A glimpse into Moonlake's creative endeavours
So some time this year, my passion for jigsaw puzzles has been revived. These are the three redone puzzles that I had completed:
I have a fourth one laid out on the coffee table that I have been neglecting for a week now. And this is the last one I will do before I leave for Europe in May (I didn’t take it very well but there is really nothing to see since I haven’t even got the borders done yet):
Mystery
The Mercenaries: Blood Diamonds by P. W. Storm
It’s a complete mystery to me why this is filed under fantasy on my local library catalogue and this is the ebook catalogue nonetheless. The book cover also doesn’t speak fantasy either. Technically this is not a mystery like I usually read but a thriller about a job by a mercenary group and yes, the title speaks it all but the book itself has nothing to do with the Hollywood movie except it features blood diamonds.
For the book itself, I find it okay as in a solid read but I can’t say much more about it.
Cry Me a River by Nancy Holder
I somehow thought this would be more supernatural mystery but not really. It just reads as a straight mystery with religious vibes. It’s okay though, just not sure that it’s really my cup of tea. It does have the central case that keeps me reading till the end but I feel like the other stuff in there is a bit too cluttered for my taste.
The Body in the Bookcase by Katherine Hall Page
It’s okay for a cozy mystery- pace is pretty snappy and there are a couple places of good high tension in this book.
A Deadly Chapter by Essie Lang
The fact that the protagonist is co-owner of a book store at a castle appeals to me. The writing is solid but not quite memorable.
Down to the Sea by Sue Lawrence
It is a parallel storyline mystery and I did think the earlier storyline was more engaging but the two storylines converge nicely and we had a quite nice bit of high tension right towards the end that counters the relatively cozy pace all throughout the novel. I feel like the cozy mystery sub-genre is perhaps growing on me- I know I used to like more plot-driven or past-faced mysteries.
Last Look by Mariah Stewart
The premise is rather intriguing: an old murder case has been blown open when the body of a girl who was supposed to have died in the 1980s turned up as a murdered prostitute. The main character is the daughter of the FBI agent who investigated the original case. So far, in the string of mysteries I’ve read this year, I feel like this is the first one where I feel like following the protagonist.
Tide of Death by Pauline Rowson
This is the story of a murder case but also a police officer who was framed and has a personal vendetta on the ringleader of an exclusive sexual club. I find the book quite engaging throughout. This is another potential series that I might want to follow.
Fantasy
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
This is the first Russian fantasy I have read and it does bring a touch of freshness to this well-loved genre of mine. I find the plot engaging and the protagonist is driven enough for one to be engaged with her story (personally I can’t say I really like her but I don’t dislike her either). Overall, a well written novel.
Currently on the borderline on whether I read the next book of the series.
Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman
I had just started this today so nothing much to tell yet.
Historical Fiction
The Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell
So I went back to this series featuring Uhtred rather than continuing with the Russian fantasy series. There was some brief disorientation with characters but I conquered it rather easily. I still like this fourth book of the series and see myself continuing it until I think the seventh book (I did snoop into the blurb of most of the series, I think this was the second natural stopping point).
The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell
What I like about this series is that the core struggle for Uhred has stayed the same but new twists keep being introduced such that you never get tired of reading the same thing over and over again. I’ve enjoyed the fifth book of this series and will continue with the next book.
Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell
This book seems a bit of a turning point for Uhtred even though the core struggle reminds the same. As I’ve said before, I intend to go on to the next book and there I will assess whether I want to continue reading the later books. This book itself is solid work by the author, a continuation of this series.
The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell
This is the novel where Uhtred has come the closest to his personal goal. I thought this is a natural stopping point for this round but it seems I am wrong. Overall, I do like this continuation. Onto the next book.
Not sure if I had mentioned it before but I will be gone to Europe on my annual overseas trip with Mum in early May and back in June. We are visiting Italy, Switzerland and France all in one-go to save on airplane fares since we are never taking budget flights.
Below is the skeleton of our trip itinerary:
Day 0: Flight from Melbourne
Day 1: Vatican City and small portion of Rome and trying to compensate for sleep deprivation/jet lag
Day 2: Rome
Day 3: Florence
Day 4: Pisa & Siena day trip from Florence
Day 5: Day trip to Cinque Terre from Florence (didn’t realise the travel time involved and I would advise against it because it’s basically 5 hours return trip by train, then again I don’t think many of you would take the “fixed hotel for at least 2 days and take day trips” strategy when traveling that Mum and I use)
Day 6: Venice and half-day trip out to Burano
Day 7: Day tour for walk around Venice, Basilica San Marco, Doges Palace & Gondola ride
Day 8: Zurich (long train ride so only half a day available to tour Zurich)
Day 9: day trip to Lucerne from Zurich
Day 10: Thun
Day 11: day trip to Spiez from Thun
Day 12: Interlaken and Brienz
Day 13: day trip to Lauterbrunnen and Murren from Interlaken
Day 14: day trip to Wengen from Interlaken
Day 15: Lausanne
Day 16: day trip to Gruyeres from Lausanne
Day 17: Annecy
Day 18: day trip to Menthon-Saint-Bernard and Tallories from Annecy
Day 19: Lyon
Day 20: day trip to Vienne from Lyon
Day 21: Paris partial walk-around and day trip to Versailles
Day 22: day trip to Giverchy (Monet mansion and gardens) and Vernon from Paris
Day 23: day trip to Amboise and Chateau Chenoceaux from Paris
Day 24: Paris walk-around and night flight back to Melbourne
Now, as for this blog, it likely won’t be affected. I will have all the post scheduled before I go and you won’t notice my absence at all. I also have a short trip to Asia (HK and Shanghai) planned in October and I’m not sure whether I will call for my birthday leave from blogging yet.
Also, stay tuned to my posts in June about my actual experiences for the European trip outlined here.
Ge Ge Fish
Physical Description:
A carp-like fish with six feet and a bird’s tail. The sound it makes is Ga Ga.
Ze Fish
Physical Description:
Looks like a crucian carp with one head but ten bodies.
Special Properties:
It smells like a fragrant herb with a similar smell to fragrant angelica. Consuming its meat makes you not fart.
Yao
Physical Description:
A bird that looks like wild duck but with an indigo body, red eyes and red tail feathers.
Special Properties:
Consuming its meat improves fertility.
Pan Mao
Physical Description:
A crow-like bird with a human’s head.
Special Properties:
It is a nocturnal bird. Its meat is a cure for heatstrokes.
I have been making some attempts at ‘cracking’ the omniscient voice in that I wanted to try to dip my hands into writing in that voice even though I won’t be using that particular for a long time (the truth is that my WIP has quite a long way to go still but I do know that it doesn’t go with the omniscient voice). If you followed my blog, you would know that they included the following:
The way forward, I’m still continuing with the last dot point. And I won’t be able to cross-post this exercise on the blog because it doesn’t seem right even if I accredit the original author and I’m not going to reach out all the way to mainland China to ask for permission.
This is a piece prompted by a song that I’ve searched out to listen to the day before yesterday on Saturday. It’s a Mandarin song and my rough translation of the song title is “Betrayed Youth” even though a more correct one would be “the Youth we Turned our Backs on”, which seems too much of a mouthful.
Anyway, for the purpose of context, here’s my manual translation of the chorus:
Would you forgive me? My arrogant youth
Running blind
dancing in the dark
The boat you jeer at will dock
Would you forgive me? My youth that lacks for my companionship
The greatest pity is that you use the last distance
To witness my restless departure
Full of apology
….
Would you forgive me? My arrogant youth
Running blind
dancing in the dark
The boat you jeer at will dock
Would you forgive me? My youth that lacks for my companionship
The greatest pity is that you use the tactful distance
To safeguard my anxious departure
With no return date ever
Would you mock me? My childish youth
Arguing with wooden swords
Falling because of dignity
For the things that I cannot back down on
I never let go of even if I had to gnash my teeth
Would you forgive me? My youth that I have turned my back on
How much have I compromised
among the packed crowd
Until I have not gotten anything
Would you forgive me?
Would you forgive me?
My passed away youth
So actually before this song I had been reflecting a bit on my youth and I’ve come to the conclusion that mine isn’t the typical youth, at least not the youth as portrayed in popular culture- full of adrenaline and passion, characterised by youthful follies, a ruthlessness in pursuing dreams and a high degree of self-centredness. Mine, like my life overall, has always been a calm and ‘lukewarm’ existence. Maybe it’s my personality or my own unique take on life, but I didn’t really go through a youth rebellion phase when I was actually a youth and instead had a rather late onset of it coming on in my 30s.
Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever regretted any of my youth. While I think this song might be more poignant for those who have, I feel like it is really about making peace with your past which I think everyone can relate to.
This is now my second round at my male protagonist (the first round was abandoned somewhere in Act 2 when I felt like I haven’t really gotten back into him so I started from scratch) but the truth is I’m so much into my procrastination mood (I’m a bit tired with the reiteration approach that I’m taking with this novel too, I guess. I think I’ve got up to the stage where I felt like I had re-read the bits I’ve written up at least 10 times and feeling a bit sick of reading them again and again) that I’m not sure that I had gotten back into the story any better this time around but at least I went past where I decided to call a stop and go back to the start the first around. So I’m not sure whether that counts as a positive but let’s call it that for now.
Again, I will finish this iteration and see how far that takes. Then I think it’s time for an assessment on the WIP. I’ve trying to cut down on such analytical periods because I’m feeling like they are a method of procrastination on my side. On the other hand, I am a bit lost on this novel right now and for someone with an analytical mind like me, I have often come to some clarity after such analysis. So we will wait and see.
As I’ve said time and again, onwards!
Let me preface this post about the following context of my reading which might or might not be new to those of you who subscribe to my blog: my foray into fantasy dated all the way back in the period before sub-genres were a thing. Back in those days, I would just say I read fantasy and be done with that rather than having to say that I read epic, high-magic and sword&sorcery fantasy. And while it is true that I read all three sub-genres, epic fantasy tended to be my main staple while the other two sub-genres were what I called light reading.
Now, fast forward to the last 5 years. I’m almost done with epic fantasy or it has become more of an occasional foray for me. Why? I seem to have outgrown most of my comfort authors for fantasy overall- authors whose works I followed more or less diligently though still subject to my own whims. Also, epic fantasy as a sub-genre seems to have shrunken from being the predominant category within fantasy to being taken over by YA fantasy (not saying they can’t co-exist in for example Tamora Pierce but mostly they don’t tend to co-exist and while I dabble in YA fantasy, I’ve always been lukewarm towards this sub-genre because that’s the way my taste runs) so I feel like I have to sift through thousands of blurbs on my local library catalogue in order to find one that interests me personally. And lastly, I seem to have reached a point of exhaustion with the sub-genre due to a combination of needing to find new authors to fill the gap of my comfort authors or what I felt was a kind of overwhelming fight against publishers’ effort to publish to trends eg. turn previously high magic settings into low magic and flood the market with YA fantasy etc.
And on top of all that above, I’ve noticed that epic fantasy is the one genre that easily creeps into my writing. And to be honest, I’m not even writing epic fantasy myself. I mean, I seem to be always writing about a largish party ala old epic fantasy but I’ve noticed that my plot always has an underlying theme revolved around family relationships so I’ve as yet not really been able to classify it into a sub-genre yet other than dubbing it Chinese fantasy. I first noticed this when I was reading Tad Williams and the Dragonbone Chair which I ended up not finishing, not because it was not well written but I just didn’t feel like continuing with it after the first section. It might also have something to do with the fact that I realised that I could possibly learn from a certain section of the story because I knew that my story occurs in a similar setting and I’m not sure whether this kind of deliberate intention on my part ruined my reading experience (as a rule, my first reading experience is as a pure reader because reading is still one of my primary leisure activities so I wondered if thinking about learning from a certain novel ‘ruined’ my usual frame of mind when reading).
At any rate, if you tracked my reading in recent years, I think Robin Hobb is the only epic fantasy writer that I had read but to be honest I didn’t really feel that she’s on the same scale as for example LOTR. I did enjoy the Soldier’s Son trilogy and the Liveship Traders trilogy from her because they both bring some freshness to the epic fantasy genre and they do tell stories bigger than your one point-of-view or two points-of-view stories but there is a very clear divide in my mind between them and old classics.
As of the time of writing I’m not quite sure where I’m going as an epic fantasy reader. I still remain a fantasy reader in general but am dabbling more and more into historical fantasy or straight historical fiction.
Who is she:
Notable Life Events:
Why is she remarkable:
Moonlake’s thoughts on her:
In the Chinese references that I had read through, she seems to be the archetype of a good woman- a very filial grand-daughter (the hair cutting incident) and a woman who knows her place and is not jealous at all (I didn’t mention this in my summary above but it was talked about in the Chinese references I consulted). But to be honest, I’m not quite sure how much of that is actually true or whether it was recorded in that way as to reflect the norm of that period.
At any rate, she must have been highly intelligent, with a thirst for knowledge. It also seems that later she has put that intellect to good use.
English Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Sui
The jump-off line is from Some Feel Rain by Joanna Klink.
She feels the river shift. She feels the mountain shift. Everything is always moving.
She feels the river shift. She feels time itself shift.
She feels the river shift. It is always shifting.
She feels the river shift. Her childhood shifts and she cannot quite see it now. Everything is a haze, colours are no longer vibrant.
She feels the river shift. The clouds shift overhead. Light shifts across the wall.
She feels the river shift. When it falls aparts, she is standing on the shore. Seeing the chasm entering into being from one heartbeat to the next.
She feels the river shift. The rocks under her feet shift.
She feels the river shift. The grasses under her feet shift.
She feels the river shift. A shifting ray of sunlight just dapples the wall.
She feels the river shift. A wind rustles the branches, shifting them according to its tune.
Moonlake's Fiction Space 