Reading
I finished The Last Battle by CS Lewis, thus ending my journey with The Chronicles of Narnia. While I enjoyed this story, I confess that this final volume didn’t dazzle me as much as the other books in the series. It was a fitting end, with characters from earlier in the series entering Narnia again one last time. One thing I liked was how quickly the animals and people of Narnia quickly followed a false Aslan, even though this imposter was doing horrible things that were against everything they knew about the great lion. I would have called it unbelievable that so many people can be so easily duped by a false leader, but the last few years have taught me otherwise. Other than that, the actual final battle itself felt rushed, and I think this book could have been a little longer to suit the finality of the story.
I am in the middle of two books, and there isn’t much to say about either them. I’m about 50% through the audiobook for A Memory of Light, the final volume of the Wheel of Time. We’re gearing up for the last battle in this book as well, though the chapter called “The Last Battle” is several hours long instead of only a few pages like in CS Lewis’s book. If I recall from my first time reading this book about 10 years ago, this chapter is ~150 pages on its own.
I’m also about a third of the way through The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. I forgot just how exposition-heavy this book is. It doesn’t bother me too much, but there are moments where I feel like I’m being talked down to. Mr. Liu, you don’t have to tell me everything; you can let me infer some things on my own. I’ve heard that the rest of the books in the series aren’t like this one, so I can forgive the exposition. Where the dry scientific exposition of Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson bored me, the explanations of technology and history lessons in The Grace of Kings don’t bore me as much. I think that maybe hard scifi might just not be my cup of tea, which is okay.
Writing
I did almost no writing this past week. Part of it was my 4-day weekend celebrating the 4th of July here in the U.S., and part of it is simple burn out. My job is getting busy, as we have a new workflow that we have to implement, and that’s been taking up a lot of my mental energy.
I made progress in my re-write of my story, crafting an opening scene, but that was under 200 words. I haven’t touched my novel outline. Since I’m basically starting over, the progress I’ve made in my manuscript the last 4 months feels like a big ol’ nothingburger.
Oh well. This is a new week.
The Night Bulletin 