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Monthly Archives: November 2024

Filling In

So, Philip, you didn’t post anything new in between the end of July and mid-October. What’s that about?

Well.

One, I got a little burned out on reviews. I try to space them out so that I’m not struggling to catch up and actually give each ARC the time and consideration it deserves, but sometimes the publication schedules mean I’m not able to do that. As you may have seen, I’ve now added two new ones.

Two, as much as I love the Renaissance Festival and the time I spend there, it is exhausting to add 16+ hours of work to each week for two months. An extra 64-ish hours of work per month, including extra driving, and less time with the family means that I have to re-prioritize on the fly quite a bit. So I did what I usually do at the end of Faire season and took a couple of weeks of vacation to spend with my kids before the school year got started again.

Three, we got ducks. Like, no joke. We own ducks. Five runner ducks (we started with six of them, but one of them didn’t make it to adulthood). We got a duck hutch from my in-laws (it had been in the yard of their new house when they moved to town) and got it assembled, and now the ducks have a nice shelter to live in set up in our back yard. Mr. Flappy, Randall, Mangocheese, Jessica, and Six are approaching egg-laying size, and they have eaten all of the problematic insects that are trying to eat our garden. It’s really a win-win. I’ll admit that I’ve grown rather fond of them in such a short time, and the kids love them too.

Four, I lost one of my favorite people in the world in August. We had known for a while that Dan wasn’t likely to make it through this year, but it didn’t make it any easier to say goodbye. I’m grateful that I had the chance to sit with him, share some memories of our work at the Renaissance Festival together, and tell him that I loved him.

Five, it’s hard to find time to write for funsies when all of the above is happening.

And that’s all without the regular library work and the world burning down around us.

So yeah. I’ve not had a lot of time to dedicate to writing. Sorry. It sucks, but that’s life, I guess.

Anyway, it’s mid-November now, and I’m finally getting back to writing some reviews and starting on some new stories. I’ll keep trying to get some fun stuff put together. Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft and Magic: The Gathering with my kids, and kicking ass up and down Olympus in the early access version of Hades 2.

Oh, and big changes on the work front. More on that soon!

Witch Queen of Redwinter: A Review

And now the story of Raine Wildrose does come to an end. A little over a year ago, I was introduced to Ed McDonald’s spectacular fantasy series when I was offered an advance copy of Traitor of Redwinter. I hadn’t read the first book, but I was so intrigued by the concept that I binged the audio version of book one in order to get through book two by publication day. Now the trilogy has come to an end.

Previously, Raine learned that her lord and trainer among the Draoihn, Ulovar LacNaithe, was dying. As it happened, his strength of magic was being drained from him and channeled into his nephew, Ovitus LacNaithe. Under the manipulation of Sul, one of the Fallen Lords, Ovitus was positioning himself to take over the leadership of the Draoihn of Redwinter. Ulovar sacrificed himself to grant Raine the power she needed to escape Ovitus’s clutches, and Grandmaster Robilar sealed herself in stone to stop Sul. Ovitus, however, remains in power. Now he seeks desperately to access the Crown that lies beneath the castle at Harranir, but without access to the Fourth Gate of the Draoihn, he can’t gain entry to the Blackwell where the Keystone lies in store. No Keystone means no entry to the Crown itself. No Draoihn who remain loyal to Ovitus can access the Fourth Gate, and his own attempt to take his uncle’s was cut short by Ulovar’s death.

Raine’s connection to the Sixth Gate, the Gate of Death, is now undeniable. She is one of the Sarathi. She died a third time at Sul’s hands, only to be saved by Sanvaunt’s awakening of the Fifth Gate’s healing powers. Thanks to Esher and Sanvaunt’s intervention, all three of them managed to flee from Ovitus. Now, however, they are trapped in the Fault, a sort of in-between world filled with half-dead creatures and the other Fallen Lords. The trio’s only hope for survival lies with The Queen of Feathers, the mysterious woman who has been guiding Raine since the day she first met Ulovar. Raine believes her to be imprisoned somewhere within the Fault, but journeying anywhere there is a painful undertaking. Getting out of the Fault is only the beginning, though. Raine is filled with the memories of the other Sixth Gate users who came before her, and she must learn to use their power without losing herself if she and Sanvaunt and Esher are going to have any chance to save the world. Raine also desperately wants to save the two of them, but is torn between her love for each of them and their feelings for one another.

The Redwinter Chronicles very quickly became one of my favorite series. Ed McDonald has written a spectacular and clever fantasy version of the UK. Raine is a complicated protagonist, frequently conflicted in her choices due to her forbidden abilities to see the dead. Now coming into the full potential of her power, she’s going to be dealing with more difficult decisions than ever before. The fate of the world is at stake, and the only person who can save it is the one thing the people fear the most: a witch queen.

Witch Queen of Redwinter is available as of last Tuesday, November 12th. Go check it out. My utmost thanks to Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group for the eARC in exchange for a fair review.