Return of the RSI

I hope it's just RSI, and not vitamin D deficiency or med side-effects again. But I started Thursday with a faint twinge in my bad shoulder, and ended the workday by getting out the hot water bottle I keep in my desk. Friday I woke up still very sore in the shoulder, and mild twinges right through the arm and hand. The 400 mg of ibuprofen in the morning did nothing for it, although the aspirin/codeine I took in the afternoon when the twinges spread to the other hand was a lot more effective. Woke up this morning with a shoulder that was so sore I seriously considered getting out of bed immediately simply because it might hurt less standing up. Which given that it was Saturday and I wanted a lie-in...

It's a lot less painful after a walk to the village this morning to do some shopping and loosen up, but I definitely need to take aspirin/codeine before going to bed this evening, to discourage it seizing up overnight. And ration my time on the computer.

book log: 76) Colin Kapp -- Patterns of Chaos

76) Colin Kapp -- Patterns of Chaos

Another of the books that I greatly enjoyed as a teenager but haven't read for some years. Fortunately it turns out that this is one I still enjoy. A man wakes in the middle of a vicious attack upon a city by a starship, dragged from unconsciousness by a voice inside his head. He has no memory of who he is and what he's doing there, but the voice in his head is no hallucination. The first priority is to get him up and moving to where he's supposed to be -- because Bron is a deepcover agent with a telepathic link back to his base, and being amnesiac doesn't excuse him from the job he was sent to do. Within a few hours, the planet he's on will be destroyed by hellburners, deadly missiles that can tear a planet apart. And in those hours, the Destroyer fleet will raid, taking slaves and goods, and most particularly anyone with expertise in chaos theory -- the concept that the patterns of chaos can be read to predict the future. One of the first things Bron learns about himself is that he has a synthetic personality embedded to allow him to pass as one of those experts, making him a target for the raiders - and a Trojan horse.

Which would be an interesting story in its own right, and the initial phase of the book is a very good story of a deepcover agent rediscovering who he is a bit at a time, while in the middle of the most dangerous job he's ever done. But Kapp takes it to a new level, as Bron comes to understand that the hellburner was aimed at him. Specifically him, personally. And that it's been on its way for 700 million years...

This is a solid piece of 1970s space opera, with a plot on the grand scale combined with some fascinating details to flesh out the universe, and some well-realised characters. It's short by modern standards, but that's all to the good, as it's a tightly written story. An entertaining way to pass a few hours.

LibraryThing entry

book log: 77) Bernard Knight -- the Witch Hunter

77) Bernard Knight -- the Witch Hunter

The eighth in a crime fiction series set in the twelfth century, following the cases of Crowner John, a knight who has been appointed as the first coroner of Devon by Richard the Lionheart. This was the first I'd read, and will be the last even though I have another in the TBR pile, because it was a Did Not Finish for me.

Even though the elements of the story should have been a draw for me, I found it hard to get into, and the lead character hard to like. Things came to a head for me with the scene where it becomes clear that Sir John ignores his wife in favour of not one but multiple mistresses. It may be historically accurate, and the author was at pains to then tell us that John's marriage was a failure but that neither party was at fault, it having been a political marriage that both were forced into by their families -- but that's the problem for me. Having shown us a miserable marriage where John's wife seems to be an unreasonable shrew, Knight then tells us rather than shows us what the problem in the marriage is. I don't find infidelity an appealing characteristic in a lead character unless it's carefully grounded, and while this may have been partly to do with my coming in several books in, it focused my attention on the real problem I had with the book -- too much telling and not enough showing for my tastes, and both in the wrong places. After three chapters, I wanted to know the end of the story, but not enough to read the chapters in between. So not a complete failure, but not a series to add to my reading list.

LibraryThing entry