we're sleeping on the concept of numair being insanely good at gambling just because of proximity to the graveyard hag during developmental years
she infected him with 'lets go gambling!!' disease. alanna and george find out about him because someone at the dove is raving about this lanky little skittish nerd boy with insane luck. he's never lost a game in his life
i mean, his luck has run out before. he did kinda make a mistake betting on ozorne, but we can just like repress that right
Rikash is described as having "bones braided into his blonde hair" and I can not for the life of me figure out how stormwings could braid their hair. There's no way they can do it themselves, and I struggle to think how they could brad each other's considering they need their claws for balance. It either has to be something Rikash does with magic (which is possible, but beautification magic does not seem like something stormwings would know) or someone else does it for him. Was it Maura? I'm seriously at a loss for this one.
while i am indulging in some tamora pierce immortals quartet nostalgia, someone should write a lil daine/numair role reversal au where she's the famous demigoddess wildmage and he's the youngest most powerful boy to ever be an international refugee who finds her while she's a half-delirious injured hawk
A stack of some of the things I've read lately! We have the two new-to-me detective novels I posted about ILL requesting here, then some rereads on the top (one requested from the library, two I own and took with me on a little vacation this past weekend). I'm currently reading a kind of middling ebook (that's just interesting enough - and a fast enough read - to finish) so thought I'd pause and post about some things I actually enjoyed reading lately!
The detective novels were nice - part of my ongoing quest to find and read as many of the books in the Inspector Macdonald series as I can. (Some have been reprinted and/or scanned and uploaded to hoopla, others appear only to exist as first, or at least early, editions. I've mostly read all the easy to find ones, so deep into ILL I go!) Murder on the Burrows is the first Macdonald novel, which is funny to read when I've read so many others. He's younger in it (he actually ages over the series, which I like) but has a consistent characterization. I have been headcanoning him as some flavor of aroace, since unlike so many of his contemporary detective protagonists, he never has a romance subplot; it was nice to see that in book one he's asked straight up, "Have you ever been in love?" (asked twice, actually!) and his response is just "Nope" both times. Aroace icon from the beginning. (He does have a little crush on a woman pianist, but it seems to be mostly aesthetic/artistic. And by the end of the book he has spent at least as much time admiring another character who's a large man in his 60s with a very strong personality.)
Rereading Wolf-Speaker was a lot of fun - I remember the Daine novels being possibly my favorite series the first time around, and I think it's just because her ability to talk to animals is so fun and makes me envious. It's also unique in a fun way - she's not trying to be a great knight among other knights, or a great mage, she's doing her own weird thing and helping in a way only she can. This one is particularly good for spending lots of time hanging out with animals and eventually defeating bad guys with their help. After I read it, I went to school for an evening class, and while walking across campus I saw two crows fly over in the gap of sky visible between two tall university buildings and for a second I felt like I should be able to tell what they were doing and feel where they were going once they were out of sight. I envied Daine then.
Took my usual winter vacation (since I work at a summer camp, summer vacation isn't really possible) and spent a couple days in the Colonial Williamsburg area, so I brought Mr. Revere and I along for the Revolutionary War vibes, despite it taking place in New England instead of VA. It was fun to reread while also learning/re-learning some of the history surrounding the story. Read it many times as a kid, but hadn't reread in a while.
Also brought the Perry Mason book, which happens to be the only one in the series I own. I wouldn't mind having more, but I think the best way to obtain them is by finding cheap trade paperbacks in used bookstores. It was a good vacation reread, and I requested some others from the library after finishing, because they're fun. Perry/Della/Paul Drake OT3.
idk what the venn diagram of Tamora Pierce fans and anime fans looks like, but Fluffy Paradise is a lot like what would happen if Veralidaine Sarrasri had been isekai'd into a noble family from birth.