Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Castle In The Air is Diana Wynne Jones' sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, not that you'd realise it for the first three-quarters of the book if it wasn't written on the cover...

Instead of Howl's rural alternate-Britain, it's time to head for the bustling souk so familiar to Ali Baba or Aladdin, for Castle In the Air is firmly in Arabian Nights territory.

Abdullah is a humble carpet merchant who purchases a magic carpet from a mysterious stranger, and finds himself thrust into the world of his dreams - and his nightmares. First he meets the girl of his dreams (or rather, the princess!), then he finds himself caught up in a battle of djinns - a battle that may well have involved the Wizard Howl and his entire family. With genies, carpets, cats and kittens in tow (as well as disreputable soldier who may not be what he seems) Abdullah will have to rescue a whole host of princesses if he's ever to find himself a new home. It's a journaey that will take him far away from the deserts of his birth to colder, greener lands in the north...

Like much of her output, Wynne Jones delivers yet another entertaining read, if perhaps not as quite as good as its predecessor. There's a certain delight here in the subversion of the traditional fairy tale (no matter which culture it's been appropriated from). Wynne Jones avoids many of the pitfalls of the sequel by apporaching the story in a completely different mode, with completely different characters. While Howl's Moving Castle was a story of a chaotic romance, Castle In The Air has a much more swash buckling feel, even if a touch disneyfied - for no one gets really hurt, and even the bad guys take a turn for the better in the end.

A fun, short read - the sort of book to be taken on a spring or summer picnic.

(Mind you, HarperCollins need to do something about the colour balance on the cover art...)

Click on the map to a claim chunk of the world for the LJ blogosphere! See here for instructions... It's a massive game of Risk!

(spotted in troubledwater's journal)

...by using a digital camera in the Yosemite Valley, when it really should have been sheet film...

One thing is clear, that Yosemite's stone grandeur is so magnificent, it's impossible to do any justice in any photograph - you need to be there, breathing that clear mountain air, hearing the squawking of the blue jays, the rush of the water, the wind in the redwoods and pines, seeing those immense masses of impermeable granite looming out from a pastel blue winter sky (for while it may be High Spring in the Bay it is still Winter up in the Sierra Nevada)...

But still, we must share these frail electronic images of solid mountains with the world, for they are poetry writ large in the slow ballet of tectonics and the subtle finger of erosion.

( Entering Yosemite, we meet the Bridalveil Falls, and are drenched in their icy spray. )
( Across the valley looms the rock face of my climbing dreams, El Capitan, sheer granite reaching to the sky. )
( Looking through the woods, and the 2000 foot tumble of Yosemite Falls shines white on the solid stone wall of the valley. )
( There are giants around us, stone and snow. )
( Another climber's dream, Half Dome, cleaves the clouds from the sky. )
( In the woods, the slow decay of the wood, and the rushing power of the water, released from the highland snow. )
( As day ends, the falls crash and tumble from their gentle valley, falling endlessly to earth. )
( Sunset paints vast stained glass windows on the Cathedral. )
( Spread out in twilight, the valley looks east to the last of the sun on the slopes of Clouds Rest. )

Be warned - there are largish images herein, a mix of 640 x 480 and 640 x 853 shots, taken on Saturday March 1st in the Yosemite Valley, using a Canon S40 4MPixel digital camera - so they have been edited down from the originals.