Reading

almond layer cake with lemon curd buttercream

The cake in this recipe is delicious. It could be very successful muffins, like without any icing.

Wax increased the amount of lemon in the frosting to about three times the recipe so it is noticeably tart, but basically it's just way too much butter and sugar for the amount of cake involved. It's fine if I leave most of the frosting scraped off on the plate. But the lemony quality of the strong lemon curd is actually lovely; it's the underlying buttercream that's wrong, so another type of icing with lemon curd might be great.

Basically Wax concluded that she forgot American cake recipes typically have about four times as much frosting as the cakes can hold as well as too much sugar in the frosting itself. I usually have more tolerance for sweeter dessert than she does, but in this case the cake is SO good that I couldn't stand to let it be drowned in excessive buttercream.

Top Ten Tuesday: Secondary Fantasy Worlds

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/07/22/top-ten-tuesday-secondary-fantasy-worlds/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18686

This week the Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “books that take place in/set in X”… and I’m not feeling very original, so I’m just going to talk about ten books that take place in fantasy worlds that have a deep place in my heart. I’m going to try to pick secondary world fantasies, rather than books set in slightly alternate versions of our own reality… but we’ll see.

I’m also going to try to set this up by going through my more recent reads and reviews, instead of reaching automatically for the same books I always pick. Let’s go have a look!

A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation (manga), by Misaki, Momochi et al. This is kind of “isekai”, in that a character from one world ends up in another world. But the fun thing is that neither are our world, pretty clearly; we don’t hear a lot about Lizel’s home world, but it obviously isn’t our modern world, at the very least — and he has magic, as does his king, so it looks like a transfer from one fantasy world to another. There are hints that it could also be time travel/alternate dimensions… but either way, it’s all fantasy, all the way down. The setup of adventurers, magic and dungeons immediately places it as something rather like a Final Fantasy game, which tickled me as well — but mostly, really, I love this series because Lizel wanders around having fun and enjoying the concept of being in a new world. Also he makes very good friends in Gil and Eleven.
Clockwork Boys, by T. Kingfisher. I just finished reading this on Sunday, and I had an absolute blast with it. It’s the same world as some of Kingfisher’s other books, including Paladin’s Grace, which I read recently. In some ways it’s quite a generic fantasy world quest sort of story, but Kingfisher’s style and dialogue make it lively. It’s like she’s playing with fantasy tropes with warmth and affection, not cynicism, even when she’s presenting us with a fairly typical paladin character who is trying to be oh so noble, and then has the narrative give him a thwack upside the head for being a bit of an idiot at times.
The Warden, by Daniel M. Ford (+ sequels). Brilliant young necromancer and mage gets assigned to a post she considers beneath her, is snooty and dismissive of the villagers, and slowly begins to settle into that village and care about the people… but at the same time, boy, Aelis reaaaally wishes she could get back to the city. (Which she does, for a while, in Advocate.) There are things that irritate me about Aelis (she wings it far too much, relies on her wealth far too much, and asks way too much of other people) but I find the magic really fun, and as Aelis’ adventures bring her to explore more of the world that shaped her and her problems, I’m really intrigued by it.
A Letter to the Luminous Deep, by Sylvie Cathrall (+ sequel). I loved this series so much, with Henery and E. slowly getting to know each other through letters and shyly forming a bond, despite their anxieties and (in E.’s case) outright OCD. It’s a frankly bizarre world in some ways, and it isn’t always clear about how it got that way (though at the end of the duology there are some explanations). There’s so much wonder about the sea and the mysteries within it, and I tore through both books trying to absorb and understand their mysteries.
The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett (+ sequel). I’ve enjoyed the fantasy worlds in several of Robert Jackson Bennett’s books, but this is the most recent I read. It’s a Sherlock Holmes homage in a fantasy world that roots the detective and the mysteries deeply into that fantasy. The mystery element isn’t always as clever as it wants to be, but the world is fascinating: the leviathans, the whole empire, the ways people have been deliberately and unintentionally altered by contact with technology derived from leviathans… I wonder where the overarching story is going, and it’s fascinating to explore the world along the way.
The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. I would include the spin-off series as well, except that I found the handling of a particular relationship in the final one (so far?) bizarre. Maybe I’ll enjoy it more on a revisit when it doesn’t feel like a betrayal, but in the meantime I’ll use The Goblin Emperor as my exemplar for this fantasy world. Addison does a lot of worldbuilding, especially around language, but also technology, magic, culture and religion. There’s a lot going on, and so much that’s hinted at but not explored in the plot — at least, not yet.
The City in Glass, by Nghi Vo. This book felt like an absolute fever dream. It’s really tightly focused on a single city and the actions of an angel and a demon (not quite our religious versions of angels/demons) as they fight and thwart each other and try to guide the city. It’s really hard to describe, but it’s beautifully written, and the descriptions of the city and of Vitrine are vivid and strange.
The Teller of Small Fortunes, by Julie Leong. This is cosy-ish fantasy, in that there are some big stakes in the background, but mostly our characters want to stay out of the way of it all, travel together, create their little found family, and solve their fairly ordinary (for a fantasy world) problems. I found Tao’s magic (and how she chooses to use it) fascinating, and really enjoyed the journey — though compared to some of the fully realised fantasy worlds I’ve mentioned here like in The Tainted Cup and The Goblin Emperor, the world-building is a bit thinner.
Heaven Official’s Blessing, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I debated whether this should be in the list, particularly as I think there are meant to be correspondences between places like Xianle and Yong’an in the story with actual locations in China, while Hua Cheng’s aesthetic and background is considered a nod to Miao/Hmong origins… but I couldn’t resist including it anyway, as it also isn’t supposed to be historical China. It’s more historical China inspired, along with Chinese traditions, etc. It’s such an epic, spanning 800 years of suffering and longing, and there’s always the sense that all kinds of magic could (and will) happen. From Ghost City to the domain of Black Water Sinks Ships to Mount Tonglu and the Kiln, there’s a lot of history and magic to discover as you read. (Also, a beautiful love story.)
The Hands of the Emperor, by Victoria Goddard. There are so many ways this is wish-fulfillment, as Cliopher is hyper-capable, and hyper-able to push through world-changing reforms that make everyone’s lives better with no downside, and it’s full of the virtues of more communal ways of living and being, and different ways of thinking. Nonetheless, the differences between this and most Western Europe-inspired fantasy are a lot of fun, and sometimes wish fulfillment and people using power in wholesome ways is just fun to read. Plus, I adored the friendship between the Emperor and Cliopher.

That was pretty fun, especially the restriction to proper secondary world fantasy instead of fantasy set in our world… I’m looking forward to seeing other people’s lists!

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/07/22/top-ten-tuesday-secondary-fantasy-worlds/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18686

Entry tags:

Our Street

Our neighbor across the street who has been replacing the midcentury asbestos shingle on his house with new wooden clapboard at the rate of one face of the house per summer also has a lockdown baby who is a toddler now. We aren't very well acquainted like other people seem to be to their neighbors towards whom they have positive attitudes -

waxjism and I wave hi at them but otherwise only talk about practical issues, like our shared mailbox stand and when their outdoor cat stayed away a few days; though they gave us a bottle of their homemade apple juice a few years ago. But since he has built a scaffolding on the side of the house across the street from our diningroom window and spent a lot of time all summer working there with power tools while our window was open just opposite and a small human was often in the yard demanding his attention, I've frequently heard him speaking to it, and he's definitely a Swedish-speaking finn like Wax. (Today he was teaching it to ride a tiny bike with training wheels outside our window.) (Due to cat divorce, the diningroom is a bedroom; Wax sleeps there with Sipuli and I babysit her there during the day, and before that I slept there with Snookums and Tristana while she was in the bedroom with Anubis.)

The weird part is that when we first moved here, my MIL's ex-boss, a retired high school English teacher and principal who also taught one of my BILs, lived on the other side (they downsized to an apartment last year), and his wife told us that she thought the constructing neighbor's family was Finnish! It's hard to imagine how that misunderstanding could come to be, unless his wife is a finn perhaps; I don't think I've overheard her speaking with the children. The new neighbors who bought the English teacher's house are also Swedish-speaking and have two toddlers and a small dog (possibly two small dogs?). This is a relief to me because sudden use of Finnish can make my language center stall out, unlike Swedish.

The other two houses on this block of our street are abandoned eyesores and public health menaces owned by the city, which has done nothing in the last couple decades of its ownership to demolish them or secure the property. (The rooves and trees AND POWERLINES in the yard are falling down and the guy who they finally hired to do an asbestos assessment last year told us it was appallingly bad, actually risky even to collect the samples that told them it's full of asbestos.)

We got a notice that they are going to build a new fire station there and close the end of the street off from the highway, which is exciting news, but experience with the city government suggests it's not likely to happen this decade.

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Daily Happiness

1. I had a lot of stuff to get caught up on at work after the weekend, but I got caught up.

2. I kept seeing ads for one of these blanket hoodie things and although it's not the season for it, it did look very comfy, so I ended up ordering it and it arrived today. It is indeed very comfy and I can see myself getting a lot of use out of this during colder weather.

3. We had a nice evening at Disneyland.

4. Gemma!

Entry tags:

disney

2025 Disneyland Trip #52 (7/21/25)

Today was a first. Carla drove down to Disneyland from home, and I met her there after work. (Usually if we go after work, either she rides with me and then takes the car to do whatever while I'm doing work stuff, or I go back home after work and pick her up then head back down.)

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Day 21

Intro/FAQ
Days 1-15

My check-in: Two more titles, and posted all the stories. Woo-hoo!

Day 21:

china_shop,

glinda,

sanguinity

Day 20:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddess47,

nafs,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

( more days )

When you check in, please use the most recent post and say what day(s) you’re checking in for. Remember you can drop in or out at any time, and let me know if I missed anyone!

non-binding pol re: Ninefox hobby mode reboot/AU format

Poll #33394 best format for continued hobby mode Ninefox AU/reboot shenanigans

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

View Respondents

Best format for hobby-mode Ninefox reboot/AU shenanigans

View Answers

Ninefox MUD
0 (0.0%)

Ninefox text-only browser-based chapter-based adventure (Inkle Studios' Ink)
6 (60.0%)

Ninefox VN
1 (10.0%)

Ninefox comic (this one is happening regardless)
5 (50.0%)

Ninefox animation (Candle Arc is happening regardless because MFA project)
3 (30.0%)

Ninefox reboot/AU serialized novel (prose) [1]
3 (30.0%)

None of these! Something else I will explain in comments.
0 (0.0%)

In terms of sustainable effort:

MUD: medium-high bar if using existing codebase.

Ink serialized web-based text adventure: medium-low bar. Probably chapter by chapter releases.

ETA #1: Wait a second! You can compile Inform 7 to release for playing on the web! Either this didn't exist ca. 2007 or I suck at reading documentation. That's my choice, then. I enjoy writing parser IF (interactive fiction / text adventures) more than choice-based formats. Yay!

VN: high bar.

comic: I'm doing this for myself so it really doesn't matter what anyone thinks, but maybe people prefer this.

2D animated short (we're talking 5-10 minutes): SLOWEST. VERY SLOW. 2D hand-drawn animation is just slow. But I've proposed this for my final major project starting in 2028, so I'm doing this no matter what anyone else thinks.

[1] serialized reboot/AU novel (prose): This would require negotiating with my publisher, which has an option on further prose works. I control the relevant rights for other formats.

Discussion with Solaris suggested they would be happy to talk about a different Machineries trilogy with a new plot and a new set of characters but the two ideas I have aren't trilogy-length and I don't have a sense that any reader wants this! It's theoretically possible Solaris might let me play with a newsletter (etc) serialization if it's something they wouldn't have an interest in offering for and they are assuming zero risk since I doubt anything I do here would tank sales of the existing books. However, there are negotiation complications here that may make this Not Possible rights-wise so I'm hoping no one wants this and I can stop thinking about it with a clear conscience.

I'm sitting on something like 100,000+ words of disorganized prose bits (not a coherent single narrative, it's a bunch of different POVs) and I want to write about that crashhawk unit and Gödel's incompleteness theorems in hexarchate numerology. I have an outline.

But also. For health and family reasons, I'm not signing a book contract in the near future; any prose-format writing is going to be on spec or similar if at all, and if the answer is that it's just noodling that stays on my hard drive, it is what it is. Meanwhile, I have orchestration homework to do, ta!

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But why do they want to?

Be respected literary novelists, that is?

Here be blokes going wah wah wah about the plight of the male novelist, lo, the voice of the Mybug B heard in the land, no?

Is this the death of the male novelist? The lonely life of a man writing fiction in 2025:

“Being a middle-aged white guy and working in this space today feels, to me, like what it must have felt to have been a poet at the end of the 20th century,” Niven tells me, laughing. “It’s a very niche, very recherché area, with a tiny audience. Men just don’t read fiction in anything like the same quantities they used to, and fewer of us, it seems, are writing it.”

You know, women are notably broader in their reading parameters? I'm not convinced by this argument:

He tells me a story about a friend – “with a big public profile” – who published his first novel a couple of years ago. “It was very good, but it was non-genre, and he’s a middle-aged white guy, so I did my best to manage his expectations.” The novel was turned down by every major publisher before eventually being picked up by a tiny independent. The book, once published, came and went, as so many do. “If it had been written by a woman, it would have sold six, seven times as many as it eventually did. But this is where we are today.”

Or maybe it just Wasn't All That?

And apparently at least one of the lairy 'scabrous, satirical, and vigorously male' novelists of the 90s who cannot catch a break these days:

["W]rites crime novels now. The last refuge of the scoundrel is the crime novel. And I get it! There’s a definable audience for crime fiction, but if you’re not writing genre fiction, then it’s difficult out there.”

Because the damselly laydeez never, ever dabble in the waters of crime or genre fiction....

Oh, wait.

I do wonder WHY they want to write SRS LTRY FIKSHUN??? is it all about the Kultural Kred? (Am currently reading Norma Clarke on Goldsmith and Grub Street, and how it was Not Gentlemanly to be a hack who wrote for filthy lucre, and the delicate balancing acts Georgian literary figures had to engage in.) And why are they all about being warty boys when they do so rather than being, oh, Henry James or Scott Fitzgerald or noted for their exquisite prose style? is it also about Macho Cred?

My own literary tastes among the Blokes of the Pen whose works you will tear from my cold dead hands have been discursed of here and they range widely. I can't help imagining several of them waxing satyrik about this lot.

Review – The Correspondent

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/07/21/review-the-correspondent/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18683

The Correspondent

by Virginia Evans

Genres: General
Pages: 288
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
A woman tries to heal old wounds and make sense of the world the only way she knows how—through letters—in this charming, laugh out loud debut novel about a life fully lived.

"There is a movie coming out this month and I saw the trailer and it made me think of you. It’s about an old woman who lives alone like a hermit. She is eccentric and rude…."

Sybil Van Antwerp is a mother and grandmother, divorced, retired from a distinguished career in law, an avid gardener, and a writer of letters. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books.

Because at seventy-three, Sybil has used her letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. But as Sybil expects her life to go on as it always has, letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life.

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel that is a testament to the power of the written word.

I didn’t expect to love Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent: I got it more because it was an epistolary novel that I could review for Postcrossing, and because it looked like it might be a fairly quick read. I found myself very much enjoying the way the author used the letters to build up a picture of the characters (mostly Sybil, but also others) and their feelings, their histories with one another, etc.

It is obvious from fairly early on that Sybil’s been through a lot, but it takes the entire book to fully spin out why she feels the way she feels, why she acts the way she does, why letters have become so very important to her. I quickly got fond of her (while thinking she might be quite annoying to actually know), and of the people around her too.

Three things I didn’t love, now I’ve sat with them:

The vague and intermittent nature of her developing blindness bothered me, because I couldn’t place it; is it meant to be real? The condition is never named (unless I missed something), and I’m not familiar with it. It’s not really my area, of course — but on the other hand I did volunteer for the RNIB and it started out with some education around the types of blindness people in the clinic I’d be working in were dealing with. Nothing rang a bell. I’m curious, darn it! It made me worry it was more of a plot device than anything, and that sat oddly with everything else.
Quite a bit of time passes between the letters. It took me a while to realise there were gaps, that we weren’t being shown the whole correspondence — sometimes I’d turn back trying to remember where something had been previously mentioned, but it hadn’t been. Dates orient most people, of course, but I don’t really log them in my brain even if I try. Gaaah. So this might’ve been a personal issue rather than a general one, though I think the gaps might sometimes confuse people (e.g. letter where a question get asked are omitted and we only see the answer).
The letters “from” real people like Joan Didion. It felt a little like RPF (real person fanfiction), which has always sat quite oddly with me.

It isn’t really a book with a plot per se, in any case. It’s a character study, through the medium of letters, and a slow unravelling of what exactly makes Sybil the person she is.

I may have been particularly susceptible to giving it a pass on some stuff, given personal circumstances: from mid 2022 to March 2025 (when she died from dementia), I wrote to my grandmother every week. Letters mean a lot to me. So if I’ve been a little soft and sentimental with this book, well, it reached me at the right moment for that.

It obviously does take liberties with realism, it’s obviously trying to be a book that is, in the words of the blurb, “Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived.” If I think too cynically about it, it spoils things a bit. Mostly I just tried to enjoy Sybil and her family, warts and all, so to speak.

One note about the blurb: I don’t think I ever laughed out at loud at it. It’s not really a comedy. Definitely don’t read it for that.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/07/21/review-the-correspondent/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18683

iNaturalist Animals and Plants

https://xkcd.com/3118/

Washington, DC: Eastern gray squirrel, Amur honeysuckle. Puerto Rico: Crested anole, sea grape. US as a whole: Mallard, eastern poison ivy.

https://xkcd.com/3118/

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

coughingbear and

kerk_hiraeth!

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Daily Happiness

1. We got fancy bagels for breakfast again. This time managed to get up to the shop around nine or so, so there was hardly any crowd yet.

2. I thought the limited edition chamoy Kettle Chips were all sold out for good as we hadn't seen them in a while, but they got restocked, so we snagged another couple bags.

3. Chloe is such a cutie.

Entry tags:

weekly reading

Weekly Reading

Currently Reading
Nikhil Out Loud
10%. Middle grade book about a teen voice actor who moves from LA to Ohio with his mom when his grandfather gets sick. This is by Maulik Pancholy, whose Murder at the Patel Motel I recently enjoyed a lot. Since I liked his narration of the other book, I decided to do this as an audiobook, too. I'm enjoying it so far.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
6%.

Kill Her Twice
33%.

Just Happy to Be Here
58%.

Sister Outsider
60%.

Recently Finished
A Slash of Emerald
I enjoyed this. Looking forward to more in the series.

A Deadly Night at the Theatre
The new Dahlia Lively mystery came out just as I was finishing up A Slash of Emerald. Perfect timing. I like this series a lot.

The Nice House by the Sea vol. 1
I knew this was associated with Nice House on the Lake (obviously) but since the name is different, I didn't realize it was the direct continuation. So I read it, but I didn't remember enough about The Nice House on the Lake, so then I had to reread those first two volumes as well (not a hardship as it's a great series). There are too many characters and too many things going on and I am almost certainly going to have to reread things before the next volume comes out, too...

Something Is Killing the Children vol. 8
I hadn't realized this was out. It's just a collection of stand-alones set at various times in the series rather than being a new arc.

The Deviant vol. 2
I liked this series a lot, but was a little disappointed in the ending as I thought we would get to find out who had really committed the first string of murders as well. ( spoilers )

Current Mood: scared

I haven't even finished outlining what I'd originally planned yet...

Oh god, it's finally happening; the smutty oneshot I'm plotting for Sot69 is trying to turn into either a multi-chapter fic or the first part of a series 😱

I'm a short fic writer! I'm not reeaaaadyyyyyy!

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Day 20

Intro/FAQ
Days 1-15

My check-in: Dinking around with the pod-together stories. Some, uh, research for possible titles? Which did not pan out, but so it goes.

Day 20:

china_shop,

sanguinity

Day 19:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

callmesandyk,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

(no subject)

I actually like reading self-help books, because they're kind of inspiring. Like Reader's Digest articles I read in the 1990s - 'this person had problems and overcame them in this and that way'. Even if the particular way doesn't suit me.

But I really love books about people's love for books. Autobiographies in books, etc. Like Helen Hanff (I read not only Charing Cross 84 but her other two autobiographical books and loved them, even though her taste in books is a bit idiosyncratic for me). I love reading other people's book lists and 'my top tens' (though strangely enough I never got into Youtube book bloggers. Maybe I am too old for them)

These musings are all because I managed to get my hands on Jonathan Rose's Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes and really loved it - especially for stories of autodidacts, but also for what Rose has to say about culture, its change and economics, and about how people do not always find in texts what their authors planned to put there.

... and now I want to sit among my plants and read all the things. Unfortunately, tomorrow I have seven English lessons to give (or fortunately. I do need money)

Entry tags:

health

former tripwires

Because my nearest aunt (in her lifetime quest for the status and domestic comforts reft from her at single-digit age) encouraged it, and because my father didn't want to spend money unnecessarily, my mother usually consulted my aunt for should-we-go-to-the-doctor medical questions. ( i'm fineish, no different from last month, but i have an idea )

Entry tags:

cooking,
recipes

Culinary

This weeks bread: a loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Heritage Seeded Bread Flour, v nice.

Friday night supper: penne with bottled sliced artichoke hearts.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, strong white flour - perhaps just a little stodgy.

Today's lunch: kedgeree with smoked basa fillets - forgot the egg due to distractions and basa cooking rather more slowly than I had anticipated, still quite good - served with baked San Marzano tomatoes (we entirely repudiate the heretical inclusion of tomatoes in kedgeree but they are perfectly acceptable on the side), and a salad of little gem lettuces quartered and dressed with salt, ground black pepper, lime juice and avocado oil.

Review – Castle of the Winds

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/07/20/review-castle-of-the-winds/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18681

Castle of the Winds

by Christina Baehr

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 212
Series: The Secrets of Ormdale #3
Rating:

Synopsis:
At Midsummer’s Eve, the Red Dragon will choose his bride.

Following this mysterious invitation, Edith sets off on a quest to the Castle of the Winds to find a lost family of dragon keepers in the mountains of Wild Wales.

But all is not as it seems. Edith must guard her own hidden power, or she might not return to her friends in Ormdale—including the man who has come to love her. Will Edith make an alliance with the legendary Red Dragon of her dreams to safeguard her ancestral charge, or will she lose everything she has tried to protect?

Book 3 of The Secrets of Ormdale is a breathtaking adventure that will take Edith to exhilarating new heights…and deeper into peril than ever before.

Oof, it’s difficult to know what to say about Christina Baehr’s Castle of the Winds. I think in writing it and setting it mostly in Wales, she did do some research into Wales at that period: she seemed to know about things like the Welsh Not and the Treachery of the Blue Books (Brad y Llyfrau Gleision), even if she didn’t directly reference the latter: certainly her characters discuss the situation of the Welsh versus the English in the Victorian period.

But… all that research, and she didn’t really think that maybe this wasn’t a story she should be telling, at least not with an Anglican clergyman’s daughter as the heroine? It risks becoming a bit of a “white saviour” sort of story (granted, of other white people, but nonetheless of people she’s viewing as “primitive”). It’s especially problematic since Nonconformist religion was part of what led the Welsh to be viewed as lesser. It’s all a bit messy and interacts weirdly with the fact that the bad guys have set up a socialist, atheist Welsh commune with faux-medieval trappings.

I was basically uncomfortable with the story from the moment someone was announced as “Arthur, Prince of Gwynedd”, and also “Lord Pendragon”, and I didn’t get any happier about it the further I went along. It tiptoes along the edge of being okay, nominally sympathetic to the ordinary Welsh people caught up in it all, but… I don’t know.

It’s probably also pretty weird that despite her Jewish mother, she’s so very Anglican Christian.

I don’t know if I’ll read more of this series to see how things shake out. I enjoyed it quite a lot prior to this book, because when she’s not being positioned as a saviour to the poor ignorant Welsh, Edith and her relationship with Simon are great fun. She’s a little bit in the mould of Emily Wilde and Isabella Trent, and I enjoy that very much. I guess we’ll see how it sits with me given a little time.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

https://breathesbooks.com/2025/07/20/review-castle-of-the-winds/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=18681

Entry tags:

In which a woman in Kent was threatened by armed police for lawfully being in public

- The nation state of Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Palestine continues.

- In the UK there continue to be large peaceful pro-Palestinian protests, including a march in Edinburgh attended by thousands of supporters.

- Led By Donkeys released a video explaining that the "charity" UK Lawyers for Israel hosted a far-right Israeli MP who has subsequently been sanctioned by the UK government for supporting genocide, and that the uncharitable wing of UK Lawyers for Israel continues to use vexatious legal bullying to attempt to erase Palestinian culture from multicultural Britain including shutting down a children's kite-making meeting by claiming it was akin to terrorism. Some people would call this "ethnic cleansing" and "cultural genocide" of Palestinians. A previous mention of vexatious claims by Lawyers for Israel that failed to remove a public art work.

- Led By Donkeys previously made a 6min video about intentional destruction of our right to peaceful protest in the UK by authoritarian politicians such as Keith Starmer (who is handing the next election to Farage on a plate complete with fascist garnishes).

- In the UK over 220 people have now been arrested and could be imprisoned for 14 years as "terrorists" for holding signs saying things such as, "genocide in Palestine, time to take action" and "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine action".

- One woman in Kent was threatened with arrest by armed police for standing in public displaying the sign "Free Gaza" with a Palestinian flag: "It’s terrifying, I was standing there thinking, this is the most authority, authoritarian, dystopian experience I’ve had in this country, being told that I’m committing terrorist offences by two guys with firearms." The police officers are on vid saying, "We could have jumped out, arrested you, dragged you off in a van." Kent Police issued a statement supporting the illegal actions of their armed fascist officers.

- Multiple legal British organisations with "Palestine" or "Palestinian" in their names have had their bank accounts frozen by multiple banks with no explanation. Some of these orgs send aid to Gaza, amongst other legal activities.

- Article, posted here for archiving purposes, from Scottish newspaper The National:

I'm a journalist covering Palestine Action arrests. This is all absurd.
By Laura Webster, 18th July

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None of it makes any sense to me, or our team.

The people doing the killing and destroying face no consequences. The people raising the alarm are taken away in handcuffs.

I wonder how many arrests our reporters will witness before the UK decides to take real action against Israel?

If this really is the new normal, Scotland shouldn't have anything to do with it.

I'm a journalist covering Palestine Action arrests. This is all absurd. (Link to The National)

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