Last Hours

[dolphins_log]

Happy March everyone.

We're enjoying our last few hours here at the beach.  It's raining lightly.  The tide is out and the, "Don't go out on Haystack Rock!!" car is out there with pamphlets and nature walks.  Juli is still snoozing and I'm reading another book.  We have our slider open and we are right next to the stairs to the beach.  So I hear the conversations as people head down for their beach walks.  "No it's too cold for swimming."  "Get Karly's  leash!  Get his leash!  Karl!"  *bark bark bark yap bark!*   "Don't Feed the Seagulls [that sounded official]"  "seagulls:  Mine!  Mine mine!  Mine!  Mine!"   "I got up before sunrise and watched the world come alive."  "Coffee's ready!"

 

 

So now we're going to lounge a bit, and then check out and go to breakfast.   ...or lunch.

I finished "The Accidental Sorcerer" by K. E. Mills [a.k.a.Karen Miller].   This one surprised me.  While no "great work of fiction" it is still entertaining.   I had assumed by the cover of the book that it was a bit of a British bureaucratic comedy, but no.  It got somewhat serious.  First I must note... Karen Miller is Australian, not British, but that's beside the point.  The hero, Gerald Dunwoody, is a wizard: third grade.  He has a job as an inspector for the Department of Thaumaturgy, a job he doesn't unnecessarily like or want.  It's the only one he could finds as a wizard, and a so disparately wants to be a wizard.

While inspecting the a staff factory, the one that produces the most prestigious wizard staffs in the world, he finds that safety has not come first.  While everyone is fleeing a thaurmaturgic meltdown he manages to avert countrywide disaster by manipulating first grade magics that should vaporise him, a third grade wizard.  And while he did successfully avert disaster, he also managed to blow up the factory.


Now out of a job, he takes the next possible job he can find.  He becomes the Royal Wizard for an out of the way kingdom in the middle of a desert.  The princess if hard pressed running the Kingdom for her brother, King Lional the 43rd.  Prince Rupert is mad about butterflies, and King Lional is a vain pompas [expletive deleted] who actually has some malevolent plans for the fiefdom next door.

Oh, and Gerald's 300 year old talking bird friend, Reg, is in constant arguments with the princess.  Gerald continues to demonstrate magics he should not be able to touch let alone control, and the King intends to use that ability for his own ends. Things go downhill from there.

End of review.