Chalion

The last few years I have a hard time finding interesting, non-cliche-ridden Fantasy novels. The only exception was George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. But since the author takes his time to finish the individual books rather slow (I'll grant him that: "Throughness before speed" I say), I'll have to look elsewhere for new reading material.

A couple of months ago while checking the Hugo/Nebula/.. awards lists for interesting books, I stumbled across the works of Lois McMaster Bujold. And behold, not a triology/triad/something-with-3 series, but rather standalone novels. So I started reading her Fantasy books, and I was not disappointed. Currently there are three books set in the "Chalion"-world.

• "The Curse of Chalion"
• "Paladin of Souls" (not yet finished)
• "The Hallowed Hunt" (yet to read)

So this list may look like a triology, I can assure you it is not. The two first books are loosely coupled and share a few common characters, but the stories are self-contained. The last book seems to be a prequel of the other two and non-related to them.

McMaster Bujold has a website containing information about the world of Chalion as well as sample chapters from the novels listed above.

Descent

"The Descent" is becoming one of my favourite movies. With (in my humble opinion) sparse means the film creates a real sense of horror and fear, something I haven't seen in any movie for years.

StarCraft Reenactment

In the light of the upcoming "StarCraft 2" and after an acquaintance told me that he had played the original "StarCraft" (from 1998!) again, I followed his example and installed & played the orginal game once more. Not entirely surprising, it is still -- after 9 years -- fun to play.