Posted by Sari
Category 9, A book situated in Praedor universe: Petri Hiltunen: Kuninkaan lapset
I still have an instinct of mispronuncing Praedor (I want to say [pre:dor] but I have been told it should be [praedor], with a dipthdong that sounds distinctly savonian to me. Or maybe there is a syllable break there? [pra.e.dor]?). This universe was created by comic book artist Petri Hiltunen and has since had other creators playing around in it creating novels, short stories and games.
Kuninkaan lapset (Children of the King) is a comics album, tightly told story of mercenaries entering a forbidden abandoned city to look for treasure and biting more they can chew. This is really off my well beaten path, it does remind me of Sword and Sorcery stories and Howard, but I am not that familiar with the genre that I could easily recognise the antecedents. Also it being a comic, there are those pesky pictures that interfere with the reading experience.
Catebory 32, A book with time travel: Ian McDonald: Time Was
In this novella, an antiquarian bookseller starts to trace the lives of time travelling lovers, Ben and Tom who got lost in time and separated from each other because of a science experiment during World War Two. They have communicated with each other by leaving letters in certain bookstores in between the pages of the book "Time Was".
This is a tightly plotted and beautiful book. The way Emmett the antiquarian slowly unravels Tom's and Ben's story via historical documents is done very nicely, though it necessarily makes him the focus of the Novella, instead of Tom and Ben. There is a nice twist in the end, and the story does not shy away from the problems faced by gay men in the past.
I wonder why McDonald changed the name of the novella from the "Time There Was" to "Time Was"? It is punchier, but i liked the original which, is a quote from Hardy's poem Before Life and After.
Nordqvist: Keisarin morsian
Propably the most popular aromatised tea in Finland, the one usually found next to plain black tea in coffee houses. Its smell and flavours of quince and black elderberry are very nostalgia inducing as I have drunk an endless amounts of the stuff during student days in various cafés in Helsinki.
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