Void Trilogy, by Peter F. Hamilton

Oct. 8th, 2025 09:28 am
runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
The Void Trilogy is three books that are really just one long, enormous book: The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void, and The Evolutionary Void. They don't stand on their own even as installments in a series and must be read one after another, no dawdling.

I didn't enjoy this as much as the Commonwealth Saga, its predecessor, which I remember as being dense but interesting science fiction. It had a lot of characters, in a lot of locations, but all were distinct and memorable and their stories slowly converged in a satisfying way. This book (all three of it) is written to the same formula, but bloated to the point where so much was happening, and for so little reason, that the people, locations, and factions all ran together despite them being on many different planets, which also ran together. The only memorable parts of the book were Edeard and Araminta, and in the beginning I mostly kept reading for Edeard, though I became less interested in him as time went on and he became so powerful that all that was left to do was wait for the corruption to set in. Luckily Araminta started to get more attention around that same time.

I think perhaps Hamilton is best held to two volume books because this story seriously got away from him in three. There was stuff in here that just did not need to be in here, and then once it became relevant again (if it ever did) Hamilton did not give a flying fuck whether you remembered it or not and refused to give you a hint even if it was referencing something from the last book or two thousand pages ago.

It's so long that by the time you get to the actual climax of the series it's like, they ask a guy not to do the thing that'll end the universe, and he's like, idk, and then they ask him once more with feeling and he's like, well, okay. There's plenty of excitement on the way, but talk about anti-climatic. And then everyone goes home to a happy ending because no one (with insurance) ever dies in this universe. They just get downloaded to new bodies. Though you do kind of forget about that while you're reading because the characters are in so much peril.

Also, and I don't know how else to put this, but every reference to sex read like it was written by a man, like the beautiful identical twins who married the same man, and the one guy in multiple bodies who told his singular-bodied girlfriend that he had to fuck other women with his other bodies while he was with her because she (the girlfriend) just made him so hot, baby.

The eye rolls I rolled.

Still, obviously I found something compelling about this in order to spend, according to Libby, something like 72 hours reading it. But if you're looking to get into granular space operas, I don't think this is the place to start with Hamilton.

Status Updates from Goodreads )

Contains: Descriptions of sexual violence; graphic physical violence; animal harm/death; references to forced impregnation and, forced abortion; "Oriental" used to describe people; lingers on fatness in a way that isn't positive; mind control; cops; and for the ebooks: so many OCR errors I was instantly transported back in time to 2009.
anehan: Drunk Lan Wangji (MDZS: Drunk Lan Zhan)
[personal profile] anehan
Work is hellish. I worked both Saturday and Sunday on three hours of sleep, I have very little recollection of what I've done since last Thursday, and I literally startle up from sleep thinking about databases. It's bad enough that today my coworker and I sat our team lead and his boss and his boss's boss down and said that our team lead needs to start prioritising things better, because his demands are ridiculous and this can't go on. No, not even when we're trying to deploy the project from hell. Especially not when we're trying to deploy the project from hell.

So, what I've needed have been books by an author I know I can trust and whose writing pulls me in so that I can make it to bedtime with my sanity intact. And you can see below just which author that has been.

Recently read

  • Annick Trent, Oak and Ash (The Old Bridge Inn #3)

    A new-to-me author. Historical M/M romance between a surgeon and a valet. I haven't read the previous parts of the series, but they are standalone enough that it didn't matter. I don't have anything to say, because my brain is kaputt, except that I really liked this.


  • K.J. Charles, the Charm of Magpies series: The Magpie Lord, A Case of Possession, and Flight of Magpies

    The first two parts were re-reads, the last I'd never read. No idea why. Anyway, it had been so long since I'd read this that I'd managed to forget basically everything, so it was all delightfully new to me.


  • K.J. Charles, Spectred Isle

    Another re-read. Another one I'd read so long ago I didn't remember anything.


  • K.J. Charles, All of Us Murderers

    KJC's newest, which was released everywhere yesterday. (I guess UK readers of physical books got theirs last week. Lucky them.) Gothic romance. Finished it yesterday evening, slept a full 8 hours afterwards for the first time in far too long. 5 stars, no notes. Loved it.


Currently reading

K.J. Charles, Any Old Diamonds (Lilywhite Boys #1). A reread, because my brain is still not online.

Up next

Christ, I don't know up from down. How would I know this? Probably more KJC, tbh.

101 ☆

Oct. 8th, 2025 12:23 am
tinkaton: morticia addams | the addams family (♥︎ gothic)
[personal profile] tinkaton
A fic meme yoinked from [personal profile] sushiflop!

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, ‘A’ and 'The’ do not count for 'a’ and ’t’. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

all this shows is that I single-handedly was keeping the pepperhony tag afloat )

Here's the meme if anyone wants to do it:

The only laws that love obeys.

Oct. 7th, 2025 09:42 pm
hannah: (Across the Universe - windowsill_)
[personal profile] hannah
When the clouds clear enough, and the moon comes out, it's almost a surprise - only almost, because you've seen it for ages, you know exactly where it is, but it's only when the clouds clear enough and the circle of the moon shows itself that you see it for what it is and not the light it gives. Because until the clouds clear, all you see is the moon's light. You don't see the moon for itself, for what it is, not quite yet. Standing up on the roof, looking skyward, all you see are the clouds and the light, not the moon. You see the reflection, not the thing itself.

Standing up there, the second night of Sukkot, the second night of the yearly harvest festival, the celebration that comes with the night of the full moon, I could see where the moon was by the light that pushed through the dense, dark clouds. Not the celestial body itself, but its light, its reminders and indicators of where and what it was. I could see where the moon was, and I could see, farther south, the breaks in the clouds that I knew would let me see it. I'd come from a Sukkah party of sorts, a dinner at a local synagogue that wasn't so much choreographed as it was loosely hosted: a sukkah built on the rooftop, with people bringing food of their own to have dinner in a sukkah and fulfill the requirements of the holiday. I talked about Greek museums, and riding the metaphor to work in Athens, and Hadrian's wall, and Los Angeles' architecture, and probably a dozen other topics, all while eating food and drinking wine in the temporary structure on the rooftop. There was some wine left over. I took the bottle with me to another rooftop. My parents' building doesn't close its roof the way my own building's does. My father wanted to see if he could see the moon.

It wasn't so much that he could see it as it was that he could see where it was. The clouds were moving south to north, along the eastern part of the sky. To the north, it was largely clear; to the south, the nighttime clouds loomed dark and uncaring, taking up as much of the sky as they could. I could see where they were thin and weak, and stayed to watch. My father had to go, satisfying himself by seeing where the moon was. I waited to see it, if I could. I knew I could, if I waited. I waited to open up the bottle and drink its remains when I saw the moon. I didn't wait long. The spinning of the earth and the motion of the clouds had them thin out and open up so it was more than seeing the light behind the clouds telling me where the moon was: it was seeing the moon itself. Waiting and watching, the darkness stopped for the light to come. It wasn't cold on the roof, not with the thick dress I was wearing and not with the wine I was drinking. The clouds weren't enough to hide the moon from me anymore. The faint spectrum around it, the blues and reds reflected by the thinnest clouds making a rainbow halo, told me exactly what I was seeing. The faintest reflection of sunlight turned into the strongest moonlight.

I watched the moon, and drank the wine. I looked at the clouds, and drank the last of the wine. I left when I was ready, and I don't know when next I'll see it - just that I'll remember having seen it tonight.

D&D

Oct. 7th, 2025 09:22 pm
settiai: (D&D -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
Well, I wasn't worried about tomorrow's game until the DM posted this message in the Discord.



Now? Now I think that I'm a little worried. What on earth is Erin planning on doing to our poor characters tomorrow?

ETA: It got worse.

Scarlet Street

Oct. 7th, 2025 02:25 pm
gwynnega: (books poisoninjest)
[personal profile] gwynnega
Back in 2021, when I was writing my poem "the ending" about my late father and his film I Bury the Living, I had a lot of questions I wished I could ask him (including how he got the idea for the movie and whether it bothered him that he had to rewrite the ending). I did some research online, but many questions remained.

The following year, my mother died, and in the midst of packing up her house with the people from the bank in charge of this undertaking, I discovered an issue of Scarlet Street: The Magazine of Mystery and Horror in the office. Someone had left it out in plain sight, maybe thinking it would be of interest. The issue was from 1993. I saw Bela Lugosi and Carroll Borland on the cover and grabbed it, though I had no idea what it was doing there. I didn't give it much thought, though, overwhelmed by grief and the million tasks before me.

Over three years went by, and although I kept the magazine where it wouldn't get lost, I didn't have the heart to peruse it. I may have briefly paged through it at some point; I think I had some idea that it contained something about one of my dad's movies. Finally on Sunday, I was ready to look through it. It features a lot of interesting articles (Carroll Borland! Curtis Harrington! Elizabeth Russell!). And it contains a lengthy appreciation of I Bury the Living, featuring lengthy quotes from my dad and a lovely photo of my parents on their honeymoon(!).

Reading through the story felt almost like a dream, there was so much information about my dad's life and career I didn't know, told in his own voice. He tells how he came up with the idea for I Bury the Living, and indeed, how much it bothered him to have to rewrite the ending. In 1993, my dad was already pretty incapacitated from Parkinson's, but his mind was still sharp enough that it was possible for him to recount all this information in a coherent, engaging fashion. A year later, even, this probably wouldn't have been possible, so it feels like even more of a gift that the writer of the piece got to him in time, so I could, eventually, read it.

The issue is available online, along with the other issues of Scarlet Street.

Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

Oct. 7th, 2025 02:58 pm
pauraque: drawing of a wolf reading a book with a coffee cup (customer service wolf)
[personal profile] pauraque
After a couple of failed attempts at Dracula Daily, I have successfully read Dracula for the first time! \o/

The book opens with newly qualified solitictor Jonathan Harker journeying to Transylvania to meet with a client who is planning to move to England. Count Dracula seems like a nice guy at first, only it's weird that he doesn't eat. Or go out during the day. Or have a reflection in the mirror. Uh-oh. Barely escaping with his life, Harker returns to England, but soon the Count arrives too and begins to stalk and drink the blood of women there, including Harker's wife Mina. Harker joins a nascent group of vampire hunters led by Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, and their attempts to outwit and destroy their foe are related in epistolary style through diaries, letters, news reports, and so on.

What surprised me the most about this book is how... cozy it is?? A lot of it is about a gang of loveable characters who all adore each other, bring out the best in one another, and never have conflicts that they can't resolve by just talking about it. They are constantly taking each other passionately by the hand and swearing bonds of eternal trust and devotion, and being moved to tears by how brave and strong and pure of heart everybody is.

This is not a criticism! I actually found it really charming! It just wasn't what I expected. I imagine Stoker's reasoning was that the plot is so scary that the reader would need unimpugnably gallant heroes to rely on or it would all be too stressful. But since it is unlikely that this plot would scare anybody today, you just have this endearing team of well-adjusted, hypercompetent, stoutly ethical people banding together to oppose an external threat that can't possibly break their bonds or their spirit. It's like the crew of Star Trek TNG fight a vampire.

cut for length and some spoilers )

Also, Dracula is described as having a huge, magnificent moustache. I await the film adaptation courageous enough to be faithful to the book in this.

Dracula is in the public domain, so you can read it on Project Gutenberg if you like.

[Edited to correct Jonathan's job title, thank you [personal profile] raven!]
schneefink: Quirrel from Hollow Knight sitting on a bench (HK Quirrel on bench)
[personal profile] schneefink
I've been having so much fun with Silksong, an incredible game. There's so much to explore!
I finally got to the first ending (could have done it earlier but now felt like a good time) and that seems like a good point to post, uh, 9.5k of notes about my playthrough.

Act 2: Citadel of Song. Part 1 )

Book of Mormon + Horse Girls

Oct. 7th, 2025 12:15 pm
osprey_archer: (art)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
I attended two theatrical productions this weekend! (In fact, I narrowly escaped attending three: Macbeth was on offer, but we ended up going to a cinema showing of Interview with the Vampire instead.)

First, I went to Book of Mormon, which I’ve wanted to see since 2014 despite a nagging feeling that possibly making a musical comedy about someone’s holy book was maybe not the best thing to do. However, I had a great time: the songs are super catchy and the show is a lot of fun, very energizing. I generally turn into a pumpkin around ten p.m. but did not pumpkin at all during the show!

Then I went to the Sunday matinee of Horse Girls, a play put on by the university theater department, whose productions range from “AMAZING” to “well, you tried.”

The lead actress was great, and the set designers were clearly having a ton of fun trying to cram as many different horse objects as they could into this twelve-year-old’s bedroom, but the script was… well. Let me just say, by the end of the play, there are three horse girls down. One gets boinked over the head with a riding trophy, another impaled on the surprisingly sharp ears of that selfsame riding trophy, and a third strangled with her own braid.

Also, the playwright seems to be under the impression that Anne Romney (wife of Mitt Romney) is some sort of patron saint of horse girls, as evidenced by the fact that when their stable is in trouble, our horse girls attempt to contact Anne Romney in the White House. (Oh, this play takes place in an alternate universe where Mitt Romney won the 2012 election, I guess.) And the director’s note is all about how Anne Romney originated or at least popularized the concept of the horse girl, which also makes me feel like I’ve stumbled into some bizarro alternate universe, because the horse girl has been around much longer than that? I’m sure there were horse girls in the 1990s if not before? Am I insane or is the director?

The director’s note also notes that horse girls are “often considered prissy, privileged, or just plain weird,” which seems like an unpromising set of assumptions to bring to the table when you are directing a play that is literally called Horse Girls. Although possibly exactly the assumption you want to bring to a play where the horse girls are homicidal maniacs.
aurumcalendula: gold, blue, orange, and purple shapes on a black background (Default)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
Night Cascades (2022):

Read more... )


Road to Empress (2025):

Read more... )


Sorry, We're Closed (2024):

Read more... )

Fic: Lime Jello and Other Dangers

Oct. 6th, 2025 10:34 pm
philomytha: Biggles pulling Angus from the water (Biggles drowning rescue)
[personal profile] philomytha
I started this earlier in the year, inspired by the 'stabbed and pinned to the wall' tag in the h/c exchange, and also by watching MASH and thinking that if someone was impaled to the wall in a serious way they would need some really good trauma surgeons really quickly. It's been sitting around unfinished for a while, but today's whumptober prompt is also 'pinned to the wall', and so I have taken the hint and finally written an ending for it and posted it. Whumptober seems to be doing well for getting me to finish longer things that I haven't quite had the impetus to get done, long may it continue.

Title: Lime Jello and Other Dangers
Content: impalement, blood and gore, h/c, MASH crossover, canon-typical relationship dynamics, whatever the h/c equivalent of PWP is, not medically accurate, 7800 words
Summary: Von Stalhein is seriously injured. Biggles won't leave him. Algy knows a guy who runs a field hospital. And Hawkeye just wants more sleep.

Lime Jello and Other Dangers )
osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
Kicking off my Halloween reads with Tasha Tudor’s Pumpkin Moonshine! This was Tudor’s first book, about a little girl who climbs up the hill to get the very best pumpkin from the field to make a pumpkin moonshine (known as a jack-o-lantern to us non-Vermonters). But the pumpkin is too big to carry, so she has to roll it; and when she starts to roll the pumpkin down the hill, well, it starts to roll faster and faster…

I rather expected this to end in pumpkin pie, but this pumpkin is made of stern stuff, and survives its roll down the hill to be carved into a toothiest, scariest, most beautiful pumpkin moonshine in Vermont.

You can tell this is an early work by Tudor, as the style seems not quite fully formed yet, perhaps more Currier and Ives than her later works. I really liked the vignettes around the first letter on each page, particularly the ones on the pages where the pumpkin is rolling down the hill: you have the big illustration on the left-hand page showing the pumpkin scaring the goats, say, and on the right, the first letter features a goat standing atop the I and staring down in dismay at the progress of the runaway pumpkin.

(no subject)

Oct. 6th, 2025 01:38 pm
ursula: bear eating salmon (Default)
[personal profile] ursula
I'm on A Meal of Thorns this week talking about Melissa Scott's Burning Bright: why I love it, what makes it space opera or cyberpunk, and the mystery of the ending.

Nominations Queries Post 4

Oct. 7th, 2025 12:19 am
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods in [community profile] yuletide_admin
We are 214.5 hours into tag approving! We began with 6078 individual fandom nominations to sort (where if two people submitted the same fandom, that would count twice towards the total). We have 28 fandom nominations still to sort. (AO3-savvy users will note that that means we're no longer seeing a random display - instead we can view all remaining unapproved fandoms.)

Please continue to review the questions below to help us sort them quickly and correctly! The sooner we sort out these issues, the sooner we can release the tag set.

Please link your nominations page if telling us what to do about your nomination - thank you! Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened. (You can find your own nominations at this link; keep in mind this gives you an 'Edit' screen where you can't actually submit any edits, but if you delete /edit, that's the page we're looking for.)

If we've processed any of your nominations and something doesn't look right, please comment (with your nominations page) to tell us about the problem and how you think it should be corrected. Questions are welcome.


The Baileys (Chuck Schumer's RPF) - We plan to approve this as something other than RPF, with Chuck Schumer as the creator of fictional material, since the characters involved aren’t real people. Additionally, we’re wondering about Eileen Bailey vs Eileen O’Reilly and Joe Bailey vs Joe O’Reilly. Nominator, do you see these as separate people, or should they be piped characters? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Dark Star Trilogy - Marlon James - Nominator, we couldn’t find a character named Panther. Did you mean Leopard? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Debí Tirar Más Fotos - Bad Bunny (Album) - Nominator, did you intend the visual album or the short film? The nomination of Señor suggests the latter, but Bad Bunny doesn’t appear as a character. We can combine them as (Album-related Videos) if you mean both. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Golden Hour pt 2 - ATEEZ (Album) and Golden Hour pt 3 : In Your Fantasy - ATEEZ (Album) - Both of these are nominated and so are the music videos for Ice On Your Teeth, Lemon Drop, and In Your Fantasy, which are songs on these albums. We're willing to approve music videos that can stand alone with clear and coherent fictional elements to build on, but it's not clear how the albums are distinct from ineligible lore or how they stand on their own, especially if the music videos also stand on their own. We're willing to hear arguments against, but otherwise will approve the music videos only. Nominators, if making a case, please link your nominations page when you reply.

Marvel 1602 (Comics) - Nominator, from your character choices it's not clear you were interested in the original Marvel 1602 - could we approve as Marvel 1602: Fantastick Four (Comics), or have we misunderstood? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

The Racing Track (GrabFood Webseries) - Nominator, it looks like you’ve selected the actor names instead of character names for this fandom. Can we confirm you’re interested in RPF? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

She-Hulk (Marvel Comics) - Nominator, are you interested in multiple runs at once, or primarily in the 2023-2024 Sensational She-Hulk run? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

自転車屋さんの高橋くん | Takahashi from the Bike Shop - Nominator, did you want the manga or the 2022 drama adaptation? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Twin Peaks (TV 1990) - Nominator of Chantal Hutchens and Gary Hutchens, these characters are only in the 2017 sequel. We realize that tag is a synonym of the 1990 tag; still, would you prefer to split these out into a separate series? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy - Uranium Phoenix - We could use some help identifying some of these characters. We can only find “Ceiba Yan” in the context of the Ceiba Yan Tree, and we can’t find Xecatl at all. Nominator, can you help us out? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Earlier queries…

Batman: Arkham Shadow (Video Game) - we received evidence for this but would like more information, please. Could the nominator, or anyone else who knows this family of games, please help us understand how it is distinct? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Ghost in the Shell (Anime & Manga) - this is nominated with Kusanagi Motoko, Batou, Kogusa, and Saito; meanwhile, we also have a nomination for Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex (Anime) with Batou, Hideo Kuze, Motoko Kusanagi, and Togusa. We would prefer to combine these under Stand Alone Complex but are open to hearing otherwise. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Hear Me Cry (1984) (CBS Schoolbreak Special) Craig and David’s parents are distinct characters and so we are not willing to approve each set of parents as a single unit. Nominator, would you like to pick two of the four parents? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

History Boys - All Media Types - Nominator, we won’t approve this nomination as All Media Types. Would you prefer the movie or the play? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Riddick (2013) - Could we please get some information about how this stands alone from the rest of the Chronicles of Riddick saga? If you nominated this, please link your nominations page when you reply.

Trash Taste (Podcast) - This podcast is nominated without characters, but it's difficult to see what you're looking for aside from RPF of the hosts, as this doesn't seem to contain a fictional narrative. Nominator, please clarify what you were hoping for? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Tron - All Media Types - We won't approve this nomination as All Media Types. Nominator, please pick a canon. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

West Coast Avengers (Marvel Comics) - Nominator, did you mean the 2018-19 reboot series? Your character nominations seem to relate to that run, so we'd like to approve as West Coast Avengers (Comics 2018-19), assuming that matches your intention. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

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