RogerBW's Blog

Mountain of Mars, Glynn Stewart 31 July 2023

2020 SF, eighth of its series. The Mage-King of Mars has been assassinated; Damien Montgomery takes over as Lord Regent for the young Mage-Queen.

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The Weekly Challenge 227: The 13th Roman 30 July 2023

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved date calculations and Roman mathematics. (Note that this ends today.)

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Pig (2021) 29 July 2023

2021 crime, dir. Michael Sarnoski, Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff: IMDb / allmovie. He just wants his pig back.

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To Darkness and to Death, Julia Spencer-Fleming 28 July 2023

2005 mystery (modern police procedural plus amateur), fourth in its series. The old family woodland is going to be sold to an alliance of environmental group and logging company, and that triggers a variety of bad behaviour.

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Summer Stabcon 2023 27 July 2023 - 4 comments

Back to the Masonic Hall on a hot weekend.

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The Great St Mary's Day Out, Jodi Taylor 26 July 2023

2016 science fiction novelette, in the Chronicles of St Mary's series (time travel). Things have gone well for a change, so the historians and other of St Mary's go on an outing to see one of the first run performances of Hamlet. Of course, things go wrong.

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Promising Young Woman 25 July 2023 - 2 comments

2020 drama, dir. Emerald Fennell, Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham: IMDb / allmovie. When she was a medical student, her friend was raped, and killed herself after nobody believed her. She's going to stop that happening again.

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The Raven and the Reindeer, T Kingfisher 24 July 2023

2016 fantasy. Gerta's friend Kay is stolen away by the Snow Queen; so off she goes to get him back.

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The Weekly Challenge 226: Shuffling Zeroes 23 July 2023

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved string convolution and array reduction. (Note that this ends today.)

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Marlow Board Games 3 July 2023 22 July 2023

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues…

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Maelstrom, Kristine Kathryn Rusch 21 July 2023

2021 science fiction, short novella in the Diving Universe series. A backwater planet's moon has a complicated hazard; what happened to the ship that famously vanished?

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Thirsty Meeples June 2023 20 July 2023 - 3 comments

Back to the boardgame café.

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On the Bias, Celia Lake 19 July 2023

2020 romantic fantasy, sixth of its loose series. Castalia Jones has built up her dressmaking business to the point where she can make choices about what to make, and for whom. Benton is Lord Carillon's valet, factotum, and household manager. They don't particularly like each other…

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Nomadland (2020) 18 July 2023

2020 pseudo-documentary, dir. Chloé Zhao, Frances McDormand; IMDb / allmovie. Migrant labour is still a thing.

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The Con Man, Ed McBain 17 July 2023

1957 police procedural, fourth in the 87th Precinct series. A con man is finding victims on the streets of Isola… and the body of a young woman has just turned up in the river.

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The Weekly Challenge 225: Diffs on the Right, Words on the Left 16 July 2023

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved splitting sentences and processing arrays. (Note that this ends today.)

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Marlow Board Games 19 June 2023 15 July 2023

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues… this evening with a couple of new members.

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A Modest Independence, Mimi Matthews 14 July 2023

2019 Victorian romance. Jenny the vicar's daughter left home to be a lady's companion. Now the lady's married, but has settled a moderate amount of money on her. So she decides to go to India and track down the truth of what happened to the lady's brother.

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After the Funeral 13 July 2023

1999 audio adaptation by Michael Bakewell of Christie's 1954 mystery, in one 90-minute episode. Richard Abernethie dies; his sister Cora claims that he's been murdered, and by the next day has unambiguously been murdered herself.

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The Invisible Library, Genevieve Cogman 12 July 2023 - 6 comments

2014 alternate-world fantasy. The Library connects all libraries; agents are sent out into alternate worlds to collect unique books. Irene is going to a steampunk Victorian London to retrieve a particular edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, but it's all going to get terribly complicated.

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UK Games Expo 2023 11 July 2023

My first in-pandemic trip to UK Games Expo. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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Who is Simon Warwick?, Patricia Moyes 10 July 2023 - 1 comment

1978 mystery, fourteenth in the series about Superintendent Henry Tibbett. Just before Lord Charlton dies, he decides to leave his company and fortune to his nephew Simon, thought by most to have died as a baby in the Blitz but secretly adopted by an American officer and his English wife. It's been a while, information has been lost, and two plausible claimants appear. But then one of them is murdered…

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The Weekly Challenge 224: Specially Additive Number Notes 09 July 2023

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved string construction and numerical sequence analysis. (Note that this ends today.)

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Lightyear (2022) 08 July 2023

2022 animated action, dir. Angus MacLane, Chris Evans, Keke Palmer: IMDb / allmovie. Buzz the Space Ranger learns to be a good person.

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Five-Twelfths of Heaven, Melissa Scott 07 July 2023

1985 SF, first of a trilogy. Space pilot Silence Leigh is stuck on a world in which women are literally second-class citizens, marooned by the death of her grandfather and legal entanglements over his will. And there's a starship in the balance…

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Thirsty Meeples May 2023 06 July 2023

Back to the boardgame café.

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The Death of the Necromancer, Martha Wells 05 July 2023

1998 gaslamp fantasy. Nicholas Valiarde is a nobleman turned thief, obsessed by his revenge plan against the villainous Count Montesq. But now someone who seems too powerful to be the common con-artist he looks like is interfering with that…

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The Path of Cunning Issue 4 04 July 2023 - 1 comment

The fourth issue of the GURPS fanzine The Path of Cunning is out.

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The Fourth Aspect, Amelia Ellis 03 July 2023

2009 thriller, third of this ongoing series; translated from the original German by Rachel Ward. A woman disappears soon after her eighteenth birthday; her boyfriend employs Nea to find her.

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The Weekly Challenge 223: Counting Boxes 02 July 2023

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved prime counting and list selections. (Note that this ends today.)

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Marlow Board Games 3 April 2023 01 July 2023

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues…

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