And I’ve returned home.  I filled up several pages in a spiral notebook with my diary and various notes about the event.  After I get all of that typed in, I’ll extract the fit-for-public-consumption bits and put them up here.

I’m now off to Burning Man, for what will be my first visit to the desert.  (Note to potential burglars: the martial artists are still in residence.)  will see everyone when I return.

This one’s a worthy successor to Rusalka.  More that’s familiar Cherryh style, including characters worrying over their choices and not knowing which characters to trust.

Spoilers

I thought the climax seemed more hasty than Rusalka’s.  Sasha & company show up, confused stuff with Draga and Eveshka happens, Draga and Chernevog end up battling it out at a distance, and it’s over.  I felt more of a sense of completeness at the end of Rusalka than I had from this book.  Still, the writing throughout the thing was good enough that I’m happy to have read it.

Other stuff I liked.  The exploration of the difference between wizardry and sorcery, though I would have liked to see more definite results from Sasha’s claimed better understanding of wizardry.  I was rather expecting to see a Sasha/Draga showdown, with Sasha defending himself by cooperating with the natural things that Draga was trying to change.

The characterization was, not too surprisingly, well done.  It was nice to see more of Chernevog and get a plausible, “He’s wrong, but understandable and isn’t completely evil.”

I need to see if I can get a copy of the last boog in the series, Yvgenie.  Interestingly, that name doesn’t appear anywhere in the first two books, so my guess is that it’s Peytr’s and Eveshka’s daughter.

(Perhaps this should go in Links, but I might get around to writing some more original content here eventually.)

Rant from Simon Wistow about the practice.

RFC 1855, Netiquette Guidelines.

How to get Outlook Express to bottom-quote.  (Relatedly, How to get Outlook Express to send in text.)

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet?

I decided I liked the design of Blosxom better than weblog.  So I switched.  Have to wait and see if I decide to stick with this one, though I think I will—it’s flexible enough for me to do most of what I want with it.