RogerBW's Blog

Tear Down the Throne, Jennifer Estep 31 March 2023

2022 fantasy, second of its trilogy. Princess Gemma continues to try to work out what the Mortans are up to.

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Star Trek (2009) 30 March 2023 - 1 comment

2009 science fiction, dir. J. J. Abrams, Chris Pine. Zachary Quinto: IMDb / allmovie. A franchise reboot, but yet another civilisation-scale threat.

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A Scandalous Kind of Duke, Mia Vincy 29 March 2023

2022 American Regency-ish romance, part of a loosely linked series. Juno Bell and the future Duke of Dammerton knew each other as children, but he had his duty, and then she had her life as a scandalous artist. But fate keeps throwing them together.

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Birdman 28 March 2023

2014 drama, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis; IMDb / allmovie. Back in the day, Riggan Thompson played the hero in the Birdman films; now he's putting on a Broadway play in a bid to be taken seriously for his art.

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Devices and Desires, P. D. James 27 March 2023

1989 detective fiction, ninth of James's novels of Inspector (now Commander) Adam Dalgliesh. Dalgliesh goes to an obscure headland in Norfolk to decide whether he wants to keep his deceased aunt's house; inevitably, he gets drawn into murder.

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The Weekly Challenge 209: Special Merge 26 March 2023

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved decoding a sequence and merging lists. (Note that this closes for public solutions today.)

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The Siren of Sussex, Mimi Matthews 25 March 2023

2022 Victorian romance. Evelyn Maltravers has a Grand Plan: she'll wow fashionable London with her riding, then find a wealthy husband to pay for bringing out her sisters. But to do that she will need the right riding habit, and Ahmad Malik the tailor is her man for that…

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Thirsty Meeples February 2023 24 March 2023

Back to the boardgame café.

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Sweep With Me, Ilona Andrews 23 March 2023

2022 SF/fantasy novel in the Innkeeper series. In what seems like an obvious trap for Dina and Sean, Sean's mentor is kidnapped and taken to a planet that's almost certainly fatal to get to. Someone else can provide safe transport, but there's a price…

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Gravity 22 March 2023 - 1 comment

2013 science fiction, dir. Alfonso Cuarón, Sandra Bullock, George Clooney; IMDb / allmovie. Kessler syndrome is not your friend.

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Naughty in Nice, Rhys Bowen 21 March 2023

2010 mystery/thriller, fifth in its series. Georgiana Rannoch, 34th in line to the throne, finds herself in Nice with a mission to recover the Queen's "borrowed" snuffbox.

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Alanna: the First Adventure, Tamora Pierce 20 March 2023 - 6 comments

1983 fantasy, first of a tetralogy. Alanna wants to be a knight and have adventures; her twin brother Thom wants to be trained in magic. So they swap roles, and Alanna disguises herself as a boy.

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The Weekly Challenge 208: Missing Index? Just Duplicate! 19 March 2023

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved searching through arrays. (Note that this is closes today.)

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Marlow Board Games 6 February 2023 18 March 2023

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet in the Britannia.

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UnArcana Stars, Glynn Stewart 17 March 2023

2018 SF, sixth of its series. Everyone was expecting the newly-seceded Republic to attack the Proctecorate, but it's been eighteen months without any movement…

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Black Widower, Patricia Moyes 16 March 2023

1975 mystery, twelfth in the series about Superintendent Henry Tibbett. The ambassador to the US from newly-independent Tampica has an Unsuitable Wife; when she gets horribly drunk at a diplomatic reception, then kills herself, nobody is terribly surprised. But that may not be quite what happened…

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Before Midnight 15 March 2023

2013 romantic drama, dir. Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy; IMDb / allmovie. Another nine years later, Jesse and Celine are raising their children, but have they turned into their own unhappy parents?

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The Sea Without a Shore, David Drake 14 March 2023

2014 military SF, tenth of this ongoing series. A variety of missions, well outside the scope of anything official, brings Daniel and crew to a planet in rebellion.

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A Legal Fiction, Elizabeth Ferrars 13 March 2023

1964 murder mystery. Two years ago, Colin Lockie was ambushed on the road, and a worthless painting stolen. Now his childhood friend has spotted it for sale in an auction-house at the other end of the country. vt The Decayed Gentlewoman.

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The Weekly Challenge 207: Indexed Keyboards 12 March 2023

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved letter sorting and an array calculation. (Note that this closes today.)

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Seventh Player Guild UK Meet 11 March 2023

The 1 Player Guild is a group of solo game players, communicating through BoardGameGeek. This was the seventh get-together for the UK contingent, back together in person.

With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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Mainline, Deborah Christian 10 March 2023

1996 SF. Reva is an assassin with a strange power: she can jump between similar timelines, so that chance is always on her side. She'll need more than that to survive her latest entanglements, though.

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Before Sunset 09 March 2023

2004 romantic drama, dir. Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy; IMDb / allmovie. Nine years later, Jesse and Celine meet again.

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Belfast Noir, ed. Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville 08 March 2023

2014 crime anthology, stories set in Belfast.

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The Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliff 07 March 2023

1954 historical fiction for young people. Marcus Flavius Aquila, centurion of auxiliaries, is crippled in his first battle; that ends up freeing him for an even more perilous mission, to find out what happened when the Ninth Legion, with its First Cohort under the command of his father, marched north and never came back.

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The Grief of Stones, Katherine Addison 06 March 2023

2022 fantasy. Thara Celehar continues to witness for the dead. But as with any agent of the law, there are people who don't want him doing his job.

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The Weekly Challenge 206: Array Time! 05 March 2023

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved lots of combinatorial searches. (Note that this closes today.)

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The Seventh Bride, T Kingfisher 04 March 2023

2014 fantasy. Rhea the miller's daughter was expecting that she'd get married some day… but why has Lord Crevan made an offer for her at all, never mind right now?

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The Renegat, Kristine Kathryn Rusch 03 March 2023

2019 science fiction, eighth in the Diving Universe series. A crew of Fleet misfits is sent on a suicide mission to find out what's happening in one of the stockpiles of abandoned ships.

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Magic Tides, Ilona Andrews 02 March 2023

2023 modern fantasy novella, continuation of the Kate Daniels series. Kate, her husband Lennart and their son Conlan just want to live in peace for a bit. Of course that isn't going to happen.

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February 2023 Trailers 01 March 2023 - 5 comments

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I want a trailer to tell me what's different about this film; the marketers want it to tell me why it's like all the others…)

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