Marie Brennan's Blog, page 42

Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 9

For once, a chapter that’s stayed intact!

(Mostly. Okay, so we added a scene in at the start, but that’s because of the aforementioned changes to Chapter 8, which necessitated some follow-up.)

We’ve got a slightly different organization for each book. This one is divided into three parts of nine chapters each — which, yes, means that this is the end of Part One! And as suits that position, it is very full of (metaphorical) explosions. Some of which the characters see coming, some of which they don’t; some of which the readers may see coming, some of which they may not. It’s good to provide a mix.

Even more so that in the previous books, there are some strong pivots between the parts here. Not to the extent of each section addressing self-contained plots, but the context and direction of events changes pretty distinctly after this point. In a really fun way . . . and by “fun” I mean we’re raking the characters over an emotional cheese grater. But that’s what you’re here for, right?

Word count: 60,000
Authorial sadism: Push someone too far . . .
Authorial amusement: Look, it was Alyc’s idea to make the clue send him there.
BLR quotient: Oh so much blood. Past and present.

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New Worlds: Time for School

Most of you are probably like me, and got the bulk of your formal education through a school. This week the New Worlds Patreon takes a look at those — comment over there!

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Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 8

I’ve been writing instead of updating! Which, if I had to choose, is the right way to go — but I don’t actually have to choose, so let’s get updating. (Especially since my subconscious was convinced I’d posted about Chapter 8 already, buuuuut . . . apparently not.)

This chapter has some of the (now expected) non-linearity, in that a scene which was in it got pushed forward into to Chapter 7, and a scene which wasn’t originally in it got added in. Those changes were both good ones; adding the scene made it super long, which shifting the other scene helped with, and then we realized we could build a link between the new scene and what follows it, with the result that this becomes a nicely coherent chapter. That’s something we very much aimed for in The Mask of Mirrors — relatively few of the chapters there just consist of one-off scenes that need to happen around that time, and many of the chapters have a unifying arc from beginning to end — but as the story has become more complex over time, it’s been harder to make that true. Much of our rearranging, though, has been about trying to shuffle the little mosaic tiles of narrative into the best possible arrangement so that, e.g., the consequences to a given event are neither dropped for too long, nor shoehorned in next to things that aren’t related to them. Revision will also help with some of that, when we can look at the big picture and see places to slip in acknowledgment of XYZ or mention of QRS so that the flow from bit to bit is smoother, but we’re doing a lot of the heavy lifting right now.

The real FML in this chapter, though, is the last two scenes. They were originally in viewpoints A and B, respectively, because we expected the second scene to have stuff personal to B. When we got into writing it, though, we realized it had evolved, and that was no longer really true. Since the first scene could work from either viewpoint, I backtracked and recast both scenes, such that the first one was from B’s pov and the second was from A’s. And all was well.

. . . until we realized that the second scene was launching something too early, and also there was another plotline we really needed to introduce way sooner, so we decided to take the “too early” bit out and replace it with the “not early enough” bit. At which point, um, that scene became very personally relevant to B.

So back I go AGAIN and RE-RE-DO both scenes, restoring the first to viewpoint A, and the second to viewpoint B. Now, the good news is that whenever we make cuts of more than, like, a sentence, I tend to save the text. So I already had the original versions of those scenes. But they weren’t as polished as the second take had been, so there was still a fair bit of me having to rework the material. And if it’s tedious to change the viewpoint on a scene once, lemme tell ya, doing it twice is enough to make me beat my head against my desk.

(Isabella never gave me these problems. There’s something to be said for five books all in a single perspective.)

Word count: ~54000
Authorial sadism: In some ways, the plotline we’re now launching in this chapter — but that won’t be apparent for a while. So I’ll give it to the scene we added in, because really, sadism is center stage with that one.
Authorial amusement: “The four most terrifying words in a knot boss’s world were one of his fists saying, ‘I got an idea.'”
BLR quotient: It begins and ends with blood.

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New Worlds: Apprentice, Journeyman, Master

For many types of work, the best way to learn the job is by doing it under the supervision of an experienced professional. This week the New Worlds Patreon looks at apprentices, journeymen, and masters — comment over there!

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Books read, July-August 2021

I am behind!

The Girl in the Tower, Katherine Arden. Second of the Winternight Trilogy, and hard going in some places. The idea that Vasya’s gifts are viewed with suspicion and fear, that people might not react well to her . . . that isn’t something Arden just pays lip service to and then breezes past to get on with the adventure.

The Hand of the Sun King, J.T. Greathouse. (Disclaimer: the author is a friend.) Epic fantasy, and one that reminded me significantly of Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant and Yoon Ha Lee’s Phoenix Extravagant, inasmuch as it involves someone from a conquered/colonized people becoming complicit in the power structure of the colonizers, then eventually turning revolutionary. The latter takes some time, but this is also the first book of a series, so there’s plenty of room for action later on.

The Memory Collectors, Kim Neville. I started out unsure of this book and then got sucked right in. The two main characters share the ability to read emotions and memories off of objects; they are polar opposites in how they deal with the psychological strain that puts on them, and the novel does a lovely job of showing how neither woman’s coping method is healthy — how both of them need to learn something from the other in order to function and survive. Very much more on the literary end of fantasy, and beautifully done.

Each of Us a Desert, Mark Oshiro. Post-apocalyptic fantasy in a setting very reminiscent of the American Southwest, though it’s never explicitly identified as our world. The main character, Xochitl, is a cuentista; she has the magical gift of relieving people’s emotional burdens by taking the stories they tell — literally taking them; the teller doesn’t remember it afterward — and giving it to Sol, the sun they worship. Like the previous book, this is not entirely a functional setup, and pretty soon Xochitl runs away from it, without quite being able to escape. This is a YA novel, though, which means that a lot of the emotional focus is on Xochitl wanting to feel seen. I’ll confess I didn’t entirely follow some of the ending, and also there were places where the text shifted into a one-sentence-per-paragraph mode long enough to feel really choppy, but overall this was engaging.

my own work doesn’t count

Hard in Hightown, Varric Tethras and Mary Kirby. This was sadly disappointing. It’s basically a Dragon Age in-joke — which I’m fine with — around the fact that one of the characters in the game, Varric Tethras, had written a hard-boiled detective novel called Hard in Hightown. Except this turned out to be more like a novelette, maybe a very short novella, than an actual novel, and also it played its concept way too straight. I wanted it to be, like, twelve hundred percent more over the top. Alas.

Over the Woodward Wall, A. Deborah Baker. Yet another pen name for Seanan McGuire, this one invented because her novel Middlegame quotes extensively from a fictional children’s book by A. Deborah Baker, and of course being Seanan, she went and wrote the whole damn book. Tonally this is in the general ballpark of things like The Phantom Tollbooth, Alice in Wonderland, and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and while I liked it well enough, I have to admit it felt way more compelling when I was only seeing snippets of it through the epigraphs in Middlegame. I’m likely to give it to my nephew, and I’ll be curious to see what he thinks; I can’t tell how much this will appeal to actual children, as opposed to being sort of a “DVD extra” for Seanan’s adult readers.

Icelandic Magic: Aims, Tools and Techniques of the Icelandic Sorcerers, Christopher Alan Smith. This sits at an odd boundary between academic work that goes into detail about the surviving historical texts which tell us about the making and use of rune-staves, and New Age work that makes suggestions for how to use this magic in your own life. Its focus is early modern Icelandic magic, not the period of the sagas, but it still has some interesting insights into the lines along which the ideas did and did not run: much less importance assigned to the materials used, for example, but a great deal assigned to intent.

Comeuppance Served Cold, Marion Deeds. (Disclaimer: the author is a friend, and this was sent to me for blurbing.) Jazz Age novella in an open urban fantasy version of our history, out in Seattle where a leading politician is cracking down on unlicensed magic users — which tends to include marginalized people of various sorts. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, because this is built somewhat around unveiling certain details as it goes, but it was definitely a fun read.

The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations, John W. Chaffee. Holy crap was this dry, yo (and you’ll see more of that to come, because I’m trying to research the Chinese examination system, and as a friend put it, that entire genre is apparently dry AF). Useful if you need to know the topic for some reason? But not something I’d recommend for casual reading.

A Heart Divided, Jin Yong, trans. Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant. Fourth and final of the Legends of the Condor Heroes; full review here.

Beowulf: A New Translation, Maria Dahvana Headley. This is the translation that famously takes the opening word, Hwaet — often translated with words like “Lo!” or “Listen!” or “Hark!” — and renders it as “Bro!” Headley is very interested in unpacking the belligerent masculinity of this poem, though she doesn’t neglect to also pay attention to the women: as she points out, an influential glossary of Old English translates aglaec-wif as “wretch, or monster, of a woman,” while the masculine form aglaeca is “monster, demon, fiend” when talking about Grendel, but “hero” when talking about Beowulf, and hmmm, maybe there’s a different meaning underlying that which could be more coherent and also more charitable to Grendel’s mother. (She suggests “formidable.”) Anyway, the whole way through this, my subconscious kept wondering when Lin-Manuel Miranda was going to make a musical of it, which gives you a pretty good sense of its general mood.

The Class of 1761: Examinations, State, and Elites in Eighteenth-Century China, Iona D. Man-Cheong. More incredibly dry research reading on the Chinese examination system! This time in the Qing Dynasty instead! Basically, same as above, except this time with pinyin instead of Wade-Giles. (I think I’m going to get linguistic whiplash from the way the books I’m reading flip-flop between the two systems of romanization.)

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New Worlds: Childhood Education

The lovely Topic Builders of the New Worlds Patreon having voted, this month’s theme is education! Beginning very young — basically from the moment we’re born, long before anybody thinks about formally teaching us stuff like math or how to forge a horseshoe. Comment over there!

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Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 7

My sister, speaking of the non-linearity of how we’re writing the third volume of this trilogy, dubbed it “an entire book of Chapter 14s,” in the sense that by the time we’re done, everything in it will probably have been part of Chapter 14 at some point or another. I wound up correcting that to “an entire book of Chapter 7s.” Here we have a scene we initially skipped over and back-tracked to write, a conversation that was originally in Chapter 2, a scene we decided to retrofit in when we were in the middle of drafting Chapter 9, a scene that was originally in Chapter 8 before being moved forward, and oh yeah there’s the fact that I got turned around and had us writing Chapter 8 before we even started this one, because I forgot what order things went in.

>_<

But hey, it’s finally in a complete enough state that I feel like I can report about it! (Well, it was that way several days ago, but I didn’t get around to posting until now.) This chapter has a lovely bit of spectacle, but the various adjustments means it also has some important politicking before we get to the spectacle. Revisions mean it now also also has a minor character who’s been a constant, low-grade irritant from the start of the series, getting the first of two comeuppances that are coming to them. It also also also has a moment that caused my sister, our alpha reader, to cry “portage feels!,” which I suspect is a phrase that has never before been used in the history of the world.

I have given up on pretending that the non-linearity will stop. It just seems to be how this book is going to go.

Word count: ~46,000
Authorial sadism: Someone shared only half of what they know. The rest will come out eventually, but right now, that someone wants their listener to suffer.
Authorial amusement: The aforementioned comeuppance. It’s really quite shamelessly delivered.
BLR quotient: Rhetoric in the first half, pivoting through blood to a final note of love.

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New Worlds: Women in War

For our final essay this month, the New Worlds Patreon looks at a specific subset of people involved in war: namely, women. Comment over there!

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The Advent of Scent: Mega-Post, Weeks 24-31

I have been utterly failing to post about perfumes, but the testing has not stopped — in fact, at this point I’m within sniffing distance (heh) of trying new things for a solid year. So let’s try to catch up!

WEEK 24

* Sol (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “dry gingergrass, litsea cubeba, neroli, frankincense tears, saffron infused honey, rosemary and the faint touch of true sweet cinnamon bark.” I got the frankincense, ginger, and rosemary in the bottle, which sort of turned into cleaning fluid when I applied it. Fortunately that switched to STRONGLY lemon (from the litsea cubeba) as it dried, then just a faded citrus, but meh.

* Briar Path (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “a sun drenched trail leading to a day dream of ripe berries and wood rose, rich forest loam, ozone, dark amber and cream.” I only really got the rose in the bottle; after that it was sweet, tart berries, picking up a woody element and then a creamy amber during drydown. I don’t think I like this one quite as much as BPAL’s The Red Queen, but I like it enough to try again!

* Herb Garden (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “sun warmed tomato leaves, with rosemary, parsley, and mint.” An herby mint cleaning fluid in the bottle, very astringent on application, strongly parsley and mint. Over time it’s mostly tomato leaves, though, so meh.

* Zazz (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “tart cranberry, pink grapefruit, sparkling champagne all shook up with crushed ginger root.” I had such a terrible experience with BPAL’s Bon Vivant that I was very cautious of this one, especially since even in the bottle it struck me as ginger + flat champagne. In fact, I was so cautious that I decided to apply it to my ankle instead of my wrist — yes, I’m flexible enough to sniff my own ankle — and I was very glad I did. BLECH. Champagne may officially be on the list of Permanent Nope for me.

* U-Pick (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “apricot, Tahitian vanilla, sandalwood, and cedar.” Like many perfumes, this sort of did a swap from bottle to wet; it began as vanilla with a trailing apricot tang, then went apricot to vanilla. Eventually dried down to vanilla sandalwood, though, which is perfectly pleasant but not very interesting.

* Mandarin and Osmanthus
I assume the other thing I smelled in with the orange/mandarin is the osmanthus, since this is a two-note blend. Wasn’t hugely a fan.

* Lavender and White Chocolate Madelines
Very cloying and sugary in the bottle; then just mostly turns into white chocolate, not much lavender. Way too foody for me.

* Haus Amber at Midday (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “Haus Amber with a slice of pear infused yellow cake and a drop of chamomile.” I wish the pear had stuck around more in this one; it turned too quickly to just sort of a sweet cake.

WEEK 25

* Oberon
Described as “orchid, white musk, and bergamot wafting over juniper berries, with a gentle touch of soft, earthy patchouli.” This was a very confusing one! It actually smells more fruity to me, and starts out very clean and light — maaaaaybe that’s the orchid? I swear I almost smell pear in this, even though it isn’t there. I’ll try it again just to see.

* Falling Leaves Moon
Described as “a cascade of fading leaves against a backdrop of grey ambergris, grassy vetiver, carrot seed, fossilized amber, green cardamom, cinnamon husk, saffron, tobacco flower, and bay laurel.” Very green and astringent at the outset, which I guess is the grass and maybe the vetiver (still haven’t quite gotten a handle on that one). It’s interesting, but I just don’t like green scents well enough to keep this one.

* Goblin
Described as “black coconut, gnarly patchouli, and sweet benzoin.” Benzoin is another one I don’t know well, but since what I got out of this was only a little bit patchouli and no coconut, I assume it mostly came through as benzoin — which made me feel I smelled like an old attic.

* Beaver Moon
Described as “creamy coffee cheesecake with a hint of milk chocolate.” Very milky, sweet coffee, with a slight buttery touch, but not as horrible as that tends to be. It’s a good balance of what it is; I just feel it’s not for me.

* Scrappy Damsel
Described as “orange blossom, neroli, white musk, shimmering amber, yellow sandalwood, Himalayan cedar, radiant saffron, and golden honey.” Sweet and thick in the bottle, sandalwood and maybe amber; goes more floral on application, with a hint of the woods. But mostly it’s very heavy and sweet, a mix of the musk and amber and honey — too heavy for my taste.

* Kali
Described as “cassia, hibiscus, musk rose, Himalayan wild tulip, lotus and osmanthus swirled with offertory dark chocolate, red wine, tobacco, balsam and honey.” Oddly, this goes in the opposite order I would expect; it starts out like chocolate wine, then goes floral. Not gratingly so, with a sort of resinous wine touch, and I like it enough to try again.

* Empathy (House of Oud)
Described as “pear blossom, raspberry flowers, Indian davana, fruity tobacco, raspberry infusion, scorched wood, transparent mosses, benzoin, silver fir, and Irian oud.” Basically just a slightly fruity generic cologne, which faded very fast.

* The Poinsettia Gown
Described as “rose cream, jasmine cream, mallow, vanilla foam, and sweet amber.” A dance of sweet jasmine rose swapping which one is dominant until it goes to vanilla amber, which is not interesting to me.

WEEK 26

* Musc Invisible (Juliette Has a Gun)
Described as “jasmine absolute, cotton flower, and white musk.” Pleasantly cotton-y, which is not something that often works for me — it easily tips over into laundry smell — but “surprisingly not off-putting” isn’t enough to make me keep it.

* 31 Kisses (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “electrified strawberry, a snap of wild cherry, smooth cream soda, and a little bit of sugar. Nicely fruity! Strawberry cream soda turned into cherry cream soda turned into strawberry cherry with a hint of cream; I like it enough to try again.

* Fig & Cranberry Sufganiyot
Very fruity dessert, though it strikes me as more raspberry than cranberry; over time the fig grounds it a bit. I’d call it good at what it is, though it isn’t for me.

* Lady Vengeance (Juliette Has a Gun)
Described as “lavender, bergamot, rose, patchouli, and ambroxan.” Clean citrus tempered by lavender, with the rose coming through later, and an inoffensive touch of ambergris (that’s a note I rarely like). Fine, but meh.

* Amber and Cardamom
Sweet cardamom, drying to something that smells like honey musk. I almost like it, but not quite.

* Wolf Moon
Described as “bone-white sandalwood aged with beeswax and balsam, crushed grass and juniper berries, ambrette seed, and lupine musk.” Juniper, picking up grass, then going resinous, ending in sandalwood. Meh.

* Blackberry and Oud(h)
(The parenthesis is there because sometimes it’s spelled with the H and sometimes without, depending on where you look.) The oud really hits me as chemical, in a way that really screws with the blackberry. Eventually that smooths out, but I just don’t really like oud. (With or without an H.)

* Anyway (Juliette Has a Gun)
Described as “neroli, lime, hedione (jasmine-like), absolute jasmine, and ambroxan.” Sprayed on, this is SUPER CITRUS . . . for about two seconds, seriously, that was gone by the time I’d extended my arm for my sister to sniff. After that it’s faintly floral, then faintly ambergris, bah.

WEEK 27

* Pear Inc. (Juliette Has a Gun)
Described as “pear accord, cetalox, and musks.” Very pear at the outset, but like the citrus in Anyway, that goes away very fast, and then you just have ambergris. The whole thing doesn’t last very long.

* Attaquer le Soleil Marquis de Sade (Etat Libre d’Orange)
I have yet to find a single-note perfume I like. This one is just labdanum, which I don’t hate, but also don’t love.

* Jovial Embrace
Described as “blackberry, wild plum, oakmoss, and red currant.” This is another that reminds me of The Red Queen, darkly fruity with a woody note. I’ll keep to compare.

* The Robotic Scarab
Described as “polished metallic notes, glossy leather, frankincense, star anise, and thin lubricating oils.” In the bottle, mostly frankincense, with an overtone of anise; on application, mildly leather and anise with a hint of frankincense. Then it goes straight to leather and then fades, leaving maybe a tiny hint of resin. Bah.

* Hearth
Described as “sweet pipe tobacco, cherry wood, the warm, worn leather of an easy chair and a pleasant, subtle waft of fireplace smoke.” Points for being a bit different! It starts out as the pipe tobacco, sweet and a little fruity, and then goes to sweet spiced smoke. It also fades pretty fast, though, at least on me.

* Famous Kabuki Actors in Imagined Scenes of Lovemaking
Described as “goat’s milk, honey dust, vanilla husk, oak bark, cardamom pod, tobacco leaf, cedarwood, and vetiver.” For once the tobacco wasn’t unpleasant, but that’s because I mostly didn’t smell it. Cardamom vanilla honey in the bottle with a bit of that buttery note, going to cardamom and butter on application, but fortunately the latter backed off, leaving sweet spiced with a later woody trace. Still not quite me, though.

* 500 Years (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “cardamom, Turkish rose, saffron, cocoa, oud, amber woods, bergamot.” Bergamot and OUD followed by OUD and I think I’m about ready to stop trying OUD.

* Spring Vacation (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “sweet tonka, fluffy marshmallow, ripe strawberry and pastel sweet pea flowers.” This is one that really smells like bubblegum at first, with a fruity tone, but then it goes musk-adjacent. Pleasant enough, but I don’t need it.

WEEK 28

* 2020 Aesthetic
Described as “cherry pulp, crushed raspberries, and sugar.” Cough syrup, but not unpleasantly so? It goes a bit too chemical over time, though, and doesn’t remain fruity enough.

* Gingerbread Zombie
Described as “gingerbread, vanilla bean, peppermint, and milk chocolate chips.” Very buttery gingerbread at first; then the butter fades, the vanilla rises up, and the peppermint cuts the gingerbread. Inoffensive, but I’m not enough into the general concept.

* Eau de Protection (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “black pepper, ginger, Bulgarian rose, bergamot, jasmine, benzoin from Laos, blood accord, patchouli, incense, and cocoa.” On application, citrusy and fresh with a hint of rose; the rose persists, taking on pepper and ginger instead. But in late drydown it’s strongly floral with a patchouli undertone, so neh.

* Black Twig, Apple Labdanum, Oak Bark, Cedar, and Bourbon Vanilla
Apple with a heavier undertone that becomes woody over time, and then some vanilla. I’ll keep for now, to try against other apple blends.

* Oud (Les Élixirs)
Described as “blood orange, cypress, cardamom, timur pepper, frankincense, vanilla bean extract, patchouli ‘cœur’ and oud wood.” Starts as cypress, pepper and a slight astringency that’s probably from the orange, but then . . . patchouli and oud. Meh.

* Fou d’Absinthe (L’Artisan)
Described as “absinthe, star anise, dry pine, cistus, angelica flower, blackcurrant buds, clove, ginger, nutmeg, patchouli, pepper, pine needles, and fir balsam.” Licorice and pine in the bottle; on me, it becomes very green and astringent, with ginger and licorice. Then it mellows out to something clean and fresh, in a way that evokes laundry — I’d honestly quite like this as a dryer sheet. Not so much as a perfume on me, though.

* Apple Spice Hard Candy
Does what it says on the tin; heavy, thick apple with spice. I may try this again.

* Mmmm… (Juliette Has a Gun)
Described as “raspberry, geranium, neroli, jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom, patchouli, and sandalwood absolute.” I got fifteen seconds of sweet fruity warmth; then the fruit was gone forever. Tuberose and I think the geranium for a bit, followed by sandalwood patchouli; I say meh.

WEEK 29

* Surprise Ejaculation (oh BPAL, your names . . .)
Described as “white pear, white champaca, pink grapefruit, and effervescent white musk.” Fruity hippie in the bottle, champaca with more pear than grapefruit, though there’s a bit of an edge from the latter. Gets grapefruitier for a bit, but unsurprisingly, it ends in musky champak.

* The Creeping Mist
Described as “orris, yuzu, white ginger, linden flower, petitgrain, and lotus.” Fruity dryer sheet! This is another that’s basically inoffensive laundry material, being a very mild floral, kind of soft and rounded, that I assume is the linden flower or the lotus.

* Erotic Sake Bowl
Described as “pink grapefruit, sugared yuzu, lemon leaf, raspberry, Queen mandarin, and plum blossom musk.” BPAL’s mandarin note pretty much always strikes me as an orange Tic-Tac, which isn’t unpleasant, but also isn’t my speed. Winds up as fruity musk.

* Experimentum Crucis (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “lychee, apple, rose neo-absolute, jasmin absolute, honey, patchouli, and musks.” Ten seconds of sweet citrus turns into ROSE + jasmine. This basically stays hella floral throughout.

* Bois D’Oud (Perris Monte Carlo)
This maker seems very prone to note-stuffed blends, as this has “bergamot, fruity peach, plum, jasmine, rose, orris, orange blossom, oud, cedar wood, blackwood, patchouli, vanilla, amber, labdanum, and musk.” It’s woody and complex, mostly being the oud and cedar and labdanum (and maybe the orris? that’s another one I don’t have a good handle on); I never really got the fruit. Meh.

* Fat Electrician (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “vetiver from Haiti, chestnut cream, olive leaves, myrrh, vanilla, and opoponax.” Creamy vanilla chestnut then goes to . . . see above re: me not really grokking vetiver yet, ditto opoponax, so I’m not sure what I picked up there.

* Hex (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “brackish amber, aged vanilla bean and three dark fruits.” Darkly fruity is about right, and it’s also sort of warm and “round” — not quite what I’m used to from vanilla, so I’m guessing that’s something to do with the “aged” part.

* The Dormouse
Described as “four teas brushed with light herbs and a breath of peony.” I don’t know peony well enough, but this is sort of herbal-y citrus, like a nice cleaning product, going green over time. Unfortunately, it also turns soapy after a bit, so, nope.

WEEK 30

* First Fruits
Described as “white pomegranate, golden grapes, apricot, black fig, and lemon and orange rind.” Very much fruit punch at first, initially a bit brightened by citrus, then grapier. The fig settles in after a while, and it seemed like there was some musk in there. I’ll try it again.

* Bronze (Nanadebary)
Described as “bergamot, mandarine, cinnamon, jasmine, iris, amber, vanilla, cedarwood, and light musk.” This was pleasant but not distinctive: kind of a generic perfume shifting to slightly cinnamon-tinged amber. I like that mix, but not enough to keep.

* Vanilla Vibes (Juliette Has a Gun)
Described as “fleur de sal (sea salt), orchid absolute, natural vanilla absolute, sandalwood absolute, brown musk, tonka bean, and benzoin absolute.” Cologne-y vanilla that turns to musky vanilla; it’s basically just generically warm.

* Rien (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “incense, rose, leather, orris, cistus, oakmoss, patchouli, amber, cumin, black pepper, and aldehydes.” The leather hit hard here — there was a strong incense note at first, some patchouli and amber later, but really just LEATHER. Blech.

* Pink (Nanadebary)
Described as “nutmeg, coriander, Sicilian tangerine, bergamot, sandalwood, cedar, Indian amber, and Bourban vanilla” (spelled that way; I suspect it’s a typo). Generic cologne with a citrus lift that lasts about ten seconds after application, and then it’s just vanilla sandalwood. Boring.

* Be Careful What You Wish For (4160 Tuesdays)
Described as “pink grapefruit, juniper berry, peach, white oudh, raspberry, strawberry, gaiac, patchouli, vanilla, plum, and dark oudh.” In the bottle, juniper, grapefruit, and maybe oud. Goes fruitier on me, mostly peach/strawberry with a bit of juniper sharpness that dulls over time. Not bad, but not enough.

* A Hundred Years Ago
Described as “green vetiver and ocean mist with a blast of elemi, verbena, and wild bergamot.” This went straight to soap the instant I applied it. Blergh.

* Picaroon (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “sun scorched mahogany bough crusted with a crystalline sea spray! Faint plundered rare spices. Lemongrass, coconuts, fine Mexican lime and Haitian bay rum.” In the bottle, sweetly woody with some citrus overtones; on me it becomes coconut rum with a bit of lime, then kind of some lemongrass spice, finally settling down into sweet woody coconut.

WEEK 31

* Hummingbird (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “lightly spiced cake with pineapple, banana and pecans. Topped with vanilla frosting, honeysuckle blossoms and a drizzle of red currant nectar.” I didn’t get too much banana; for a while it’s mostly vanilla and pineapple, more cake-y early on, more honeysuckle later — but then HI VANILLA. I’d eat this, but I don’t want to wear it.

* Insalata Nocturna (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “green Bolivian lemon, rubbed tomato leaf, black fig syrup and basil.” Technically there is no parsley in this, but boy howdy did I smell like parsley. Which I don’t mind, but I also don’t want.

* Lassi (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “cool, fresh mango cream, Tunisian orange blossom absolute, black ginger to ground, splash of green tea and a soft squeeze of lime juice.” The mango and lime dominate in the bottle, with a faint undertone of cream and some astringency from the tea. Wet, it’s lime tea with an under-layer of mango cream — the former does a nice job of keeping the mango under control, and there’s maybe a hint of orange later. Mango isn’t my favorite, though, so no.

* Sunbeam (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “warm amber, sun-dried corn stalks, mimosa flowers, fenugreek absolute, and shimmering aldehydes.” It annoys me faintly when a description just says “aldehydes,” because apparently those can smell like lots of different things, but from what I can tell what I smelled in here was mostly the fenugreek, and DO. NOT. WANT. It’s been a while since a perfume made me desperately wish I could get further away from my own arm.

* Boca Chica (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “rich gardenia blossom, red mandarin, coconut cream and ripe banana.” I think I’m finally starting to get a handle on what gardenia is like; it reminds me of tuberose, being kind of thick and heavy, but in a nice way. The mandarin and coconut lift it as it dries, and it turns into a nice balance of gardenia and coconut, though it’s not my type of thing.

* Lemongrass Ice Cream (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “rich coconut milk ice cream infused with lemongrass and vanilla. Garnished with a lime leaf.” Never really got the coconut; it’s semongrass with a milky undertone that fades over time, giving me a distinctly lemon-lime scent . . . and then vanilla. I like vanilla, but I find too much of it in a perfume to be tiresome.

* Asperitas (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “rain soaked grass, Egyptian musk, a touch of patchouli and myrrh, bright flashes of lemon, and a sharp crack of pepper.” I have no idea how this one managed to go floral, given those listed notes, but the lemon went away and there was only ever a hint of patchouli and myrrh; nothing else came through.

* Hestia (Hexennacht)
Described as “marshmallow and clove,” and while I got the clove for sure . . . how did this manage to smell like apple? And then later on, bubblegum. I’ll give it another shot just for comparison with other apple scents, but it’s probably a no.

The post The Advent of Scent: Mega-Post, Weeks 24-31 appeared first on Swan Tower.

New Worlds: How to Make a Soldier

After you raise an army, you may have to teach it what to do. This week the New Worlds Patreon looks at the training of soldiers — comment over there!

The post New Worlds: How to Make a Soldier appeared first on Swan Tower.