I am the Kat that Walks By Itself

1. Assassins Guild

The Assassins Guild has precisely 100 members, no more. Entry requirements are simple, but strict: to become a member, one has to assassinate one of the assassins, without getting caught.

2. Bureau de Change

Bureau de Change - currency exchange. You see those little offices all over the place. Simple, right? But in one corner of the city, those in the know can find that one special office, where they exchange things of a different sort: weaknesses for strengths. You give them one of your weaknesses, and they will exchange it for the strength you desire. But what Our Protagonist doesn't know is that a weakness is the flip-side of a strength, and s/he is going to be missing that "weakness" a great deal before our tale is done.

Feel free to use these ideas, just mention me in the acknowledgements of your fabulous novel when it gets published. ;-)

Here follows more of my very SPOILERY notes, ponderings and speculations about "This Crumbling Pageant", written as I am reading it.
This section is for chapters 10-15.
( there be SPOILERS here! )

(from alias_sqbr)
This is the staff reading list for the Sirens 2013 con, which is focused on women in fantasy. It makes an interesting list (though with obscure stuff presumably because of guests of honour).

Bolded are books I've read, and italicised are books I started. Underlined are stuff in my to-read pile (that is, I actually have a copy of the book, but haven't read it yet). Stuff in parenthesis after the titles are my own remarks.
( cut for long list )

Today I saw "Inkheart" with my nieces. Good film. I've had "Inkheart" on my to-read pile for ages and ages, so I feel all guilty that I still didn't manage to read it before watching the movie. Well, I shall just have to read it now.
( Read more... )
After the movie, I wandered around the shopping centre, looking for bookstores to see if I could get the next two books in the trilogy (since I already have the first one). Alas, no joy; in one store they only had Inkheart (but they also had Knife! So I bought a copy to have a copy ready to give someone as a present). The other store had Inkheart, Inkdeath, and a all-three-books-in-one-volume tome, which I didn't want to buy because I didn't want to have to lug around such a big book, and since I already have a copy of Inkheart, it would be wasting money to pay for two copies of the same book.

Then I went looking for a new watch. My previous watch still works, but it has no strap (cheap plastic, it broke, and then broke some more, and then it broke a bit more after that). Normally I carry it in my pocket, but this morning I couldn't find it, and it was a bit stressful being without a watch, particularly when one is wandering around a shopping centre and have to meet people at a particular time.

So I went to one jewelery store, and they were not much good. I looked in the window of another, but they didn't have much range either. Then I looked at the Information screen, and found other jewelers, and went to Bevilles. They turned out to have a very large range of watches, so I looked at them all in the window to see what subset of same I would be most interested in. No plastic straps for me this time. Leather. And a digital watch. With 24-hour time. A simple set of requirements, yes? No, apparently not. But the shop assistant was really helpful, and I was laughing at our predicaments (such as not being able to find any instructions for the watches we were looking at) rather than getting cross, and that made it all pretty pleasant. The shop assistant reminded me a bit of lizbee, actually - pretty, young, thin, friendly, helpful.

I now have a new watch. I guess it will take a little while to get used to it; it is much bigger than my previous one, but the strap is really good thick leather, a sort of double-strap, with a wide leather band at the top, and a normal-sized strap over the top of it. The kind of watch that Rick O'Connell would have if he had a digital watch.

Poison Study by Maria V Snyder

"About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. As a food taster, she'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace -- and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia."
( thoughts on book )
I hope there's a sequel.
ETA There is a sequel, "Magic Study", which is already out in hardback. Hmmm.

fikgirl expressed a curiosity about magic systems in fantasy over here and I decided I'd do a long ramble, or, more precisely, a List of Lists about magic systems. ( here beginneth the ramble )

Which is possibly more than you wanted to know, though I wouldn't call it definitive.