20 years a proud RuneScape player!

20 years ago this week I began the game RuneScape, beginning, unbeknownst to me, a continuing age of my life. An MMO of deep (book-worthy) plots augmented by rich characters and the wondrous ever expanding world of Gielinor, I want to thank Jonah (Evilspirit44), and Sam and Henry for convincing me to play (which was no easy task, if I recall aright).

The game has changed much over the past two decades years in countless ways, with graphic improvements, vast thickening of plots, and a "new" combat system that drove away many close-minded players alongside several new skills and geographical locations. Yet even not Questlines that began before I started playing are at last coming to triumphant conclusion. I view the game - a continuing relic of my early childhood - as I would a dear book, making it an important part of my life. Indeed, it was critical Escapism during the COVID Pandemic.

A toast to Jagex and the game they created! A toast to another fabulous decade!

I have started Dragon Magic, Book Two of Ava Richardson's Deadweed Dragons

I have started Dragon Magic, Book Two of Ava Richardson's Deadweed Dragons.

Training Dragons is hard work, specially after they have had a nasty time of it, and the Dagfan Training Halls is still filled with hard-headed people who seem to think Dragon Riding is like horsebreaking and riding. So tis off to the Fury Mountains to work with Akeem and his Wild Company who seem to a process that at least works. Add Binshee tribal and Council of Southern Lords politics and prejudice though, to say nothing of the Deadweed which is definitely higher than humans on the food chain and can even best Dragons... Well, Dayie and Zarr will have to turn on the charm and learn her magic before the South is overrun.

I have finished Dragon Called, Book One of Ava Richardson's Deadweed Dragons

I have finished Dragon Called, Book One of Ava Richardson's Deadweed Dragons.

Well, those Dagfan Training Halls have got to be the most disgraceful and perverted mockery of a 'Dragon Rider school' I have ever had the misfortune to see. Fortunately Dayie, Rider of brave Zarr the Crimson Red has turned things in the right direction alongside Akeem and Nas of all people. Yet even as the label witch becomes truth instead of insult and a way to stop the Deadweed, it is a dangerous one still and the Southern Kingdom, its Riders, and Dayie, still have a long way to go if they are to save themselves and become truly great Dragon Riders.

AI Library Poster Experiment

As is known, I try to avoid discussing real-world issues here on my not always entirely humble blog. However, just as I performed a deep-dive experiment regarding AI's potential in world in Fantasy literature and art, I wanted to see was use it could be in allowing librarians to truly customize their workspace. So I tried using AI to see if it can make good library posters using my favorites quotes... and the results have been amazing. Here are two of the best. 

Again, I am very well aware of, and share, the concerns regarding Artificial Intelligence. Yet I also believe that, like anything, its potential for good can be incredible if used with integrity – and I will use any tool available to me that benefits my students.

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power." - Alan Cohen 

My father and I just finished rereading The Dark Is Rising

My father and I just finished rereading The Dark Is Rising, book #2 of the Sequence of the same name written by Susan Cooper.

As Louisa May Alcott said, "Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again." Such is the case here, The Dark Is Rising (both the book and series) being for is one of our highest and holiest pinnacles of Fantasy, an Arthurian Epic that helped forge our love of the genre and, for me, crafted my view of the world almost as much as The Lord of the Rings. Thus reading it again, walking and questing ones more with Old Ones of the Light Will Stanton and Merriman Lyon was and remains the among highest of literary joys.

"When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.

Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning, stone out of song;
Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;
Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;
Power from the greenwitch, lost beneath the sea;
All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree."

I have started Dragon Called, Book One of Ava Richardson's Deadweed Dragons

Arguably the most prolific Epic Fantasy author of the age, with over two dozen series to her name, Ava Richardson's calling card is the roar of mighty Dragons and their Riders. She has also been on my to-read list for far to long, so I end that by beginning her book that first drew my eye.

I have started Dragon Called, Book One of Ava Richardson's Deadweed Dragons.

From castaway to sold away, to Dragon Thief and now, for the moment, runaway, Dayie has certainly lived a full if not exactly enviable life for a fifteen-year-old girl. So now the question is – since permanently hiding a soon-to-be hatched fledgling Dragon is impossible – can she take up the mantle of trainee Dragon Rider in a place where the 'bond' between Dragon and Rider is characterized more by acrimony than affection? That the Training Hall seals eggs for the purpose of combating Deadweed may have something to do which that of course, which adds another question. Since Deadweed comes by its name honestly, can Dayie kill the weed before it kills her and countless others?

Tis good to finally be starting Ava Richardson and, hopefully, this is but the first of many posts marking my journeys into her worlds, getting to know her Dragons.

Official Book Review: The Equinox Tor, Book Three of David Doersch's Chronicles of the Raven

I have finished The Equinox Tor, Book Three of David Doersch's Chronicles of the Raven and, as the author requested, now give it an Official Book Review.

Book One was called The Gathering Storm, and The Equinox Tor could just as easily have been called "The Storm Breaks," for not since Robert Jordan's A Memory of Light have I read a book that was one long heart-stopping climax. Heart-wrenching at times too, for the sadistic Angor blood-shamans and their Barbár puppets shied from no depravity in their efforts to claim Tor and Green Mount for the Shadow Lord. As Latrans the so-called Fool told them though, "We're back", so the Raven Corvus Corax and his friends were not without without their own supernatural supporters as a war as old as time continued. All while the Church of the Five and the infamous Blades of Sebastian fall closer to Fel, and Queen Darienne enjoys a brief respite before blossoming between sword and sorcery into the deadly Moonflower destiny has proclaimed her to be.

In short, David Doersch delivered exactly what I anticipated: another thrilling chapter in the world of Hortus, as full of deadly intrigue and breathtaking battle as warm moments of family and personal reckoning. Among other things, for while the Tor upon Green Mount is safe...the other Tors are not. So three minstrels march north, the Moonflower prepares for invasion while a different Queen readies her wedding, and, as the next book is titled The High King, Corvus' life is doubtlessly about to change again.

The battle cry goes out as swords are drawn… "Protect the Tor!"