Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 171
May 5, 2020
Recent Reading: A Posse of Princesses by Sherwood Smith
This was a fun story, hovering right between MG and YA, I think.

Rhis is sixteen, romantic, a princess of the tiny kingdom of Nym.
Nothing ever happens in Nym, until she receives an invitation to a celebration for Prince Lios of Vesarja, the largest kingdom around. Lios is as handsome as Rhis hoped, and she falls instantly in love, just like in her favorite songs. But life isn’t like the songs — none of her friends are happy, and then there is the Perfect Princess, Iardith, who keeps occupying Lios’s time.
Rhis does her best to fix things for her friends, as she pursues her romantic ideal . . . and then the Perfect Princess is abducted. Of course Rhis must go to the rescue . . . the princes right behind.
A charming story. Sweet and fast-paced, with low stakes and tension. Believable teenage characters.
Things I liked:
–Rhis falls out of love with Lios promptly, as soon as she has a conversation with him. She thinks he’s nice, but that’s all. Angst-quotient: very low.
–Rhis of course falls in love with someone else, and that’s well-handed, with a huge emotional blowup that actually worked for me. I thought she got over it fairly fast, but that wasn’t completely unbelievable. Angst-quotient, actually still lowish, despite the huge blowup scene.
One thing that worked really well here is that Rhis has the Big Reveal and then is instantly plunged into urgent adventure as the plot suddenly snaps from house party to rescue mission.
–I enjoyed the heartless flirt character. She has her huge emotional blowup when accused of being a heartless flirt, and the funny part is, she really is a terrible flirt, though not actually heartless.
–I liked the other secondary characters as well. They are very simple, each one with a single defining characteristic, but that suits the story, which is also simple.
–I liked the details about the journey and learning to pitch in and help with the camp chores and so on. I like journey scenes, generally, if they’re at all well done, which this was.
Things that were just so-so:
–At sixteen, I know Rhis is a bit naive, but it was kind of hard to believe she would reveal her name at that one moment. Also, the singing diamond was a little contrived in a bunch of ways. Also, the get-out-of-jail-free card was more than a little contrived. Sure served to reduce tension, though, so if you’re looking for a low-tension read, here you go.
–Iardith is incredibly one-dimensional and too unlikable for me. I thought dialing that back would have worked better. A girl can be unlikable without being THIS nasty.
–To be honest, I thought the Message quotient was a little high. You Shouldn’t Judge People By Their Rank, but By Who They Are As People. Thank you, good advice. Of course for a MG/YA reader, that might not have felt as much like a bludgeon.
Things I LOVED:
I very much enjoyed how the parents step in and force the children to settle down and wait five years before they get married. That was soooo sensible, way better than the teenagers toppling into marriage on the strength of their adventure.
Sherwood Smith does a great job showing the young people mature through their letters, and the last chapter, where we see them as young adults, functions beautifully to tie up the story.
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First angry, then afraid, then dead. Is that the right order?
Wow, you seriously don’t want to be a condescending vicious sadist AND THEN mess with Murderbot.
On the other hand, if you happen to be having trouble with condescending vicious sadists, you know who you totally want on your side? Uh huh. Especially if they have already screwed around with Murderbot’s friends.
I just met the bad guys. Wow. They did not have the slightest idea what Murderbot was. At least one of them does now.
I now have a pretty clear guess about the broad outline of the story.
Loving this so far.
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May 4, 2020
Best SF adaptations
From BookBub: The Best Science Fiction Adaptations Ever, According to Our Readers
So, a popularity contest. I do not watch many movies . . . I just don’t ever seem to get to it . . . and I don’t go out of my way to watch adaptations. Nearly always, I prefer the book. The only real exception I can think of is The Hunt for Red October, where the movie is dramatically better than the book because:
a) Sean Connery
b) pacing is more taut in the movie
c) Sean Connery
d) Tom Clancy overwrites in terms of detail and isn’t that great at description and if you take all that away and just have images plus dialogue, you get a better product.
e) Also, Sean Connery
Of course, The Hunt for Red October isn’t an SF story. I know which SF adaptation I’ve liked best in the past decade or so. As I said, I’m choosing from a small subset of SF movies made. But I really liked The Martian as a movie — I thought it was ALMOST as good as the book.
Let’s see what BookBub picks out …
The Martian. Yep. I am just another sheep following this herdArrival by Ted Chiang. Oh, was there an adaptation? I didn’t know that. Chiang is a very skilled writer; if the adaptation stayed close to his original story, I bet it was indeed very good.Ender’s Game. Now come on. That was a terrible adaptation. It lost almost everything good about the book. Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey. Somebody did an adaptation, really? How ambitious of someone. Oh, this is The Expanse! I’ve at least heard of that tv show. I didn’t realize it was drawn from this novel. If any of you have watched The Expanse, how is it?Jurassic Park. Sure, okay, the movie was good. I mean, great special effects. All the stupidly unbelievable science is probably just as stupidly unbelievable in both the book and the movie.
Several others at the link. The other one I’ve watched and thought was really quite excellent was Guardians of the Galaxy. I didn’t realize it was based on a comic book.
I’m a bit surprised not to see Galaxy Quest here. Personally I think I’d count it as an adaptation of Star Trek and put it right up at the top.
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May 1, 2020
Wow, that was intense
I just completed putting together the “lecture” for the very last lecture of my biology class: Biomes.
That took practically forever. Adding a zillion pictures was obligatory. I will be grading lab projects and making the final exam all weekend. Since I don’t have time to write a post, here are a few of the pictures from this lecture, some of which obviously illustrate various biomes and others of which I tossed into the “lecture” partly to provide a visual aid for “animals of this biome,” but mainly because they’re just neat.
In absolutely no order, but in each case with the biome first and then a characteristic animal from that biome, here we go.
Bonus if you can recognize the first animal. Or for that matter the second.










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April 30, 2020
Paranormal cozy mysteries
From Book Riot: THESE PARANORMAL COZY MYSTERIES WILL CAST A SPELL ON YOU
Okay, well, I do like cozy mysteries, and I’m not opposed to paranormals, so let’s take a look . . .
This one sounds like fun:
Murder in G Major by Alexia Gordon
Gethsemane Brown is a struggling musician, so when a paying job finally opens up to her, she needs to take it. And with this job comes a place to live—she’ll also be housesitting an Irish cliffside cottage. But nothing is ever that simple; the house is haunted by the cottage’s murdered owner. Gethsemane sets out to discover his true killer so he can finally rest in peace. This ghost cozy mystery series is a fun paranormal read and an armchair travel series all in one!
Oh, I see that the author is using this one as a loss leader — the first book is only 99c. Well, sure, I’ll be happy to take a look at it for that.
Let me see, what else do we have here . . . a couple of these sound too cutesy for me . . . oh ho, look at this one:
The Vampire’s Mail-Order Bride by Kristen Painter
In Nocturne Falls, Halloween is celebrated 365 days a year. Tourists think it’s just for fun, but the supernatural creatures populating the town keep up pretenses so no one figures out they’re actually vampires, werewolves, witches, and more. In the first book in this paranormal mystery series, Delaney James changes her identity to save herself from her mobster boss, pretending to be a mail-order bride. But what she doesn’t know is that her new groom is a 400-year-old vampire...
Now that is just a fantastic hook. Silly, and yet appealing. The description at Amazon is even better:
The tourists think it’s all a show: the vampires, the werewolves, the witches, the occasional gargoyle flying through the sky. But the supernaturals populating the town know better.
After seeing her maybe-mobster boss murder a guy, Delaney James assumes a new identity and pretends to be a mail order bride. She finds her groom-to-be living in a town that celebrates Halloween every day. Weird. But not as weird as what she doesn’t know. Her groom-to-be is a 400-year-old vampire.
Hugh Ellingham has only agreed to the arranged setup to make his overbearing grandmother happy. In 30 days, whatever bridezilla shows up at his door will be escorted right back out. His past means love is no longer an option. Not if the woman’s going to have a future. Except he never counted on Delaney and falling in love for real.
Too bad both of them are keeping some mighty big secrets….
Also a loss leader, I presume: this one is free.
That was a significantly more productive Book Riot post than I expected, and if you are also in the mood for paranormal cozy mysteries, click over and take a look. Both of the ones I pulled out for this post have good reviews, and it’s hard to go too wrong at those prices.
I’ll just end by reminding you of one mystery series I like that’s on the cozy side of the spectrum, not cutesy, and in fact does feature a ghost: The Wisteria Tearoom series by Patrice Greenwood.
Cops drink coffee.
They don’t belong in Ellen Rosings’s Victorian tearoom. But when her opening day thank-you tea ends in the murder of the president of the Santa Fe Preservation Trust, the police invade her haven. Enter Detective Tony Aragon: attractive and unsympathetic, with a chip on his shoulder that goes beyond the murder investigation, and Ellen’s delicate bone china cup is full. Is the murderer one of her honored guests, or the ghost rumored to haunt the building? Will Ellen solve the mystery, or will the Wisteria Tearoom’s premiere turn out to be its—and Ellen’s—finale?
Of course Ellen is fine, and in fact I see the 7th book is out now, so it’s good I had a reminder to check in on this series.
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April 28, 2020
Not to be judgmental, but —
Okay, now, listen. I know people have different tastes. But I’m starting to think that a lot of keto recipes are just terrible and the reason people on the internet claim they are good is:
a) They are trying to rev up their own enthusiasm for recipes they know perfectly well are pretty bad, or
b) They have not had normal food for so long that they have forgotten what it’s like.
I’m kidding, to some extent, but I’m serious too. Here’s a recipe I made last night:
Crispy Chicken Fritters
1 small yellow onion, diced
3 celery stalks
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
13 oz. boneless chicken thighs, skinless
2 large eggs
¾ cup fine coconut flour
1 C oil, for frying
Zap everything but the oil and the coconut flour in a food processor to make a paste. Form into patties or small balls. Dredge in coconut flour. Fry.
Now, there is nothing here that seems awful. Chicken, onion, celery, eggs, all of that should be a fine basis for a recipe. Cumin is one of my favorite things, though I wouldn’t normally combine it with oregano, so maybe that should have made me suspicious.
I made this recipe almost exactly the way it says, and it was terrible. The goop was thin and hard to handle. The texture of the cooked patties was not inviting. Despite the name the fritters were not crisp. The flavors were off, with too much of an onion flavor and, oddly, not a lot of celery. The coconut flour was way too evident in the flavor profile. I like coconut fine in a chicken curry. I hated it here. The cumin was not detectable, and to be fair, neither was the oregano.
I could give you a link to the site where I got this recipe, but honestly, I don’t like to do that after writing the above condemnation. You can google around and find it if you want.
Anyway, I didn’t throw the finished chicken patties away because I was raised not to waste food. I didn’t feel comfortable giving them to the dogs — too much onion, it would probably be okay, but still. Slathered with mustard, the patties were edible.
But what gives? Could anybody really like these chicken fritters? Yes, I know, no need to remind me again that tastes differ. But still, taking the most objective possible look at these chicken patties, they were a total flop and no one should make this recipe.
You know what else aren’t any good? Keto pancakes made with cottage cheese and eggs and no real flour. I swear to God, people who rave about those cannot possibly ever have eaten real pancakes, made properly, with wheat flour and buttermilk. Or for that matter, cornmeal and buttermilk. Or my actual favorite pancakes use a lot of oatmeal and a little flour and regular milk, and my point is, the things that keto recipes pretend are pancakes are not REMOTELY as good as real pancakes and I see absolutely no reason to pretend otherwise. Keto recipes of this kind should be written with a disclaimer: These are terrible, but they sort of look like pancakes and if you drown them in sugar-free syrup you may be able to more or less ignore their awful texture.
I have not actually tried sugar-free syrup and don’t plan to.
While in this thoroughly peeved mood, let me add that I cannot get a cauliflower crust to work properly to save my life. My hands may not be strong enough to squeeze out enough liquid; I don’t know. I just know that this does not even begin to work for me. There are other ways to make fake flatbreads that are semi-acceptable but this is not one of them.
I have to go enter a zillion test questions into the completely obnoxious online test builder now, but before I do, I will provide a much better recipe that is not keto, but is, shall we say, keto-adjacent. It’s from Bon Appetit and makes cookie-esque items that are quite decent.
Trail Mix Cookies
1½ cups assorted raw nuts and seeds — I used walnuts rather than a mix
½ cup (60 g) old-fashioned oats
1 large egg
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
¼ cup (packed; 50 g) dark brown sugar — I used brown sugar Truvia, which is pretty decent, partly because it contains a little real sugar and molasses.
2 Tbsp. (25 g) granulated sugar — I used white sugar Truvia, which cuts fairly awful erythretol with monk fruit and real sugar, producing a low-sugar substance that’s pretty decent, though not as good as the brown-sugar type.
1½ tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. kosher salt — I used regular; kosher salt is for finishing, imo, and regular salt is for baking.
½ tsp. baking soda
¾ cup assorted dried fruit (cut into ½” pieces if large) — I used golden raisins, only 1/4 cup, and if I were doing it again I would leave them out; I added 1/4 cup coconut flakes and that was fine.
¾ cup chopped bittersweetchocolate bars or chips or disks
½ cup (63 g) all-purpose flour — I used half spelt and half regular flour, but as you see, this is really a small amount of flour. You’re going to wind up with less than a Tbsp of flour per finished cookie.
For me, based on two years of experiments, oatmeal is less of a problem than wheat flour, rice, or corn. This recipe is using so many nuts that the oats and certainly the flour is fairly minor in comparison.
Anyway, toast the walnuts and oats at 350 degrees for ten or twelve minutes. Cool.
While you’rd doing that, combine the egg, butter, sugars, salt, and baking soda. Let that set while the nuts cool. Toss the chocolate chips, dried fruit, coconut flakes, and whatever else you’re using with the walnuts and oats. Stir into the egg mixture. It’ll all fit in there if you’re mildly persistent. Chill for a day or so — I’m not sure what difference this makes, but the recipe said to chill for a couple hours to a couple days, so I did.
Form into 12 large disks. I packed the dough into a third-cup measuring cup, then tipped each fat disk out and pressed it out flatter with the heel of my hand. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes or thereabouts and cool on the pans.
One of these cookies is pretty satisfying, seems a lot like a cookie, and is moderately close to keto-acceptable.
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April 27, 2020
Murderbot
You probably all know that the new Murderbot novel, Network Effect, comes out in a week or so. I will probably drop everything and read it the moment it appears on my kindle, though you never know, I may be in Mad Gardening Mode or for that matter I could conceivably be in Obsessive Writing Mode.
It’s certainly the release I’m most looking forward to this year, though.
And here at tor.com is a Murderbot post: Feelings [redacted], which is an Instagram interview with both Murderbot itself and everybody’s favorite totally unarmed research ship, ART.
I particularly enjoy the questions about Sanctuary Moon:
What is their favorite episode of Sanctuary Moon about?
MB: The one where they found out the Terraforming Supervisor was still alive, and behind the whole plot to deregulate the colony’s mining franchise which had been blamed on the Colony Solicitor, so she and her bodyguard and the Mech Transport Crewmember and the Mystery Person from the level 7 airshaft and the Food Service Staffing Manager fake her death, and she comes to her own memorial service.
ART: I didn’t like that one.Which is your favorite episode of Sanctuary Moon to recommend as a gateway to the show?
MB: The first one. It’s the only one that gives all the detail about the Colony Solicitor’s secret backstory as a corporate espionage agent/opera production manager and you need that to understand the rest of the story.What really happened on episode 231 of Sanctuary Moon?
MB: It was clearly a dream.
ART: You’re wrong.
MB: So when the Mech Pilot was attacked by his evil duplicate who tried to hit him with a giant hammer and then disappeared, you think that was supposed to be real?
ART: It was an artistic choice.
Perhaps it’s forgivable at this time to wonder whether Martha Wells might someday write the novelization of a Sanctuary Moon episode. Hey, she’s written novelizations of TV shows before, right? It would sort of the same as Rainbow Rowell writing a novel which was presented as fanfic in a different one of her novels.
Either way, even though I haven’t read it, I’m already hoping Network Effect won’t be the only Murderbot novel.
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April 24, 2020
Small good things
I don’t have time for a real post today — sorry — so I will leave you with a couple pictures I took recently.
Each of these pictures was taken at dawn. The first was taken a couple days ago, the other yesterday morning. These are some kind of clematis; I don’t remember the variety.
These pictures make me want to plant a ton of white flowers where I’ll see them at dawn.

And a few days later, when more flowers opened:

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April 22, 2020
The shifting landscape of language
At Kill Zone Blog, this post by Sue Coletta: Word Porn
It’s fun to see how words change over time. Their meanings transform, expand, and even metamorphose into a whole new meaning….
For example, by semantic narrowing, as a word becomes more restricted in meaning over time. I like the example of “mete” meaning “food” and only gradually coming to take on the current meaning. That’s rather interesting, and in fact it has always struck me as strange that “meat” today is often used to exclude chicken and almost always used to exclude fish. That’s always puzzled me.
However, this is the example from the post that REALLY caught my eye, because it annoys me every time I see it:
“The history of the word hound in English neatly illustrates this process. The word was originally pronounced hund in English, and it was the generic word for any kind of dog at all. This original meaning is retained, for example, in German, where the word Hund simply means ‘dog.’ Over the centuries, however, the meaning of hund in English has become restricted to just those dogs used to chase game in the hunt, such as beagles…”
The reason this annoys all right-thinking people is that when it was recognized by the AKC, the Norwegian Elkhound, a fine spitz breed, got stuffed for NO GOOD REASON into the Hound Group because of its name.

Any fool can see it belongs in the Working Group or the Nonsporting Group, with the other spitz breeds, and NOT in the Hound group with the beagles, spaniels, retrievers, pointers, and other gundogs.
What I really think we should have is a Spitz group, like other breed registries, but I’m not holding my breath. Spitz breeds can be used for hunting, like gundogs, or herding, or guarding, or all kinds of things. There are so many of them and they are such an obvious and distinctive lineage that they deserve their own group. Spitz breeds include, in no special order:
Akita, Alaskan Malamute, Siberian husky, Samoyed, Norwegian Elkhound, Keeshond, American Eskimo, Finnish Spitz, Schipperke, Chow, Shiba, Swedish Vallhund, Icelandic Sheepdog, Swedish Lapphund, and Pomeranian. There are plenty of others, but I think all of these are AKC recognized now, and I don’t think I’ve left out many recognized spitz breeds.
How many versions of “hound” do we see just in this small group of breeds? Plenty: Vallhund = hund. Keeshond = hond. If the Norwegians had used the spelling “Elkhund,” that breed would be in the working group right now.
Incidentally, to drag this post back firmly to the world of words, in Norway, this is an elk:

So in America the Norwegian Elkhound should really be called the Norwegian Moosehound, but that does sound stupid, so I’m sure it will never catch on. The better option would be to rename the breed the Norwegian Elghund and petition to be moved into the Working Group.
To avoid confusion . . . some kinds of confusion, anyway . . . an alternate common name for American Elk is Wapati. That is a name that steps outside the confusion pretty well.
To ensure understanding, of course, we use Latin names.
The moose is Alces alces. The wapiti is Cervus canadensis. There, problem solved.
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April 21, 2020
8 characters from Arthurian literature
Here’s a Book Riot post: 8 FASCINATING CHARACTERS FROM ARTHURIAN LEGEND
Okay, sure: who’s fascinating from Arthurian legends? The right author can make any character fascinating. The Lady of Shalott became interesting when Loreena McKennitt sang the poem — before that, I didn’t find her interesting.
IMO, the best Arthurian retelling is Mary Stewart’s — I know I’ve said so before right here, I think rather recently. Her characters are the ones I know the best. Who there do I find most fascinating?
Well, Nimue. Mary Stewart does a really intriguing Nimue. Maybe that’s one reason I named my puppy Nimue — the other reason is of course that I named the other puppy Morgan Le Fey. My Morgan does not really deserve that name, I will say: she is a very easy, non-evil puppy.
Anyway, Morgan Le Fey gets almost nothing from Mary Stewart. Very boring character. She is much more interesting in almost any other retelling.
I find Uthur and Ygraine pretty boring. Wild passion and betraying your vows and all that, not my thing. Ditto for Lancelot and Guinevere. In Mary Stewart’s version, almost all the more minor characters interested me more.
Well, okay, let’s stop here and look at the Book Riot post. Whom do they pick?
Ah hah! Morgan Le Fey, right at the top. Nimue is the fourth — I figured she’d be here somewhere.
Most of the other characters picked out for this list are important figures in the legend. Mordred. Mary Stewart did a great Mordred. I don’t care for anyone else’s portrayal — wait, yes I do, Elizabeth Wein’s take in The Winter Prince! That is the BEST Mordred in Arthurian retellings. Talk about fascinating! And conflicted! You probably already know this, but wow does Elizabeth Wein go way, way off canon in the rest of her so-called Arthurian series. Despite the Arthurian connection, I do prefer to think of them as the Lion Hunter series.
Okay, last on the Book Riot list: Elaine of Astolat. I don’t believe she appeared in Stewart’s version. She sort of got subsumed into the Lady of Shalott, I guess. Anyway, call her Elaine and this very odd novel by CJC springs to mind, adjacent to Arthurian retellings.
Here’s the description for Port Eternity:
Their names were Lancelot, Elaine, Percivale, Gawain, Modred, Lynette and Vivien, but they were not characters from legend. They were made people, clone servants designed to suit the fancy of their opulent owner, the Lady Dela Kirn. And they worked aboard the Maid, an anachronistic fantasy of a spaceship, decorated with swords, heraldic banners, old-looking beams masking the structural joints, and lamps that mimicked live flame. They lived in a kind of dream, and had no idea of their origins, their prototypes in those old, old story tapes of romance, chivalry, heroism and betrayal. Until a wandering instability, a knot in time, a ripple in the between sucked them into a spatial no-man’s-land from which there seemed to be no escape. And they were left alone, with the borrowed personas of their ancient namesakes, to face a crisis those venerable spirits were never designed to master.
Who’s read it? Obviously it’s in the Alliance / Union universe, obviously the characters are mostly azi. Only Lady Dela and her current lover are born-men. Then the situation goes way sideways. If you’ve read it, what did you think? Elaine is the point-of-view character in that one, and come to think of it, this is another great portrayal of a sympathetic Mordred. I guess that is one factor that makes an Arthurian retelling work for me.
Also, we have of course by working on back cover copy, so what do you think of this description? I think it’s pretty good, except the “venerable spirits” line, which strikes me as pretty stupid. No matter what fictional character an azi is modeled on, that azi does not have a venerable spirit.
It’s been a good long time since I read Port Eternity. It’s not one of my favorites, though actually I’ve always kind of liked it. I’ve been re-reading this month while working on other stuff. Maybe I should take this one off the shelf and give it another try.
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