You were warned

My apologies to those who've been checking in here to see what's shakin' only to find that nothin's happenin'.
I really do get the winter blahs, jus' like I toldja, and when that happens I hole up with the critters and read a bunch and drink coffee and eat ice cream and whatever else tickles my palate. Just can't get ginned up to do much writing, don't want to hear what people think about what I think. Just an ole hermit and curmudgeon.
During all this cold nasty weather I've been seriously preoccupied with the Engineer Trilogy by K.J. Parker.


It's an absolutely BRILLIANT fantasy series (and I say that as one who absolutely loathes most fantasy literature!), three books of great complexity and completely unapologetic examinations of the lives of the characters. I found myself again and again re-reading a passage and saying 'damn' - just plain old 'damn'. There were so many situations that really hit home. Even though it's set in a fantasy world, the manner in which Parker plots the evolutions and the individual events that dot the story line are so very bleak and unequivocal, so hard-edged with unblinking reality that it's unsettling, compelling. Parker makes no attempt to soften the edges of the narrative. Lives are wasted, fortunes destroyed, nations wiped away - just like real life, with no pretending or gilding to make anyone the least bit comfortable about any of it. I've never read anything quite like it.
So while I've been having the blahs and Bloggo has been absent from the keyboard, the time hasn't been squandered, at least not from my point of view. There're going to be things to read and think about on the ol' blog in the days ahead. Just didn't want anyone to think that I'd vanished or anything like that.