The Gunslinger Review

The Gunslinger is the first book in "The Dark Tower" series by Stephen King. "The Dark Tower" is King's magnum opus that has been written over the course of the last 25 years. He was inspired by Robert Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." The series ties most of King's works into a single universe. This book takes us into the realm of horror, as well as fantasy, westerns, and epic journeys.

When we meet are protagonist, he is "a man without a name", simply "The Gunslinger". The Gunslingers are a mixture of nobles and law enforcement. The titles are inherited, but must be earned through a trial of battle. We later learn his name is Roland. He is pursuing the man in black. The man in black has wronged him, and many others. Later we meet a young boy named Jake, he is crucial to the story as well.

King makes frequent use of flashbacks to develop the back story of Roland and Jake. King paces the story well, and is often vividly descriptive. King's words pull the reader into the events in many places, the paintings included in the first edition are also quite beautiful. This book is the back story, set up, for the rest of the series, but it is done in a way that doesn't make it feel like its exposition only. King even gives the reader a classic cliff hanger ending.

Two Completed Projects

This is the end result of the pillow for the wedding gift. It turned out pretty good. She was very surprised and I think she appreciated it.













The stocking design is all done, now I have to trim the edges and put the backing on. My next project will be another stocking.

Hardwired Review

Welcome to Hardwired, Walter Jon Williams' world of super corporations, hard-wired skills, and smugglers. This is an extremely fast-paced, classic cyberpunk novel.

The opening of the book gets your heart racing. We meet Cowboy, our protagonist, as he is driving his car to his mountain hideaway. It does great job of introducing the feel, the hero, and the technology of the story. Cowboy is a panzerboy, THE panzerboy actually. A panzerboy is a smuggler, a bootlegger, and a line-runner. He smuggles to maintain his freedom from the control of the Orbitals, corporations that run the world and maintain their head quarters in orbit around Earth. His approach reminds me very much of what in America was referred to as the "frontier spirit".

Our other main character is Sarah, Sarah is a person for hire. She has a modification called a Weasel, it is very dangerous to those she uses it on and herself. Sarah's goal is to buy tickets for herself and her brother to live in Orbit. She has held some very borderline jobs in order to achieve this. In fact, when we first meet her, she is on a job to assassinate one of the Orbital employees and steal some information from their database. This results in her home being blown up and her brother being seriously injured.

Her fixer, or agent, for the lack of a better word is put in danger as well. Cowboy and Sarah meet on the job related to finding out who is trying to kill her. Both Cowboy and Sarah have strong senses of integrity, despite the fact that they hold what is in our world criminal jobs. They discover that the black market is not all that it seems.

This story contains much complexity in the plot and character development. The details come together wonderfully, though occasionally there is a slight feeling of deus ex machina. I would say that for most people this is an excellent introductory novel to the cyberpunk sub-genre. It is much more accessible than Neuromancer by Gibson for those brand new to the genre. It contains less "techno-babble" at any rate.

Celtic Cross Design Completed

This is the finished design, minus the couples' initials and the wedding date. I thought that posting it in it's pure form would be a good idea. I'm kind of nervous that I may have thrown off the design with the initials. The next step is to wash it and let it dry. Then I will add the borders and backing for the pillow.

The Continent Cake

I did not utilize my usual care and patience with this cake, to my shame. This is my last cake to rewards my students for being excellent during the 8th grade testing.

Due to other commitments, I had to do this cake in one night. I was up until 12:30 am. Thank goodness it's Friday. I hope it is a semi-reasonable facsimile of Asia.