fantasy · General · reading

V is for Vanyel Ashkevron

Sonia Lal2 Comments

Vanyel Ashkevron is a character from the Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series.

He’s mentioned as a legendary character in the first series I read

This built him up in the first few books I read. When his story first came out, I was slightly disappointed because he didn’t have any magic at all, let alone any powerful magic.

But by the time the first book ended, it was clear. Tragic, too.

His story doesn’t follow the legend exactly the earlier books that I started with. That used to bother me, but I’m not sure that a legend and the legend actual story has to match exactly.

His story is fun though.

fantasy · reading

U is for Umbridge

Sonia Lal15 Comments

Umbridge is a villain in Harry Potter.

She has a first name, but I always think her as Umbridge. I don’t think she was referred to very often by her first name.

She looks sweet and talks in the sweetest tones you imagine, but she is not sweet at all. All pink and frills and bows, but terribly cruel.

She enjoys tormenting the students.

I don’t think her character is explained at all – like why she is so sadistic. She just is.

reading

T is for Takeshi Kovacs

Sonia Lal2 Comments

Takeshi Kovacs is the main character in Altered Carbon. It is both a book and a TV show. I didn’t finish the series, either the book or the TV show.

The first book in the series was amazing. Amazing! The library didn’t have the last two in the series when I looked, but it’s possible they have it now.

Takeshi has flashbacks to a time before he was imprisoned, when he was training for some resistance group, when he was supposed to take what is offered.

This phrase is sort of a guiding principle, to always find the most in opportunities, to adopt, to complete the mission with whatever is at hand.

He falls in love with his trainer, but I didn’t get far enough in the series to know if anything came of it. Considering this world, probably not, but maybe at the end, because he is the hero. I can hope.

Takeshi is loyal to people, but he was betrayed as a soldier and that’s when he started resisting.

He’s a fascinating character in a fascinating world.

reading

S is for Sherlock Holmes

Sonia Lal4 Comments

Sherlock Holmes is probably one of the best know private detectives.

I don’t know if he was the first fictional private detective. There might have been earlier detective stories, but if so, I don’t know of them.

I’ve read many of the short stories. There are TV shows and movies, too. I have watched some of those, too. Not all, not even many.

Sherlock Holmes seems a bit different in each iteration. His observation skills and ability to detect seems to be the only commonality. But then, that’s what he’s known for.

He had a cocaine habit in the books, but I’m not really sure if that made it into the TV shows and movies.

I don’t really remember that much of the stories. Maybe it’s time for a reread!

fantasy

R is for Rumpelstiltskin

Sonia Lal8 Comments

Rumpelstiltskin comes from the fairy tale where he bargains for a future queen’s first born child in exchange for turning straw into gold. There is a loop hole where if she guesses his name, she doesn’t have to give up her child.

But I only really thought about this character when he showed up in Once Upon a Time. He’s a very important character.

It’s the Evil Queen’s fault they are in this situation but he probably manipulated her into it. He arranged things for the sole purpose of finding his long lost son.

I never finished it; I’ve no idea if he found the boy.

In this show Rumpelstiltskin starts out as some evil character but ends up a much kinder then I would have thought. Still utterly ruthless, though. But driven by less evil desires then you would expect.

science fiction

Q is for Q

Sonia Lal10 Comments

Q is one of the oddest characters from Star Trek.

I never understood Q. He’s a member of a different species, but he is a god-like figure. He sees everything, knows everything and does things on a whim.

He appears in many different Star Trek shows. Where he goes, chaos follows.

It made for interesting shows at the beginning. But not always. Sometimes he’s just too omnipresent.

fantasy · reading

P is for Penric

Sonia Lal4 Comments

Penric is one of my favorite characters. He has a series of novellas by Lois McMaster Bujold, who is one of my favorite writers.

He is slight and blond and has a demon. This makes him a temple sorcerer in this world.

He aquires the demon accidentally, on the way to his wedding. Needless to say, the wedding does not happen. Instead he goes off to study to be a temple divine.

That was his dream, but there was no money for it. Instead he ends up engaged to a girl with a rich dowery because his family had no money but did have some noble blood.

Getting the demon was an accident – maybe, considering the nature of the gods in the world! But it made his dreams come true, even if his life was also endangered on a few occasions.

In the first story he’s a hapless youth, and in the later ones a husband and a father and a person of some standing.

The story of his life is a fascinating and a very engaging tale, told in bits.

science fiction

O is for Odo

Sonia Lal8 Comments

Odo is a character in Deep Space Nine. Deep Space Nine is one of my favorite Star Trek shows. It’s vastly underappreciated, in my opinion.

Unlike the other Star Trek shows, this one takes place on space station, not a space ship and I think this allows different sort of stories that would not be possible on Voyager or The Next Generation or Enterprise.

Odo is also underappreciated, I think. He’s the security officer on the space station. He’s a shifter and has no idea where he came from. He looks like a shapeless blob in his shifted form. He can look like anyone or anything he wants.

He was found as an infant and raised by a scientist. The scientist didn’t know he was a person and ran painful experiments on him.

I’ve always wondered how he fed and grew as a child. Or how his schoolingb worked.

However that happened, he was abused by the scientist.

But he grew up eventually. And he grew up to the security officer on the station. Which he is not bad at all.

reading

N is for Nancy Drew

Sonia Lal21 Comments

I loved the Nancy Drew stories as a child. I don’t think any of them were part of the original series; I suspect all the ones I read were written by someone else and just had the writer’s name.

But I didn’t care and wasn’t even aware they had been around for so long. I found out later that my elders had also read these books as  children and wondered how the writer could be alive for so long.

I loved the idea of girl detective who always solved the mystery. I had never read books like that before. She was probably the first.

I suspect that many of characters that I loved later on would not have been possible without Nancy Drew. That includes many of the urban fantasy characters that I loved (Anita Blake, Riley Johnson) and characters from TV (Lily Rush, Miss Fisher).

There is a TV show. It’s entertaining but I don’t feel it’s like the books at all. There is a paranormal aspect to it that has more in common with horror then mystery. I still like it though.

General

M is for Miles Vorkosigan

Sonia LalLeave a comment

Miles is one of my favorite characters. I don’t remember which book I started out with; there are a few and they mostly all around by the time I started reading them (except for maybe the last four).

The order doesn’t matter so very much; I read them all out of order and they were mostly written out of order. Lois Bujold does jump around in the timeline. So the publication date and the internal chronological order are different.

He starts out in The Warrior’s Apprentice, young and failed out of military school in a world where the military is everything. Then accidently creates his own military unit.

Miles is born with crippling injuries. His father doesn’t kill him in infancy for it and that by itself is a strange thing in this world. His father only manages because he is powerful and able to command the best medical care.

Miles learns to live with his body, and eventually, not wish away his experiences with a body easily broken because he doesn’t want to become smaller. That is a process that happens across many books, years of his life and mistakes made.

Lois doesn’t take it easy on him (or his parents) but eventually he does get his HEA. Which is very satisfying!