Transplanting a Seattleite

Username:	Password:
Forgot your password?	Remember Me

Math, we love it; also, modest amounts of driving
Locations 1619-25 of _$20 per gallon_:

"For a family driving a modest amount, say 15,000 miles a year on two cars, and driving vehicles that do well on overall fuel economy, say 30 mpg, their annual fuel costs would be $10,000."

This 15K a year has shown up both earlier in the book as an expectable amount of driving for brand-new-car owners in India and China, and it has shown up earlier in my blog as apparently what some people think of as a typical amount of driving to do in the course of the year. Now me (and remember, I've driven 1200 miles in a day. More than once), I think that's wholly unreasonable. I think 12K is a more reasonable number, and the one I recollect from my younger days. We put less than 12K/year on our two vehicles. Combined. But wait! He doesn't mean 15K combined! He means 15K _each_! OMG!

Well, you know. Sell one car, replace it with a really decent mileage vehicle that you preferentially drive, cut your mileage as much as you can (walk, bike, public transit, eliminate trips, order online, carpool, vanpool, work 4 tens, you know what everyone did when we hit $4, right?). If you can, sell one car and don't replace it -- the savings on insurance, taxes, maintenance etc. will help _a lot_.

If people did all that stuff at $4, why would he be treating 15K/yr driving as normal ongoing behavior at $10? I _just do not get it_.

I've driven to Las Vegas
More than once, in fact. I left Las Vegas (in a car. that I was driving) around noon once and drove home to Seattle, arriving the next morning around 9 a.m. or so. I did take a couple naps in the car along the way. (I will further add that that is not the only time I drove around 1200 miles in a single driving "day".) So when _$20 per gallon_ says:

"Almost nobody, save a few L.A. gambling junkies, drives to Vegas. And the five-hour drive from Southern California won't be too appealing, either, when filling the tank costs $150."

I start feeling a little pissy.

I think a lot more people drive from LA to Las Vegas than he realizes. And in any event, driving 265 measly miles is no great shakes and with an appropriate vehicle selection, shouldn't cost more than $100 RT. And I'm betting there's bus service.

http://www.luxbusamerica.com/index.php

Why yes! There is.

This guy is _really_ annoying me. Las Vegas _is_ hurting really, really, really bad. But they're hurting for the same reason everyone else is hurting. And it does not have that much to do with steep gas.

_$20 per gallon_ foolishness
Locations 1040-53

"Carriers you can expect to survive: Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France - KLM, and Japan's All Nippon Airways....Some countries, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austrial, Ireland, and Italy, will lose their national carriers altogether as foreign airlines take over the transatlantic business-- Continental, Air France, British Airways, and Lufthansa."

I don't get it. KLM is the Netherlands national. It merged with Air France in 2004 and operates as part of a larger consortium including Continental at this point. So what did the above pair of statements mean? The name KLM will go away? He doesn't realize KLM is the Dutch national?

ETA:

Locations 1167-74: "But state schools that depend on out-of-state students will be hurt as well, including the University of Vermont, which draws 65% of its students from out of state."

Uh. Gee. Where to start. Calling the University of Vermont a "state school", while technically true, sort of misses a lot of what UVM is. UVM got invited to become an Ivy (which it turned down), and while a lot of its students are from out of state, they are not from out of region. I do not envision a world in which $8/gallon gas has a significant impact on the ability of UVM to attract the kind of students to which it has grown accustomed. His further examples are pretty silly, too. Kids are limited in college selections now because everyone is broke and borrowed too much and is scared to death and retrenching. The idea that someone would decide not to go far afield to college because they couldn't go home 4x a year (or whatever) neglects how common that was not too many years ago. The idea that people wouldn't move across the country because they'd be away from extended family and unable to afford plane fare to visit neglects, you know, like, how on earth is it that this country had so many white people in it before airplanes were invented.

Yes, people are not moving much right now -- but that happened with cheap gas because the housing market froze hard. If it gets expensive for people to fly to Disneyworld, they can still drive. If he's thinking they can't afford the gas to go to Disneyworld, they can if they swap to high enough mpg figured over total passengers so maybe there might be trains and/or buses involved. When I was a kid, Disneyland attracted people from Seattle. In droves. And they didn't fly.

I'm finding this book unbelievably frustrating. I suspect the author is very young. It's reminding me of that article that suggested that if you couldn't fly across the ocean, the next alternative would be Harry Potter style through-the-fireplace wizardry. As if boats had never carried passengers across the pond.

If this is to be believed, people are indeed switching from the bus in the sky to the bus on the ground:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/13/earlyshow/living/travel/main5154463.shtml

ETAYA:

As another $8 effect, our youthful author notes that resort towns will suffer and has an extended discussion of ski towns such as Jackson Hole, and how the resorts there guarantee the airlines who run flights into Vail-Eagle Airport and promise to make up revenue shortfalls if the folk don't show up. "In a world of $8 gasoline, however, guaranteeing those flights will be a risky play, as the airlines will likely demand $800 a seat or more."

A quick trip to google confirms what I suspected: 50% off sales on multi-million dollar homes in Telluride, Vail, etc. in auctions designed to get the totally cratered real estate market. More notably, it confirms something else. Tourism is not and has not been the "No. 1 area industry" (location 1207-15). Real estate was. It didn't take $8/gallon gasoline to wipe out the resort towns (and, I might add, you can get some significant discounts on season passes at all of them this year, more than enough to make up for whatever increase might happen to your plane fare, and I bet the hotel rooms are going begging, too).

Locations 1200-? whine on about how DisneyWorld will close with $8/gallon gas, which is pretty funny. I _know_ people were driving their 12 mpg max SUVs down the coast when gas cost a buckish. There's no reason you couldn't drive a Fit down there when gas cost $8/gallon; the fuel cost of that trip either way is quite minimal compared to the overall cost of the trip.

Don't believe me? From here, it's about 1300 miles. 2600 RT/44mpg (the Fit when R. drives) = about 60 gallons of gas. At $8/gallon, that's under $500. Even in the _cheapest_ flight years, you'd be hard pressed getting 4 airplane tickets from Logan or Manchester to Orlando RT for $500 (altho there were times it could be done).

$8/gallon gas wipes stuff out because people's fuel budget grows and wipes out what they can afford to spend on other things. It wipes out casual dining chains before it wipes out Disneyworld. _We know this_. Because we already saw the effect at $4/gallon gas. I'm utterly mystified at what this guy is picking for what goes away when.

_The Cyclist's Manifesto_, Robert Hurst (kindle)
Boy, when people say that political alignments in Colorado in general and Denver in particular are different from the rest of the country are not kidding.

Most of the indications are that Hurst is not a culture-war style conservative, but is a fiscal conservative, and a knee-jerk liberal basher on account of liberals being rich, ignorant elitists out of touch with reality (I'm not saying liberals are -- I'm saying there is evidence in the book to assert that Hurst thinks along these lines). Obviously, I'm going to find that annoying.

Hurst is part of a cohort that grew up pomo (postmodern), and his interpretation of a manifesto is well in line with that aesthetic: self-referential, ironic, darkly humorous primarily by telling you the truth straight in a way that forces the reader to perceive the world as the tilted funhouse that it truly is. I like that. In general, he is careful about what he says and how he says it (none of this more cars than Americans from him -- he gets it right: more privately owned vehicles than registered drivers), altho there are occasional errors, some of which he notes on his website (the comment about the Idaho law on the subject of cyclists, red lights and stop signs, for example), they are not particularly serious. He recognizes both that cycling has dangers, and correctly disentangles who is most at risk (a big minority of bike accidents involve drunken riding, presumably by adults who've already lost their driver's license to the same persistent substance abuse problem; another chunk involve children; most of the fatalities involve cars; most of the got-hurt-but-not-dead do not). I have a lot of respect for someone who can navigate that mess with such crisp precision.

In addition to using Frances' Willard's book about cycling to talk about women and bicycling in the early days, Hurst includes the use of bicycles in war under utility cycling (including how the British lost Singapore, which I'd never heard about) and devotes a chunk of the text to the racism of the League of American Wheelmen and cycling in general, via the story of Major Taylor. I'd _heard_ of Major Taylor and knew he was a racer, and hadn't pursued the tale otherwise; I feel bad about that now. I'm going to be referring to Jackie Robinson from now on as the Major Taylor of baseball. Only fair. It is, of course, always fun to get a giggle out of learning that a major temperance activist enjoyed her experience of ether in the wake of a bicycle accident.

Hurst sets himself apart from the Vehicular Cycling vs. Cyclepaths Everywhere fray, in favor of sharrows (big arrows in the middle of the lane with a bicycle icon, indicating that the lane must be shared with bicycles). *shrug* If he'd gone to the bother of including stories of bicycle boulevards in Portland OR and similar bike/ped/local resident only streets in Vancouver, BC and elsewhere, I might have taken it seriously (especially since traffic calming islands can help prevent the unfamiliar from inadvertently traveling on these roads unless they really are their destination). As it is, it feels like local prejudice: a useful thing, but not the Be All and End All.

Climate Change is never mentioned, altho Hurst goes on for a bit about Peak Oil, using _Twilight in the Desert_ as his main source.

And he gratuitously disses Portland, which I find way past lame, along with his dissing of European city bikes, and European cycling cities as being plodding and boring.

You can't blame Hurst for any of this, tho, really, since he presents himself as unstable, and able only to stay in the ballpark of sanity by lots of exercise (on a bicycle). I _do_ blame Hurst for this ridiculous piece of nonsense:

"In reality, only those of us who consume zero petroleum can preach to everybody else about the evils of oil."

What "reality" is this? Maybe if he'd used "should", or some descriptive modifiers ("reasonably", "ethically", "responsibly", "non-hypocritally", etc., all spring to mind), but even so.

Barring the occasional rhetorical flourish of this nature, however, this is an entertaining and engaging read, written by a bicycle messenger who can accurately repeat stuff he's learned which is saying a whole lot more than it might sound. Should you read it? If you were thinking about reading either of the other two bicycle books I've reviewed recently, but were feeling on the fence, I'd start with this one instead.

ETA: Want to sample the flavor? Try the author's blog. And look at what he named the research file.

http://www.industrializedcyclist.com/index.html

Notes for a review
Location 280-4: "It could simply be that the bicycle itself is a beacon of darkness, bitterness, and ill will that transforms anyone who climbs on top of it.

Since bicycles were invented, self-proclaimed masters of that domain have erected walls and placed arbitrary filters, riddles, clothing requirements, and icy glares -- racial requirements--in front of anybody hoping to become a bicyclist. Clearly any effort to popularize the bicycle for basic transportation purposes will have to overcome some of the bicyclists themselves. A more annoying foe could hardly be imagined."

Location 1093-6: "But I like the streets. I like the American streets, the dance of traffic, the occasional flashes of terror and drafting off ambulances. The Amsterdam cycle path paradigm is nice in different ways, but it's kind of a plodding enterprise. Kind of slow and clogged up, confining. We bicyclists in America are surely in more danger than our Euro counterparts, perhaps less accepted in the national culture, but we may also have a little more freedom overall. We can ride with a little more speed, a little more zing. The trade-off goes largely unappreciated."

Hey -- just because I post a quote doesn't mean I agree with it. I'm including these because they really stand out as very different from the usual rhetoric.

Location 1107-10: "Thinking we can steadily transform Portland into Oulu is nothing but a trap.

The American way of bicycling does not need to be fundamentally changed, it only needs to be enhanced. We in the States could actually do Europe one better in our bicycling future. We could ride farther, and faster, on sportier bicycles, and just generally have more fun with it."

Location 1188-91: "As a child driver he impaled a '73 Volkswagen Type III on a hydrant while playing four-wheel drift on a snoy night. "Radioactive" by the Firm was on the radio."

If that's factually true in every respect, I think that implies Not a Boomer, as "child" would imply no older than 17 when "Radioactive" could have been on the radio, which would have been no earlier than 1985, thus, born no earlier than 1968, unless my math or research sucks.

Location 1194-99: "I must have been about fourteen or fifteen years old...Mid-1980s."

Location 1214-18: "About a dozen sixteen-to-nineteen-year-olds are killed in wrecks every day, about four thousand to five thousand per year. Close to half a million go to emergency rooms each year after hitting something in their cars."

Makes you wonder why people get so freaking uptight about making kids get an MMR vaccine. I mean, by comparison? Tiny, tiny, tiny risks.

race and cycling
Well, H. brought this up as a possibly interesting avenue of investigation and boy, howdy, was she right. The League of American Wheelman, which eventually became the League of American Bicyclists, passed a whites only amendment to their constitution in 1894, according to _The Cyclist's Manifesto_, an amendment which stood until...1999.

speed limit
I got _The Cyclist's Manifesto_ on kindle because it looked like it had a bunch of bicycle history in it, so I thought I'd give it a try. Very short distance into the book (loving the authorial voice, btw), and I learn that New York (one assumes city) had a speed limit of 5 mph for vehicles when bicycles were included in "vehicles" for rights and responsibilities purposes.

!!!

I open my laptop, I google a bit, and I found this:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/05/dayintech_0521

From this I conclude:

(1) When B.L. said most of the problems associated with motor vehicles would be mitigated and/or eliminated if we just said no one goes over 15 mph any more, B.L. was not being wacky. B.L. was being utterly reasonable and, in fact, had vast historic precedent on his side. He convinced me at the time, and I hadn't forgotten, but whoa and like damn.

(2) I love the idea of jailing a cabbie driving an electric taxi at the breakneck speed of 12 mph.

and

(3) Wow. The layout of NYC makes so much more sense when you assume the travel lanes should be moving at about 5 mph.

_Kiss of a Demon King_, Kresley Cole (kindle)
Book 6 of the Immortals After Dark series

I did finish it. But I did not like it. Oh, it's more of the same: layer after layer of romance novel (and other popular fiction of page and screen) cliche, with some humorous banter and blah blah bleeping blah. But I did not like it. And I was pretty sure I was not going to like it. I did not finish it because it was addictive. I finished it because I actually care about the plot independent of the development of the romance and it is my intention to continue with this series.

I like banter, and I don't mind a bit of conflict in a relationship. I don't mind a spot of teasing, a little tying up and tying down. I don't mind a bit of tit for tat. But this wasn't a little. This was a decently long book full of drawn-out rape sequences. They may not have ended in tab P slot V style sex. The parties to the act may have both been highly aroused. But this was mean, punishing, vicious, non-consensual craziness and lots of it.

Rydstrom (the tightly-wound Woede brother who lost his kingdom to Omort), as you may recall, was kidnapped by Sabine the Queen of Illusions in Book 5, and by the end of the Book, she was yelling her head off that she was being held against her will. This book overlaps in time with Book 5 and then extends somewhat after it. While Rydstrom is locked up in the dungeon of Tornin being tormented by Sabine, various characters are getting updates on what happened in Book 5 so you can more or less keep the sequences straight if you are so inclined.

There's a ton of backstory on Sabine and her older sister Melanthe and their half brother Omort. A lot of it is as one would expect of a Big Bad Who Is About to Be Redeemed: big trauma, the survivor had to do vile things to make it, oh, and she's a vegetarian. There is, however, one really nifty bit (and this almost makes slogging through the nasty sex scenes worth it): Omort is the offspring of the previous Accession's Vessel. He's the powerful warrior who is All Evil. So when Rydstrom is willing to sacrifice the Vessel this time around to get the sword to kill the offspring of the last round's Vessel, he's basically saying, sure, make another Omort (or worse) as long as I get to kill Omort.

Yeah. That's great planning.

Kidnapping and near-, attempted and actual rape are long-term themes of romance. And Cole knows this, or she wouldn't have named Sabine Sabine. But while on the one hand, you could think about giving Cole props for gender bendering the kidnap and rape (woman kidnaps and rapes man, when the reverse is so much more typical of, well, you find me an instance where it's not more typical), on the MUCH MORE IMPORTANT hand, it's NOT consensual. Not cool. Sure, Cole's message is abundantly clear: don't cross "the line", don't do anything "irrevocable", you can't "force" someone to love you, you can't "control" someone with sex. Actually, that last one is kind of cool. Jayne Ann Krentz has way too many novels in which someone attempts to "control" the someone else with sex, and it's annoying.

As the relationship develops between Sabine and Rydstrom -- after they've achieved parity in tormenting each other -- things get marginally better, but it isn't enough. The sense of humor is almost entirely driven by Sabine's outrageousness, which isn't particularly funny to me. Her relationship with the orphan demon Puck is clearly intended to be charming, but it struck me as creepy and abusive. Having Sabine advocate for women's rights, roads and other modernization is lovely -- but not lovely enough.

I'm betting there's someone -- maybe a lot of someones -- out there that find this book enormously appealing, sexy, funny, an emotional roller coaster. That someone might further point out things like, hey, this book gives us more insight into Nix than we've _ever_ gotten before. And hey, if you think you are that someone, I'm glad you're happy.

Me, this was just a necessary evil to get to the next book in the series.

ETA: Okay, _that's_ lame. That's the most recent entry. *sigh* There's a prequel in an anthology, _Playing Easy to Get_, which has the Nicholas Wroth/Myst story.

_Dark Desires After Dusk_, Kresley Cole (kindle)
Book 5 of the Immortals After Dark series.

Which one was this? Ummmm....

Oh yeah, Cade Gets Laid.

Rydstrom Woede lost his unexpectedly inherited demon kingdom to Omort. Omort, in case the name isn't a total gimme, can't be killed. You can behead him, chop him up and burn the pieces and he'll _still_ come back. Omort is a Sorceri, which is sort of like a witch, but not. Rydstrom blames his brother Cadeon, aka, Cade, for losing the kingdom, because when Rydstrom had to go fight some vampires who had attacked the kingdom he summoned Cade to defend the castle and Cade, who had spend most of his life being raised by a foster family, declined in favor of protecting his foster family. Unfortunately, while evading troops trying to make him do his duty, his foster family was offed by revenants. Sucks to be a Rage Demon King or second in line to the throne, apparently.

The disinherited and formerly separated demons are now mostly inseparable, recruiting Lorekind to their cause and presenting a united front to everyone else while privately constantly running each other down and beating the snot out of each other. Nix tells Rydstrom he has one last shot at getting his kingdom back: get a sword from Groot the Metallurgist that will really kill Omort (Groot is a half-brother of Omort, but doesn't like him anyway). A scavenger hunt is set up to get the Woedes to Groot's hideaway and thus the sword.

But Nix isn't the only seer around and Omort's half-sister Sabine (Queen of Illusions) intercepts Rydstrom on her way to meet Cade. And we won't see him or them until the end of the book, and then only as a tantalizing intro to What Happened There, which will be revealed in Book 6, _Kiss of the Demon King_.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. You know, there's an awful lot of plot in these things. Meanwhile, obsessive compulsive thought-to-be-mortal daughter of a Valkyrie mother and a civil engineer father, math teacher and doctoral candidate Holly Ashwin (groan) has been sensing a benevolent presence watching over her lately. Then one night, it doesn't feel benevolent, but it's still a presence and the next thing, she's about to be impregnated against her will be 1 or more of 12 members of the order of Demonaeus because she's The Vessel. The Vessel's kid will be a powerful All Good or All Evil (depending on Dad's nature) who will have a big influence at the Accession -- the last 6 of 7 of these have been Evil, which does not bode well for Ms. Ashwin. But she gets cranky, her grandparents hit her (well, someone does) with lightning, and she goes all Valkyrie on that demon ass and kills them all. Then she hides in a corner and cries.

Where Cade finds her, he of the benevolent presence, who is about to take her on that scavenger hunt because the deal is: trade Vessel for Sword. And Cade has promised to do this even if the Vessel is his fated mate (cause you know she is) because he doesn't want to disappoint Rydstrom Yet Again (little does he know...wait, that's from the next book).

The scavenger hunt, as Nix knew, would be one glorious almost-got-it-on after another, until they really do (oh, and they're being watched by Groot when they do. Ewwww.). Most of the tension on Holly's part is, but I have a boyfriend (that I'm not actually having sex with) and I don't _want_ to be an Immortal! I hate change! On Cade's part, it's, geez, do I _really_ have to give her up? Awwwwww... Complete with dialogue that could have been ripped from an X-rated [ETA: Rethinking this. More like PG, or PG-13] version of _It Happened One Night_, this is all actually somewhat fun.

And then, it gets a little darker, because Cade really does turn her over to Groot. Yes, it's a romance. Yes, you'll be getting that Happily Ever After. But Ms. Ashwin needs to get a chance to show more of her Valkyrie nature than liking pretty clothes and sexy boots, getting drunk with demons and liking very athletic, frequent sex. Specifically, those 12 Demons from the beginning of the book need some company on the way to wherever dead demons go. She escapes Groot, jumps off a Really High Cliff, picks her broken self up and then kills all the Wendigo for miles around. Which is good, because in the meantime, Cade has to recover from being poisoned, toss Groot into his own furnace, get blown up with the rest of the castle, and then walk out of that mess.

Nix to the rescue, so Holly Ashwin (who is, in fact, knocked up by now) visits Val Hall and mopes around for a while, to be escorted to a home suitable for rearing a child (or children) (which Val Hall is not, because of lightning, if nothing else -- and nothing else would not be accurate) by Nix, who abandons her to the person who bought her the estate, a certain Rage Demon named...

Chopping through all those details, what do we have here? We have screw-up brother Gets It Together and is rewarded with The Sword, the death of a Big Bad, the Girl and soon-to-be-a-Father. We have perfect-brother Fucks Up Horribly. That's a classic plot all by itself -- the fuckup and the perfect siblings trading places in a time of crisis. Then we have the uptight bluestocking turns out to be a words-fail in bed. There is banter. There is discovering-bio-parentage-and-family. Really, it's layered cliche after layered cliche.

But that many layers and it tastes like cake.

_Dark Needs at Night's Edge_, Kresley Cole (kindle)
Book 4 in the Immortals After Dark series.

Another Wroth brother, this time Conrad. From age 13 until his death at the hands of Russians while protecting the family homestead including plague-ridden and soon to die sisters and father (well, some may have already been dead), Conrad was a member of a Secret Society devoted to killing members of the Horde (evil Russian vampires). You can imagine how he felt when his brother Nicholas converted his other brother Sebastian (of Book 2) and him without consulting them (well, Conrad was mostly dead already, and Nicholas didn't know about the Secret Society thing. I mean, Secret, right?).

With his old brothers-in-staking staking, er, him out (okay, staking doesn't work -- you have to behead in this series) because he is now Teh Enemy, Conrad tries to stay alive, or at least undead, and turns out to be phenomenally good at it. He gets paid for killing people and, in general, it turns out that a lot of the people someone is willing to pay to make dead aren't very nice people. Oh, and he drinks them dry to collect their powers and, as an undesirably side effect, gets their memories. This is not good for the sanity.

When Conrad's brothers finally track him down and, with some assistance from Bowen (see Book #2) and Magick Handcuffs lock him up in a dilapidated old estate, Conrad meets Neomi (there's an accent mark) Laress, daughter of a French burlesque dancer, herself a burlesque dancer and a prima ballerina who used the funds she raised on stage to buy this estate back in the 1920s. Unfortunately, a guy she turned loose turned on her (and then himself) and she wound up haunting the place. She is Conrad's Bride, but he can't be blooded because she is incorporeal.

Because he's hangin' with a nice, funny, sexy lady, and Not Drinking the Blood and Memories of Really Bad Supes, Conrad starts to recover his sanity, thus making this a little like the Only She Can Reach Him Through His Disability subgenre (cf Flowers From the Storm, Laura Kinsale). His brothers think he is hallucinating, which is a little silly. Why balk at ghosts when you are a vampire? Ah, well. In any event, Conrad still has some problems, including a demon mark that won't heal. After some in-person phone sex, Conrad decides that it's just a matter of coming up with a plan and implementing. Unfortunately, his brothers have quit visiting (probably locked up somewhere) so he's unable to get out of the magic handcuffs. OTOH, as we know from Book 1, one solution to the your-limb-is-trapped problem for immortals is removing the limb. After all, it'll regenerate! Off to the woodshed for an ax -- right when Neomi decides its time to come clean about having stolen the key to the cuffs and now being willing to hand it over. Ooops. Big Misunderstanding ensues and harsh words.

Neomi, however, decides enough is enough. Conrad is right. We need a plan. So she finds the cell phone (also stolen), calls the House of Witches and gets Mari to come over and hatch a plan. It has some unpleasant conditions, and Nix is not overly happy, but Neomi gets a body and goes to the Ball, er, Big Party to Plan the Accession and find Conrad. Next, Sexxxorringg!

Conrad really does it up: he's not only cleaned off the blood and shaven, but he's gotten a haircut, nice clothes and started hauling her all over the globe for fancy dinners and moonlit walks on the beach and whatnot. Neomi won't marry him because of the conditions, which also mean she can't tell him about the conditions. Big Misunderstanding ensues and then Demons show up. Third party inadvertently drills Neomi immediately after she clears up the Misunderstanding in an effort to stop Conrad from trading his life for hers, after all, hers isn't worth much since it's gonna be so short. And not just mortal short. As in, at 2 weeks, she's feeling lucky to have lasted this long.

So now Conrad's looking for a witch to fix the body and Mari's under pressure to use the mirrors and Bowe has a Bad Feeling and can you guess where this is going? In a way, this episode is a lot like a nice version of Torchwood's _They Keep Killing Suzy_. Only They Keep Killing (and Bring Back) Neomi.

One of the things I dearly loved about Stargate SG-1 was the incredible frequency with which major characters were killed off and then brought back. And they didn't do it the same way that many times -- oh, sure, the occasional repeat, but in general, new and different ways to die and come back once a week, many weeks of the year for 10 years. Just to keep things interesting, they'd once in a while bring back someone who had been dead for a long time, keep 'em around for a while, and them kill 'em again permanently. And once in a rare while, they permanently offed a major character.

Cole has been okay with killing off main characters in this series (Kaderin, in Book #2, for example). Being dead in this game is not black-and-while. With a time-travel key and witches and a goddess of the impossible, there's no end of deus ex machina available. And the whole help-hero-recover-from-serious-damage isn't limited to this book -- that's a staple of the genre, and a part of Rescue Culture that makes R. and I scream, "Codependency, much?" Once again, Cole fiddles with the Soul Mate idea: in theory, there can be no doubt if a woman is a Vampire's Bride or not. He starts breathing and his heart starts beating and he can get it up. But until Neomi is corporeal, nothing happens, so Cole is stuck wondering is-she or isn't-she.

This entry, tho, really makes a stark point about the amorality of True Love. It apparently Does Not Matter that Conrad is/was a crazed serial murderer for hire. Altho he does have to stop killing except in self-defense going forward. Which raises a whole fascinating series of questions about the purpose of True Love or, at any rate, women, in the Kresley Cole universe. This isn't so much about redemption as redirection.

In case it isn't obvious, I'm still going back for more.

_Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night_, Kresley Cole (kindle)
Book 3 in the Immortals After Dark series.

I almost hesitate to review this book, since Janet over at Dear Author did such a phenomenal job:

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/10/08/review-wicked-deeds-on-a-winters-night/

This is the story of a Witch (Mariketa the Awaited, early 20s and not yet immortal, a rare, collect-em-all-five-types-of-powers witch) and a Werewolf (the depressive and depressing Bowen, who thinks he lost his Mate about 200 years ago) who lose a contest (the Talisman's Hie, won by Sebastian in Book 2) and win each other. Aw. Isn't that sweet.

Most romance novels explain Teh Brokenness of their Physically Perfect But Emotionally Damaged characters by some kind of tragedy or trauma in their past. Bowe, obviously, lost his mate, and then it turns out he _really_ hates witches because his dad wanted to be the strongest of his brothers, and he got his wish from a witch who offed his brothers for him. Not what Dear Old Dad had in mind because he abdicated from the kingship he inherited. Bowen, as a result, is a bit Tetchy when it comes to magick.

Mariketa is unhappy because (a) she can't control her powers and (b) she has to cover up in a glamour and burqa, er, full coverage scarlet cloak with a big hood to keep from being identified by the Big Bad who prophecy says is gonna (try to) get her.

Mariketa, the Woede demon brothers Cade and Rydstrom (who will get their own books later in the series) and some fey, all team up to collect some prizes in the contest from a pyramid in Guatemala that imprisons some incubi who just want to die and (correctly) identify Mariketa as someone who can help them. After a little interaction between Bowen and Mariketa, Bowen locks them all in assuming they can escape, then goes off to get locked up with the Fyre Serpente (and yes, Serpente has an accent mark on it, no less) with no food or water for a couple weeks (where he was left at the end of Book 2). He is rescued from there solely to go rescue Mariketa et al from the pyramid which no one else can figure out where it is, to prevent the outbreak of war among a bunch of factions that desperately need to stay allied for the quickly arriving Accession, aka Big War with the Vampires (well, at least the Horde vampires). Still with me? Yeah, not even halfway through the book. And despite all this plot activity, most of the verbiage centers around Mariketa and Bowen not trusting each other (well, given that she cursed him to not regenerate and that's what cost him the Hie, and given that she's been stuck with creepy crawlies and incubi for 3 weeks, surprise) but still being hugely attracted to each other.

What bothered Janet, at Dear Author, is something that bothers me a lot about supernatural and other romances with One True Love. It bugs me IRL when people think they've found their Soul Mate, largely because every single time I've encountered that kind of starry eyed belief, Snowballing Clusterfuckage ensued. Yes, dear, you are haaaawwwwttt for each other with a hawtness that is Older Than the Stars and Stronger Than WTF. Okay. Fine. And what Cole is up to in this novel is yanking the Soul Mate idea around so much it more or less disintegrates. I'm not sure if that was her intention, but that was the result.

Bowen "senses" Soul-Mate-age with Mariketa. But his Mate died long ago so that can't be. Mariketa being a witch, thus, she has Enchanted him. Evil. Oh, and never mind he's still wearing a medallion given him by his Soul Mate almost two centuries ago. Surprise! That medallion is the enchantment that convinced him Mariah 180 years ago was his Mate when she wasn't. And the whole thing was set up by the Big Bad that is after Mariketa. Mariketa's damage is that her dad died and her mother left her to be raised by other witches; she doesn't realize dad's soul got sucked out by big bad and mom went to go beg for it back. Of course, the HEA delivers big time because, hey, this is Kresley Cole. Me likey.

Mariketa, not unexpectedly, wants Bowen to commit to her, Soul Mate or Not. And Bowen is advised to make a decision and stick to it, because waffling is bad. And I'm sitting here wanting to make parallels to Sanford and women, and desperately trying not to. No wonder I hate the Soul Mate idea. And while I didn't anticipate the details, I figured no way in hell is Fate so screwed up as to match Bowen to Mariah (once we had the details on her, and they match ex/first wife romance novel stereotypes so perfectly) and no way did Mariketa's parents abandon her for frivolous reasons, once we had the details on them (actual, loving, parents. Whoa!). From there, it was a very short step to finding the conniving bitch responsible for all the manipulation. I just wish it had been a conniving man instead of a conniving woman, because that's a misogynistic stereotype I'd be happy to do without.

Surprisingly good, if you can work your way past some of the surface stuff.

Bicycling update
I haven't been mentioning this, but we still do it every day. T. has been interested in the Burley Kazoo, so he went to and from school yesterday on it, and to school on it today. He went straight for it when we went for our morning ride. And let me just say, nothing says to a motorist, "You want nothing to do with any accident she/they get into" like a surrey bike and a bright pink skirt.

The only issue was a big black SUV thinking about passing me on Prospect approaching Spencer on the way home. There was a spandex clad guy on a bike coming up Spencer (and, I might add, a huge grin on his face when he saw me), and I took the whole lane so he wouldn't have to stop at the top of the hill. Poor driver. Sometimes I feel like a moving traffic calming device. They may not _feel_ calm but they sure as hell have to slow down.

weird e-book coverage
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/books/15ebooks.html

"For now, Amazon is taking a loss on each e-book it sells because it generally pays publishers half of the hardcover list price on new releases. So publishers who delay releasing e-books run the risk of losing sales, for which they are now getting higher margins than they are on print books."

So, on the face of it, this just can't be true. If they meant "each e-book which is otherwise available only in hardcover", it might conceivably be true. But are they _really_ taking a loss on all those Harlequins they sell?

This is at least them quoting someone else being an idiot:

"Mike Shatzkin, founder and chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, a consultant to publishers on digital issues, said he did not believe e-book buyers cannibalize hardcover sales. “People who read e-books don’t buy physical books, and people who buy physical books don’t buy e-books,” he said."

Again, untrue on the face of it. Everyone I know who reads e-books also reads paper books (I'm not saying that no one reads e-books exclusively -- I just don't know them), altho not everyone I know who reads paper books reads e-books. I could quibble about the next sentence:

"E-books still represent only 1 percent to 2 percent of book sales."

on the basis of the word "only". I'm pretty sure picking up 1-2 percent of book sales over the course of the brief time the kindle has been out (and that's when the big jump happened, albeit in part because other formats became Much Cheaper) isn't something to call "only".

"while the most common price for an e-book has quickly become $9.99."

Really? Prove it. And tell me whether you're basing that on books sold or titles sold. And how you came by the data to make that assertion other than, say, pulling it out of your ass.

The article doesn't need this kind of error-laden garbage to be interesting. Discussing the trade-offs associated with when to release the e-version of a book is important and they laid out at least some of the issues. But they did miss several, because (and this is so typical) of their focus on books that are bought by a wide-range of buyers. Books bought by a smaller range of buyers (things that don't come under the heading of "general" fiction or "general" non-fiction) bring up a whole series of other interesting issues that it looks to me like at least some publishers have a great grasp on. Both fantasy and romance fiction is now running through a fine gradation of price and time points: you can get it in hardcover, then you can get it as a e-book, and then the e-book starts getting price cut, the paperback comes out, the e-book gets cheaper and cheaper, etc. Eventually (depending on which platform you are on), you may be able to buy that book and several more of a related nature/series as a "bundle" for less than a single one hardcover -- in fact, competitive with a single in paper. Baen and HQN both do this, and that's when they aren't just giving away early entries in a series for free to get you hooked on buying the new ones as they come out.

Just because the "respectable" publishers have their heads shoved so far up their asses they find it disturbing to deal with a title available at multiple price points doesn't mean the people really moving the product haven't figured this out.

Boats and Bicycles
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE56E2TE20090715

DHL in Amsterdam has a canal boat office. It travels through an outer canal ring, with bicycles doing the final leg in the center, leaving the boat at one point and meeting up with it again later on in its journey.

DHL's competitors would, apparently, like to have their own canal boat office, but have not yet received approval from the city. DHL operates similarly in Venice, and a double-decker bus in London.

It's not obvious to me that this is "news", but it was both informative and entertaining and is in their "Life" section, so fair is fair. Read the whole thing; it's a hoot.

rationing health care
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html

Peter Singer doing a summary of quality adjusted life years and deciding where to spend health care dollars. He does the usual setup to show that, no, we don't _actually_ have an infinite amount of health care resources and, yes, we are engaging in de facto rationing because not everyone has equal access, and then describes quality adjusted life years as a rationing mechanism. Basically, it's sort of like cap-and-trade for health care: we only have this much money to spend on health care, so let's spend it where it gets us the most.

It turns out that while I'm all over the rationing of health care, and would even happily support this strategy, there are some massive problems with it. It is tremendously easy to get suckered by Pharma's studies showing that if you just put expensive drug X in the water (or whatever), everyone will not die of Y and therefore live forever. Ignoring the fact that they will instead die of A, B, and C, possibly totaling out at more deaths faster than if you never treated anyone at all.

Yes, once again, I've bent something apparently unrelated back to my usual screed against disease definitions which spiral out of control, scare the shit out of people, and result in treatment morbidity and mortality equal to or in excess of whatever it was everyone is so terrified of. Or, don't bother being screened for cancer, but be willing to consider treatment if it becomes symptomatic.

Or, simplest of all, don't go looking for trouble.

Supes, Sex Ed and Disease Prevention
In a previous post, I described a little about Supes (supernatural characters in urban fantasy/romance books/series -- such as vampires, werewolves, etc.) and sex (heterosexist, manual, oral and tab P slot V -- very little anal, altho more than a few years ago). Romance novels have gone through some changes over the decades in terms of the amount and kind of sex depicted and whether that sex included depiction of contraception (of any sort) or condoms-as-prophylaxis. There was a brief period of time when it was absolutely de rigeur for someone to fumble opening a foil packet, and frequently described as adorable/cute/sexy that she had no mortal clue how to put it on him. There was, sadly, rarely the let's-go-to-the-CVS and buy some protection scene that characterizes the beginning of a lot of relationships. No, these characters were prepared without that preparedness freaking anyone out (altho sometimes there was a joke in there about it was a really big box or whatever).

And can a reader find lube in a romance novel? Of course not. (Not even, I might add, in a book in which a post-menopausal women is depicted as getting it on three times in one night, altho that was in no way relevant to urban fantasy.)

Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be anyone wandering around these books clueless as to what is going to happen (go visit a Regency for that hilarity). Sarah and Candy did an excellent job describing common author errors in writing sex scenes in their vastly entertaining _The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels_ (location of the hymen, being most notable, but they also talk about recovery time for men). In general, there aren't that many virgins wandering around (altho there are a few). There is a lot of emphasis put on how big the outie is vs. how tight and wet the innie is, but I'm prepared to overlook that.

What I have more trouble with is that characters in urban fantasy don't seem to worry about STDs at _all_. Now, in some instances, this is explicitly covered: vampires can smell infected blood, vampires have special powers to filter out the Badness, werewolves are immune, blah, blah, bleeping blah. In the 2nd book in the Immortals After Dark, the (still mortal) witch has a contraceptive patch which she insists on using, even tho the werewolf wants to knock her up as quick as possible to prove to himself that she is his Mate. She's not going for that, cause until she converts to immortal, having the 2-3 offspring litter of a 7 foot tall Lykae will probably kill her. This strikes me as an interesting conversation to be having (altho a bit reminiscent of some of the themes in Stephanie Myers books), but I also have to wonder: just because it isn't making the werewolf sick doesn't mean he's not still a carrier. Why doesn't anyone worry about that?

If you remapped all the werewolves and vampires and whatever to some ethnic group, all that stuff about their big dicks goes from being HAAAWWWTTT to being a problematic stereotype. And all that Forbidden Love/what will my coven think becomes all-of-my-family-and-friends-are-raging-bigots. All that I-don't-use-condoms-or-birth-control becomes all too reminiscent of the girls I grew up with, who figured if you planned ahead, it made the sin worse. And the one-true-love/soulmate/blah blah bleeping blah just sounds the justifications of someone thinking with their hoo ha instead of their head.

I'd kinda still like to have the leaps tall buildings, kicks serious butt, recovers from major trauma quickly qualities. But could someone please make the worrisome parallels Go Away? Or better still, put a hat on that before you stick it anywhere.

Do Immortals Vote? And what political party would they belong to?
While politics play a major role in romance/fantasy novels/series involving werewolves, vampires, etc., the politics in question are not of the who-do-you-support-for-mayor variety (I'm sure there's an exception somewhere, and I hope you'll tell me about it). But it might be possible to impute some political stances to the paranormal/supernatural/immortals of various series.

(1) How do they feel about health care?

In general, supes (short for supernatural) have the ability to regenerate. If they are vampires, they might need to drink blood. If they are werewolves, it will generally happen automatically, unless they've been poisoned with silver or something. If they are witches, they can drink a potion, cast a spell, go to their happy place, etc. In general, supes have limitations that make it difficult for them to hold down a high-paying job with benefits: they might be unable to tolerate sunlight, unable to work for a couple days around the full moon, required to participate at a second's notice in a bunch of illegal Pack related business, etc. In practice, supes who might be able to hold down a high-paying job with benefits don't do so anyway. Either they flunked out of college because they couldn't control their power, or they are Ancient and Very, Very Rich.

Some supes have mortal friends, and they do worry about those mortal friends, especially when they get hurt by being kidnapped or otherwise damaged in a fight. Usually, the solution is to make them drink blood so they heal magically.

There are exceptions (notably in Harris' Stackhouse series, in which somebody winds up in the hospital in almost every single entry), but in general, supes avoid the health care system. When they do interact with it, they're looking for doctors who don't report bullet wounds and they pay cash.

It's not a sure thing, but I'm betting the supes don't have a strong feeling one way or the other about mandatory health insurance coverage for all.

(2) Taxes?

Do supes pay taxes? Well, it seems fairly likely that the uber-rich supes are going to take advantage of their uber-richness to hire good tax lawyers and minimize their tax exposure. The ones not holding down regular jobs may or may not have a strong opinion about taxes, but to the extent that their money worries are severe, they probably would like FICA to be a lot lower. It's unlikely you could hold their attention for long on the subject of tax policy, but they likely have the usual knee-jerk lower-would-be-better response.

(3) Parenting Issues

Supes reproduce. A lot. Which is kind of weird, given how many cross-species couples there are, and how female vampires/werewolves/whatever are supposedly Entirely Extinct and making more is Very, Very Difficult and tends to result in the death of the candidate. It is rarely made clear who delivers these babies, except when the babies are born before the arrival of the skilled birth attendant (like, no one was ever going to show up), or are caught by hubby or the coven or whatever. Usually, babies appear between books (after the romance focused on their parents, and before their parents are the doting parents of 1 or more while a sibling/friend/packmate/coworker/etc. is going through difficulties attempting to hook up) and display many of the characteristics of Soap Opera Children. Could Moms Rising convince some of the women-supes to support their platform of paid maternity leave, affordable high-quality child care, health insurance for all children, etc.? Given how few of the supes have jobs to go back to, and given the above comments on supernatural regeneration/healing, it seems a little unlikely, however, mama's commitment to the rest of the pack/other vampires/etc. does create dilemmas in which she needs someone to watch the kids while she kicks butt (if you know of a SAHD (stay at home dad) supe, I _really_ _fucking_ _want_ _to_ _read_ _that_ _now_. I mean. HAAAAAWWWWT!). Usually, a sibling/coworker/packmate/whatever (who also had her own book at some point in the series) steps up to the plate.

Moms Rising 0.

(4) Peak Oil/Climate Change/Conservation/Energy Security

I've put these all in one bucket, even tho they have slightly different appeal to slightly different groups of people. They all, however, amount to an effort to modify the way that we consume energy (reduction and/or substitution and/or sequestration).

Supes tend to have the capacity to run very fast over long distances including over broken ground in the dark. This limits their need to hop in the car to run to the store (not that we ever actually see a supe hop into a car to go to the store to buy milk or a 6 pack or whatever. Or, for that matter, trot, fly, trace, etc.). I don't know that I've ever read about a supe on a bicycle (that would be damn cool, tho), installing solar panels on the roof, a wind turbine on the estate, converting the limo with the blackened windows to run on biodiesel, etc. And there's a hella lot of airplane travel first class and/or in private jets and/or helicopter. On the one hand, really old supes are really used to not using fossil fuels. On the other hand, they are sucking them down as fast or faster than mere mortals now that they have them.

This does not sound like a Must Reduce Carbon Footprint kinda crowd.

As for what their belief system might be on the subject of extinction, climate change and so forth, I think it's safe to say that people who have direct and regular contact with deities (like, their parents or grandparents or whatever) might have a very different perspective on the relevant science.

(5) Sex?

Supes in romances have a lot of it, but it is relatively vanilla. Sure there might be a little of the tying up and tying down, and there might be a little doggy style, but it's mostly petting, licking, and tab P slot V action, with the occasional three-some (not all the same gender and almost always with the interactions between the two of the same gender highly limited). For all the interspecies action, there's remarkably little same-sex action, and no species with more than two genders (in romance/supernatural novels published recently by mainstream presses -- I'm sure you can find something out of Ellora's Cave). (I don't know what LKH has gotten up to recently. I'm assuming it's more of the everyone and everything having at the Golden Orifice, but if it got more interesting than that, I'd like to hear about it. And if you don't know what that meant, you don't really want to.).

(6) Toleration

The major conflict in a lot of supe romances is of the Forbidden Love variety, but some of it is of the They Must Not Know What I Really Am variety (Sookie Stackhouse being a perfect example of that). Eventually, through blackmail, the production of grandchildren, ascending to a throne, abandoning one's past, or whatever, an accommodation is found, but even once the Pack reluctantly accepts that one is sleeping with a Whatever, or the other Vamps have grudgingly accepted that you are doing a Whatever, or you've decided you didn't like your Coven after all, or you want to Effect Change from Within, there is still a huge chunk of prejudice against your mate floating around. And you tend to become friends with other people after they wind up in the same situation.

Why do I feel like this stuff is aimed squarely at readers whose extended family and kinship network (at least the one they were born into) is so conservative it's basically safe to call them bigots, but of course no one will because they are Family?

And I think I should be a lot more grateful to Charlaine Harris and her Sookie Stackhouse than I often feel. Her political world is way sophisticated compared to most of the rest of what is out there.

a novel approach to bibliomancy
Normally, bibliomancy is accomplished by taking something (like a Bible), opening it to a random page and arbitrarily pointing at a passage and that using that passage as a sort of fortune cookie or magic 8 ball to help make a difficult decision or otherwise guide one in life.

Some time ago, I noticed that I have a Great Affection for Doom. It's good to recognize things like this, otherwise one's emotions can lead one into vast complications and trouble. But if you know what you like, you can go instead find a nice, safe version of it to satisfy the urge and call it good. In my case, since I know I really Love Doom, I can do things like worry about Peak Oil and Climate Change by buying bicycles and attempting to run errands on them, rather than, say, bunker up in the countryside and hope the ammo holds out when the mindless starving horde from the city try to come steal my stockpiled Ensure. Which, I might add, was a retread of the choices available for Y2K. I also vastly enjoyed Y2K. In that case, I called a bunch of people to make sure the garbage would still get picked up and the water/sewer and electric would still work. I have my priorities straight (altho I did also use it as an excuse to buy gold coins. Pretty!).

Dorothy Sayers, I think using her character Lord Peter Wimsy as a mouth piece, said something about how you can look at a person's library as a way of understanding who they are as a person. You can see the successive skins they have shed, as they mature and change in the course of their life. Of course, you can't do that if they _get rid_ of things, but True Bibliophiles have trouble getting rid of books so there's generally a good amount of evidence lying around. I think this would have been in one of the short stories, but it's been a solid couple decades since I read it so I'm probably confused.

In any event, it has always been in my head since she articulated that so very clearly, that one way to understand myself is to understand why I like the books I like. Particularly when, as is all too often the case, there is no obvious redeeming feature to the book, and quite a lot to loathe. It will be in this spirit that I'll be posting a bit about Immortals After Dark and romance in general, paranormal/urban fantasy, more specifically.

_No Rest for the Wicked_, Kresley Cole, (kindle)
Altho, speaking of no rest for the wicked, John Ensign has announced he is running for re-election to his Senate seat in 2012. I guess that means he _won't_ be running for President?

Returning to the review at hand (altho the prezzies to Ensign's lover's kids are sooooo tempting to comment on, particularly given that there's apparently some effort to emphasize the gifts complied with tax law. Because _that's_ the part that really matters here):

In this second entry in the Immortals After Dark Series, a Valkyrie named Kaderin the Cold-Hearted finds herself unable, for the second time in her millennia long life, to kill a vampire. This time, the vampire is Sebastian Wroth, brother to Nicholai Wroth who we met in the first series. He applied some leverage to the Valkyrie coven to get them to recognize his marriage to another Valkyrie named Myst. The first time Kaderin was unable to kill a vampire in battle, he turned around and killed her two twin sisters, and she's been guilt-ridden about it ever since, except somebody (presumably a deity) made it impossible for her to feel anything at all (hence the title "the Cold-Hearted". She meets Sebastian, he wants to die (he didn't want to be Turned into a vampire by his brother Nicholai in the first place) and isn't shy about saying so. Instead, they dry hump like crazy, Kaderin gets her emotions back, freaks out and departs. And Sebastian decides he has met is Bride (One True Soulmate). Sebastian goes off to get blood from the butcher and buy himself some decent clothes and then chase her all over the world after discovering that he doesn't need to have been a place to teleport (Standard Issue Vampire Trait, called "tracing") there. He can just visualize Kaderin and pop! There he is. You can imagine how she feels about this.

Meanwhile, the Talisman's Hie (a paranormal Amazing Race run by the goddess Riora) is starting. It happens 4 times a millennium and Kaderin has been winning it for a long time. This time, a witch named Mariketa the Awaited, a Lykae (Scottish werewolf) named Bowe (first cousin to the werewolf in the first book, and we met him briefly in that entry) and numerous others have entered. Sebastian stalks Kaderin and decides to enter to win it for her. Hmmmm. The witch curses Bowe so he can't regenerate, but otherwise it's basically a contest between the vampire, the werewolf and the valkyrie, and a siren named Lucindeya (who I'm _still_ worried about stuck in that ice cave -- I hope she gets rescued in a later book) for a bunch of goodies. The ultimate prize is a two-time-use travel-in-time key that lets you go back and retrieve something (as long as it isn't too disruptive). Kaderin and Bowe have numerous arguments in colorful parts of the globe while casually dealing with other supernatural interference.

This book overlaps slightly with book #3, which is Bowe and Mariketa's romance, and there are some assumptions in this entry that you remember stuff from book #1, but Cole is fairly good about supplying enough information to let you treat these as stand-alone novels if you are so inclined.

Again, you know whether this is your kind of thing or not. Obviously, there's a Happily Ever After -- this is a romance after all.

T. went to school on the Burley Kazoo!
No, not a musical instrument. A trailabike. R. drove. The transition was apparently tricky; I'll try to pick him up the same way so he has more of a chance to get used to it.