star Wars and Scooby Do references was pretty good, too.

Since it's set in Chicago I sort of wish he'd use some Blues Brothers-

"Jake: No, I didn't. Honest... I ran out of gas. I... I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD! "
**********************************

Jake: We're putting the band back together.

Mr. Fabulous: Forget it. No way.

Elwood: We're on a mission from God.
*************************


Anyway, glad to know it keeps getting better. The other one I really enjoyed was White Night.

Back to the book...there was an explosion in the warehouse.

[Flux]

Began reading Centauri Dawn.
UN fans would like it. Pravin backstory galore.

[Rusty Edge]

Okay, I never expected the Winter Lady to pull a pistol...
Well, I guess the Summer Lady didn't either.

Best one yet!

[Unorthodox]

On to Skin Game already! 

[Rusty Edge]

That was great! I guess I'm caught up. It's nice to see some of the elephants in the story acknowledged... Maggy and Murphy, in particular.

Personally, I figure Dresden has a better chance for a long term relationship with Molly as they have more in common - Wizards, Winter court, potential for a long life, and the same sense of humor. 

Well, if I were in Harry's shoes I would have said to Marcone, "Oh, I found this beside the Holy Grail, and I can feel the power in it. I think it's the True Sacred Shroud. I thought you might like to borrow it for a while and run some tests on it, just keep it safe until we have need of it. "

[Unorthodox]

I don't own that one (only paper backs for me), so didn't re-read it, can't remember, did they specifically mention what else was picked up besides the grail?  Looking forward to seeing what chaos the grail unleashes. 

It never really did let us know what happened with the fake one, either.  While we can assume it didn't heal the girl, we don't KNOW.  I absolutely loved the whole concept that it doesn't matter whether the fake was real or not, the fact so many BELIEVED in it is what gave it power. 

I don't see Dresden trusting his feelings with Molly now she's the winter lady, to be honest.  How much is real vs the mantle influence?  This on top of all the reasons he already has to avoid that situation. 

[Lord Avalon]

Merovingen Nights #1: Festival Moon, edited by CJ Cherryh

[Rusty Edge]

I don't own that one (only paper backs for me), so didn't re-read it, can't remember, did they specifically mention what else was picked up besides the grail?  Looking forward to seeing what chaos the grail unleashes. 

It never really did let us know what happened with the fake one, either.  While we can assume it didn't heal the girl, we don't KNOW.  I absolutely loved the whole concept that it doesn't matter whether the fake was real or not, the fact so many BELIEVED in it is what gave it power. 

I don't see Dresden trusting his feelings with Molly now she's the winter lady, to be honest.  How much is real vs the mantle influence?  This on top of all the reasons he already has to avoid that situation.

Let's see, I think there were 4 or 5 items. The cup, the cloth, the crown/wreath of thorns, a knife of some kind... I'll get back to you on that one.

Yeah, the shroud stuff was great, just like all references to the magic of Faith.

As for Dresden's love life, I fear he's stuck on star crossed. 
They've introduced an interesting new concept- being pierced by iron or steel can de-activate the mantles. They can put in  some steel pins or earrings or something if they need a reality check, or if Harry doesn't want to be an asshat with whoever he's with.

I have no idea what they plan to do with the Grail. Presumably the shroud can raise the dead.
I assume the Crown is a physical and psychological torture device.

Here we go-
"And upon the marble sat five simple objects. An ancient wooden placard, its paint so faded that the symbols could not be recognized. A circlet woven from thorny branches. A clay cup. A folded cloth. A knife with a wooden handle and a leaf-shaped blade."

Butcher, Jim (2014-05-27). Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files (p. 339). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.

I'm assuming the wooden placard was "The King of the Jews" from the crucifixion,
but I'm stumped by the knife.

Any ideas?

[Lord Avalon]

The Sea without a Shore (RCN #10), by David Drake

[Rusty Edge]

I haven't read this one - yet.
War History Online | News
The Strangest Battle of WWII: When Americans and Germans Fought the SS Together
on January 19, 2014 at 23:00



thedailybeast.com reports: Days after Hitler’s suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division—the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II. Andrew Roberts on a story so wild that it has to be made into a movie.

The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding’s The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others. Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich. Steven Spielberg, how did you miss this story?


The very model of a Wehrmacht officer… In this photo, newly contributed by Sepp Gangl’s son, Norbert, the man who would later help Jack Lee defend Castle Itter is seen during a rare happy moment in 1944, probably just before the Allied landings at Normandy (Source: Facebook)

The battle for the fairytale, 13th century Castle Itter was the only time in WWII that American and German troops joined forces in combat, and it was also the only time in American history that U.S. troops defended a medieval castle against sustained attack by enemy forces. To make it even more film worthy, two of the women imprisoned at Schloss Itter—Augusta Bruchlen, who was the mistress of the labour leader Leon Jouhaux, and Madame Weygand, the wife General Maxime Weygand—were there because they chose to stand by their men. They, along with Paul Reynaud’s mistress Christiane Mabire, were incredibly strong, capable, and determined women made for portrayal on the silver screen.


‘The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe’ By Stephen Harding. 256 pages. Da Capo. $25.99.

There are two primary heroes of this—as I must reiterate, entirely factual—story, both of them straight out of central casting. Jack Lee was the quintessential warrior: smart, aggressive, innovative—and, of course, a cigar-chewing, hard-drinking man who watched out for his troops and was willing to think way, way outside the box when the tactical situation demanded it, as it certainly did once the Waffen-SS started to assault the castle. The other was the much-decorated Wehrmacht officer Major Josef ‘Sepp’ Gangl, who died helping the Americans protect the VIPs. This is the first time that Gangl’s story has been told in English, though he is rightly honored in present-day Austria and Germany as a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance.
http://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/wwiis-strangest-battle-americans-germans-fought-together.html

Well, I finally got around to completing the book. It starts with the history of the castle and the biographies of the various people involved, and that can be a little dry at times, so it's not the kind of book I can read in one sitting. Also, the names of the French were meaningless to me, and I had a really hard time keeping them straight.

It would seem to me that normal people, when imprisoned by a common enemy,  could let the past stay in the past. Or, they could respect each other's intentions and patriotism , even when they didn't agree with their choices. I don't know if it was the nature of Frenchmen, as my wife insists ( she is biased by her decades in employ of a French company) , but they were particularly and consistently quarrelsome and vindictive towards one another. Sort of an "if you hadn't lost the war, we wouldn't be here!" attitude.

But beyond that, I can only endorse the above review. It should have been made into a movie.  It should be. You have the ultra villainous SS intent on committing war crimes. You have everybody else defying them.

Well, it's also a story of initiative vs. inertia. Heroism vs military bureaucracy. A lot of people understandably wanted to sit tight, and survive the war, while some wanted to save lives from the SS fanatics.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm most of the way through another re-read of SF classic Tau Zero by Pohl Anderson.  -Has it ever occurred to anyone that the resolution of the ship's dilemma is impossible several times over?

a) They are traveling slower than light -the central idea of the book, after all- and would have been drawn into the monobloc with everything else.

b) The cosmic egg should have sucked up space-time along with all the matter and energy, leaving them nowhere to orbit.

c) The creation of a new universe would be an energetic event, to say the least, many orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude beyond surviving a ground zero nuclear explosion.


...Am I leaving anything out?  Any holes in my analysis?  Anyone think they can handwave these problems away?  Geo?  Anyone?...

[Geo]

I merely read the Wiki synopsis, but to me it looks like they'd never even be able to reach this 'monobloc'. The synopsis says they have to keep the engine running for anti-radiation shielding reasons. But between galaxies there's appearantly not enough particles to fuel the engines. Ergo, the engines will quickly run out of (earlier collected, if any) fuel, so the shielding goes down at the worst possible moment, when the ship is already approaching speed of light, with all the increased energetic radiation that comes with that.

[Buster's Uncle]

Agreed - the first time they reached a new galactic cluster, the radiation should have killed them before the shielding kicked in.

You should read the book - it's still a classic, despite those problems and even though I don't think Anderson wrote women very well.

[Lord Avalon]

Dark City, A Repairman Jack Novel, The Early Years Trilogy Book Two, by F. Paul Wilson