So a lot of things have changed in my life, but I’m going to write about books

I’ve discovered a new favorite author: K. J. Parker.

I read his Engineer Trilogy during June and July, since I always saw them on the shelf in bookstores and needed something of length to get me through a tumultuous month.  I liked them so much that I ordered his Fencer Trilogy online after a fruitless search through used and new bookstores alike, only to discover that the books had UK covers–they haven’t been published over here.

I’ve since read the first one, Colours in the Steel, which is about the siege of a city and the strange magical connection between several people who seem to be guided by luck, or instinct, or tragedy.  The coolest part by far is the career of the protagonist, Bardas Loredan, who is a fencer-at-law.  Yup, trial by combat, fencing-style.

Meanwhile, I’ve also read the tenth Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel, The God of the Hive, and it was familiar and funny without being spectacular.  Book nine was a bit bizarre, so I was glad to have a normal-strange story, including spies and bolt-holes and chases around London, instead of a weird-strange one, including Druid-style sacrifice and Holmes’s long-lost relatives.

And lastly, I think I’ve discovered my least favorite Terry Pratchett novel, Moving Pictures, which is to say that it’s hilarious but hasn’t got Sam Vimes or the Patrician or even terribly many wizards in it.  After I finish the last hundred pages (in which I hazard a guess that Discworld won’t be destroyed by creatures from other dimensions after all), I’m going back to K. J. Parker’s Fencer book two, The Belly of the Bow.

Perhaps there will be another siege.