In which trek reviews Summer Snow

During a bout of insomnia last night, I finished up Summer Snowby Nicole Baart. As previously mentioned on the blog, this is the second of a three book set: After the Leaves Fall,Summer Snow, and Beneath the Night Treeand I (accidentally) read them out of order: Beneath the Night Tree, After the Leaves Fall, Summer Snow.

After the Leaves Fall covers a ten-year span in the life of Julia DeSmit, from the time her mother, Janice, leaves until her freshman year of college. Occasionally, time skipped a little disjointedly, but overall the action flowed well. Summer Snow follows the term of Julia's pregnancy, during which she must decide whether or not she is going to keep the baby or give the infant up for adoption.

If facing the possibility of being a young, unwed mother in a small Iowa town wasn't stress enough for Julia, Janice returns... with her five-year old son Simon, Julia's half-brother, in tow. Nellie, Julia's grandmother, insists that Janice and Simon stay with them, hoping that Julia and Janice might reconcile and heal the rift between them.

I enjoyed this selection though I felt there was a problem in the transition between it and the third volume. Beneath the Night Tree picks up five years after the conclusion of Summer Snow. At the end of the second book, certain relationships between characters are being established. Right from the beginning of the third book those relationships are represented entirely differently by the author, creating a dialectic shift in the interaction of the characters involved. Baart makes no attempt at all to explain why or how the change has taken place.

Taken alone or in combination with the first book, Summer Snow was good. Open issues and unsecured threads were tied together and there was a sense of resolution and hope at the end of this book. Viewing this as the second book of a three book set, I was left with the feeling that Beneath the Night Tree was a forced sequel, written in haste.

Given that I was operating in a fog of sleeplessness, I decided not to attempt to write this post in the middle of the night. I waited until this morning and reviewed the last couple of chapters. While the sense of disgruntlement can be attributed to the insomnia, the unexplained change in the personality of a major character still remains a flaw when seen during the daylight hours.

On ebooks and lending

Hardcover and paperback books are really easy to lend. You give it to your spouse, send it to school with your child to go home to another kid's parent, you bring it with you to a Brownie meeting to hand off to another mom. Really straightforward and simple and you hope that the book comes home in the same condition you loaned it.

What about loaning your ebooks? Well, Barnes & Noble nook has had this functionality for quite some time and not too long ago, Amazon made lending between Kindles a reality.

If the people local to you have the same ereader and share your reading tastes, you're good but what if the people you know play for the other team? DRM rears its ugly head and smacks you down, that's what.

I got to thinking the other day, after reading a plea on the Kindle discussion board for a loan, "Ebook readers need the equivalent of a community bulletin board where they can tack up a virtual index card saying what books they are willing to loan out and what books they would like to borrow."

Yesterday I learned that there already exists such a mechanism: Lendle. You can register to be a Lendler for free or you can opt to be a Patron for a life-time membership donation of $25. Lendlers earn 50¢ per book they lend out; patrons earn $1.00 per lend. You earn more requests by putting books on your lendable shelf and by actually lending books to other Lendlers. Nothing is loaned out initially or automatically - it's sort of like maintaining a Goodreads book shelf but with lending enabled.

To request a book, you search the title and join the wait queue. To respond to a request, you loan the book from your Manage My Kindle page. Very simple.

I loaded up about 160 or so Kindle books which I am willing to lend which means I earned 70 request privileges. I applied two of them to next installments of serials I like and have the rest in reserve. The virtual TBR pile is groaning!

Four or five requests to borrow books arrived and I responded to all of them. This is a fast-moving community, though: I was beaten to the lend on all but one of them! no matter, one person is going to read a book I loaned out and that's pretty cool.

One thing potential Lendlers must note: this is only a mechanism for matching up someone who has a copy of the book and someone who wants to read it. Both parties are still bound to the DRM and lending rights established by Amazon and/or the publisher: one two-week lend per book. Lendlers also need to respect Lendle's terms of service and not request a second loan of a book. If you liked it enough to want to read it a second time, buy it.

Just to keep things fun and interesting, Lendle has a list of achievements you can earn: signing up makes you a Lendler; paying up makes you a Patron; uploading a profile image earns you an Avatar badge; and Good Samaritan status has multiple levels. Oops, you tried to lend a book but got beaten out? Horsehoes and Hand Grenades for you! Are you waiting for someone to lend you a book? Right On Queue! You can come visit me and see all my awesome Lendle achievements, if you like.

According to the FAQs, all purchase links from Lendle are Amazon Associate links. They have to make enough money to cover operations and I'm sure that the people running the show like eating, heat, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing, after all.

Want more information? Visit Lendle or the Lendle blog.

In which trek reviews After the Leaves Fall

I enjoyed Beneath the Night Tree,by Nicole Baart enough that I immediately located the first book in the series, After the Leaves Fall.This is the beginning of Julia DeSmit's story.

Here the reader follows Julia from childhood to college. Mom, Janice, walked out on the family when Julia was nine and Julia and her father moved in with his parents on their farm. During her high school years, Julia developed a strong friendship with (and crush on) the next door neighbor boy, Thomas. Her father died when she was fifteen. Through all of her life, Julia's grandmother was unwavering in her support even, or maybe especially, when Julia returned home from her very difficult first semester of college.

Having started this series out of order, it is really tempting to drop some spoilers here. I won't but I will say that occasionaly the amount of time passing between chapters is a little bit ambiguous.

I read After the Leaves Fall very quickly and immediately started the second book, Summer Snow.

In which trek reviews Beneath the Night Tree

How do you discover new authors? There are so many ways: you can request a recommendation from someone; you can track your favorite authors, waiting for the next book in an ongoing series; you can download free Kindlesamples from Amazon; or you can browse the new release shelves. That last is how I discovered Beneath the Night Tree,by Nicole Baart.

I didn't realize that this is the third volume in a series, since the cover merely stated "a novel by". Usually I do not like to read books out of sequence. Knowing that a particular character didn't "make" it to book three can be a bit frustrating. Beneath the Night Tree was a good enough read that I went back to find the first two book in the series so that I could read Julia DeSmit's history and to learn exactly how Julia got to where she was in her life.

There is enough history in the third volume that the reader has no trouble following the current story but not so much as to bog down the action nor to make reading the first two books without value.

Julia DeSmit is a young, unwed mother who lives with her paternal grandmother, Nellie, 5-year old son, and 10-year old half-brother. Her long-time boyfriend, Michael Vermeer, is in medical school and their relationship takes on a long-distance character while he is in residency. While the distance puts a strain on their relationship, Julia is committed to making it work when her son's father, Parker Holt, reenters her life, asking her whether or not he has a child. The reader knows from the back story provided that this man was the teaching assistant from an engineering class during her first semester of college and that he wanted her to have an abortion when she told him she was pregnant. While Julia is not very happy with the idea of being around Parker herself, she feels that he does have the right to get to know Daniel and, consequently, her Simon, whom she is raising. Over the course of the book, Julia realizes that, just as she has changed over the intervening years, so has Parker.

The action and conflict are driven by Parker's need to know Daniel, as an "old friend" of Julia's, Simon's fears that he is unwanted, both boys' need for an interested adult male in their lives, and Michael's jealously of Parker. While I foresaw the ultimate resolution of the story, it was neither contrived nor trite.

Overall an enjoyable read, enjoyable enough that I returned to the library to secure the two preceding volumes, After the Leaves Falland Summer Snow.

In which trek lists

It's that time of the year again. The school year is winding down so now it is time to start thinking about summer reading. Not that Neatnik doesn't read during the school year, but the summer is a magical time. A time when we get to the library several times a week and the number of books soars.

It is also the time of summer reading incentive programs!

These are the ones I have located so far:

• Barnes and Noble Read 8 books, get one free


• Borders - Read 10 books, get one free


• TD Bank - Read 10 books, get $10 deposited to your TD Bank Young Saver Account

Anyone aware of other programs which do not have local residency restrictions? Leave me a comment and I'll update the post for all to see.

Oh, and in past years, McDonald's has offered a free Happy Meal for reading five books. I don't like fast food but once a month in the summertime for good reading is a treat. Check your local library for the forms; they usually arrive iin late June.

On gender... or lack thereof

I usually try to avoid news articles as blog fodder and yet this month I made an exception with the whole Camping fiasco and now I am making another.

There has been a story circulating the web over the past few days about a couple in Toronto who aren't telling the gender of their third child. I'm okay with that decision while the child is in utero; after all, learning the gender of your child before the birth is only (recently) possible due to advances in modern medicine and the invention of sonogram technology and plenty of parents tell their health care providers that they want to be surprised.

I already am surprised: little Storm's parents are not sharing the baby's gender and the kid is already four months old.

Only the parents, two older brothers (unschooled children ages 5 and 2), and the midwives who delivered the baby know what sort of tackle is hidden behind the diaper, no one else, not even the grandparents.

Both the grandparents and friends have expressed concern over this decision and fear that the child is being set up for lifelong ridicule and bullying.

Human beings have gender by definition. How much damage are these parents inflicting by trying to neuter their child through non-consensual social experimentation all in the name of their own political and ideological agendas?

Pinball wizard

Way back when I was a teenager, video arcades were all the rage. There was one at the mall where I worked. It all started with Asteroids and grew explosively from there.

I spent way too many of my hard-earned quarters on such classics as Pac-Man and his lady friend, Centipede, Galaxian, Tetris, Gauntlet (loved the flying ostriches!), Dig Dug, Q*bert, Frogger... the list goes on. My favorite type of arcade entertainment of all, however, was always pinball machines.

My favorite type of pinball machines are the ones with multiple levels and chutes and multi-ball bonus rounds. Lots of lights, sounds, and activity. A good pinball machine has a lot of "action" in the flippers. You have to be able to catch the ball on the flippers and the machine shouldn't tilt with the slightest movement of your hands and body.

We recently learned that there is a pinball museum not too far from home. You pay one fee and engage in unlimited play on the machines. Each machine has a placard with its date of manufacture and a short description. We took Neatnik over the weekend.

Quite a few of the machines were antiques and their flippers had long since lost their responsiveness. One in particular, however, was vintage 2005 and it met all of my criteria for a good pinball machine.

I don't even like this show!

We stayed for an hour and I spent most of my playing time on that one machine.

My shoulder joints are still aching days later!

In which it is business as usual

It is May 21st. I'm still here, accompanied by Neatnik and Number Guy. We haven't noticed any missing friends nor relatives. All of the vehicles on the roads have populated drivers - even the ones with the funny bumper stickers - and all of the people passing by on their daily constitutionals are moving at their accustomed pace - no shambling at all.

Glad I didn't waste time shopping for shotgun shells last night. Of course, not owning a shotgun, ammunition would have been a bit of a waste any way, I suppose.

Yet another doomsday prediction has come and gone - a non-event. Except for all of the parties.

We are going to a barbecue later today, which was dubbed a Judgment Day barbecue in the invite. This was merely our friends' tongue in cheek humor since it really is an early Memorial Day cookout: a compromise position so that they could honor their long-standing annual holiday get-together but still take advantage of the upcoming three-day weekend off from school and work to visit their kid at college. We'll miss the missing kid, but everyone else will be there and Number Guy assures me that my apple crisp contribution will be the hit of the dessert table.

# # #

I was at the local mall last night, walking a couple of laps, when I overheard an interesting conversation regarding the impending apocalypse. The young lady at the pretzel shop counter was asking her friend buying snacks what his opinion was. He felt the guy making the prediction was off his rocker. I observed in passing, "What part of 'you know not the day nor the hour' was unclear?" We all had a good laugh.

We parted ways and I continued my walk. I was still kind of chuckling to myself but then I got to thinking, "What about those poor souls who were convinced by Camping's ad campaign? How are they going to feel Sunday morning? Will they lose their faith in God?"

My sincere hope and prayer is that those who were seduced by a flawed mathematical manipulation of the scriptures will see that this old man stood on his soapbox and made a lot of noise, but that he's just a cult leader with an agenda. In fact, he's a cult leader with an awful lot of hubris. How can a civil engineer in 21st century America claim that he's put together a reliable prediction, down to the precise hour of an exact day, based on a seven thousand year timeline constructed from the books of the Old Testament?

Jesus himself said,

"But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
- Matthew 24:36

Those same texts cited by Camping were read daily in the synagogues. Does Harold Camping really think that the date of the end of all things is really hidden in the books of the Bible and that Jesus himself wasn't smart enough to put all of the clues together?

Lead him not into temptation...

There's been an awful lot of celery, lettuce, cucumber, and carrots consumed at chez trek the past month or so. And don't let's forget the apples, strawberries, and cantaloupes.

We have been eating so much rabbit food that this morning, when I had an itch behind my right ear, I tried to scratch it with my foot. I've been greeting the wild cottontails as if they were long lost relatives. "Hey, Frank! How are the wife and kids?"

It's all been worth it: Number Guy has lost over twenty pounds! Please leave him a congratulatory comment. He reads the blog and he'll be very much encouraged.

There has been one problem with this whole vegetables as primary victuals, though. I really enjoy baking and it wouldn't be at all right to bake stuff Number Guy can't have and leave it lying around the kitchen. If we had a bake sale scheduled at school or church, it might help. I could bake and take it away and that would scratch the "I need to bake" itch. Of course, then the delicious smell of warm cinnamon or ooey, gooey, melted chocolate would still linger in the air and I shouldn't be leading him into temptation.

Just to get my mind away from daydreams about baked goods, I walked to the library today and I saw this in one of the parking lots along my way.

To quote Harry Dresden in Dead Beat:
"I just stood there staring,
because while I've seen a lot of weird things,
I hadn't ever seen that."

Some days I am so thankful my cell phone has a built-in camera.

In which trek reviews Lie Down in Green Pastures

Back in December, I reviewed the first volume of Debbie Viguie's Psalm 23 Mystery series, The Lord Is My Shepherd. I'd gotten my paperbackfor free during a limited-time promotional interval but it is also available in paperback and in Large Print.Since I enjoyed the inaugural installment, I checked out book two, I Shall Not Want, (also available in Kindle format,btw) out of the library and enjoyed it as well. Of course, I immediately scooped up the third volume, Lie Down in Green Pastures, when it was offered for free earlier this month.

Lie Down in Green Pastures is a bit of a double entendre: it is the third line of the twenty-third psalm but it is also the name of the camp where the teens from Cindy's church and Jeremiah's synagogue go on retreat. Perhaps a bit to "pat" and "clever" for some readers, but I always like me a nice, clean double entendre.

In a bit of a departure from tradition, this book opens with Jeremiah discovering the dead body and Cindy coming to his rescue. Jeremiah was rear-ended in front of Cindy's church by a man who had died while driving. Cindy, hearing the collision, ran outside to investigate and immediately called Mark, the detective she met in her homicide case. He and his partner, Paul, are inclined to think that this is a simple case of a guy having a heart attack behind the wheel until another dead body turns up and somebody makes a run at Cindy.

The action in Lie Down in Green Pastures moves quickly. Since I was reading it on my Kindle, I knew that when the murderer was arrested, I was only 70% done. Even allowing for next-book-first-peek chapter that is commonly found at the end, there were too many pages left. The second part of the book was clearly meant to draw the two protagonists closer together. Jeremiah and Cindy have been fighting a growing attraction since the opening of the series. The end of this book explores that attraction and sets the stage for additional developments in the next book. The reader also gets a glimpse of Jeremiah's mysterious past.

From the beginning of book two, Viguie has been dropping little hints and tidbits about Jeremiah's life was before his relocation to southern California. Publicly, he admits to being a native Israeli, but side conversations and peeks into his private thoughts indicate that there is more to his past than simply rabbinic training. Definitely look for more secrets to be revealed in later stories.

The Lord Is My Shepherd was a very well-edited Kindle edition. Lie Down In Green Pastures not so much. There were three typographical errors in the first paragraph of chapter one: "synagogue.His" instead of "synagogue. His" transitioning between two sentences and "offThursdays" and "offMondays" each missing the space between words. Errors of this sort were endemic throughout the text. While not annoying enough to quit reading a good story, but they did occur at least once on every page. The series uses a small graphic between paragraphs to indicate change of perspective or passage of time within a chapter. In the paperback and in the first volume's Kindle edition, this graphic is centered on the line. In this third book, it is left justified. Again, not irritating enough to quit reading but frustrating all the same.

While I would recommend this series and this book, unless you were quick enough to score a free copy on Kindle, I would say buy the paperback. The Kindle edition is $9.68 as of this typing and I feel that that is way too much to spend on a poorly edited ebook.

Almost there

Growing up, the end of the spring term of the school year meant the beginning of summer vacation. We weren't quite dirt poor but we never had money for extras - like going away anywhere for vacation. Heck, we were so strapped that my mother sewed us those polyester stretch material pants - the kind with the crease sewn down the fronts - until I was in the fourth grade. After that, our jeans came from Sears Roebuck. Oh, how I lusted after a pair of Levi's jeans!That's what every other kid in the class wore. Even a pair of Wrangler'swould have been an improvement over the bell-bottom, red and white plaid pants immortalized in my sixth grade softball picture.

Happily, those days are far behind me, shut up in the dim recesses of my subconscious mind for the most part. :: tic-twitch ::

These days, summer does mean time to consider going places and doing things. Or it will once the first summer session term completes.

Yep, I am teaching summer school this year. The beginning of the summer session butts right up against graduation and the end of the spring semester and it is really weird.

The hallways are empty and they echo. The department office is empty and dark. The main computer lab, normally a hub of stress, panic and other student activity, is populated only by the lab assistants and they looked rather relieved. As for me, I thought it all felt kind of creepy. I found myself thinking, "Was that Camping guy in California sort of right after all? Was everyone else all raptured up?" I mean, seriously, being off by a day or a week over a seven thousand year calculation is within statistical significance, what with all of the fluctuations and slip in the changing of the calendar systems from Julian to Gregorian and adjusting for leap years and all of that.

I'm trying to keep things upbeat and light for my students. We are all in this six-week-long, crash course semester togeth... oh, wait, hang on a second.... -er. Yes, together: just checked my roster online and everybody is still on it, no harried visits to the registrar to drop the class yet.

Imagine trying to compress fifteen weeks of a weekly activity into just six. Let's say you normally do five 30-minute workouts a week. That's about the amount of time a student spends in a three credit class each week. Let's assume that your normal everyday activities like walking the dog, running up and down the stairs doing laundry, and hefting grocery bags from the car to the house account for the amount of time they spend on their homework.

Cramming all of that down to a six-week interval would mean you would have to do 2½ times as much shopping, laundry, and dog walking and you'd need up your workouts to 80 minutes each or swith to 55-minute workouts every day. Yeah.

It is going to be interesting around here for a while. The students have homework due every day this week which means that I have homework to grade every day.

"No rest for the wicked, Bob, and that means that we can't slack off either, or they'll outwork us."
- Harry Dresden, Proven Guilty

I'll try to come up for air periodically, though given that our air right now is actually a downpour of Biblical proportions, would someone please pass the gillyweed?

Reason, aim, fire

Can I truly describe today's Thursday Morning Bullet post as random? Dictionary.com provides the following definition:

random -adjective
proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason,
or pattern: the random selection of numbers

Well, I do have an aim: to attempt to indicate that I am still thinking and breathing and otherwise operating as an intelligent life-form.

I also have a reason: having not been all that prolific on the blog of late, it is time to return to some semblance of normalcy.

What I do not have is a pattern.

At least, I do not think that I have one. If anyone out there can identify a definitive pattern in the bullets today, without resorting to feeding them into a supercomputer running pattern recognition software, please leave me a comment and submit your findings via email. After that, you should probably apply for a position within NASA.

• There was a house fire several days ago about a mile and a half from chez trek. No idea what happened and it wasn't in the news.



• Plywood nailed over windows makes a building look so sad.



• Amazon had a huge list of free Kindle books yesterday. I "bought" several.
  
  • One Deadly Sisteris a series opener featuring Philadelphia law student, Sandy Reid.
  
  
  
  • A Plunder By Pilgrimsis a short story featuring Garrison Gage, a reclusive ex-detective. He also stars in The Gray and Guilty Sea.
  
  
  
  • Perfect Crimeis about a San Francisco woman who manages to murder her cheating husband. She figures she got away with the perfect crime but then the doorbell rings.
  
  
  
  • The Last Witchis the story of Aradia, a witch who moves to Salem, Massachusetts.
  
  
  
  • The Thirteenth Unicornis a fantasy story aimed at younger readers. I think Neatnik might enjoy this one.



• I acquired Debbie Viguie's first book in the Psalm 23 Mysteries Series, The Lord is My Shepherd,for free back in October. I liked it, so I checked the second volume, I Shall Not Want,out of the library.



• Got the third book, Lie Down in Green Pastures,for free on May 3rd.



• The limited-time free promotional list has been a great way for me to discover new authors.



• Oh, speaking of third volumes in a series, remember the pair of books I reviewed in the Prescription for Trouble series? I saw the third book, Diagnosis Death,on the library's new release shelf.



• I checked it out after reading the back cover. I'm about halfway through and Mabry's gotten better.



• Wanted to take Neatnik to a theme park over the weekend.



• I have discount coupons to make the ticket prices somewhat more bearable and I was on the phone with a hotel for a one-night stay before I thought to consult the weather bureau.



• It's supposed to rain all weekend.



• Harumph.



• I might mention that it is gorgeously sunny right now.



• Abigail is blogging again down in Key West. Tell her I sent you.



• NumberGuy lost 18 pounds - yay for him!



• Bridge partners say they found some of them.



• I got a small, unmarked envelope in the mail earlier this week. It was full of Box Tops.



• I logged into Ravelry this morning for the first time in months.



• There were a few messages there which was really nice. One was from someone else who wants to send me Box Tops.



• Maybe we'll finally make our school goal.



• The spring semester is officially over.



• Sort of.



• I have one student who blew off the final in favor of going to work.



• Also blew off the makeup exam appointment.



• I briefly considered feeling sorry for this student but then I got busy prepping up for the compressed summer term course I am teaching and all of my school-related emotional energy was rerouted past my sympathy center.



• One of my last students to finish the final final had to show me some work on her flash drive. She had a 8GB Kingston.I told her all about the new Kingston Data Traveler Locker+.



• An old friend sent me an email this morning. Seems he is interested in some new business venture and wants me on-board.



• Not sure what sort of ship this is. Waiting on a reply to my reply.



• The joys of email-tag.



• Sure hope he responds before next Saturday.



• You know, May 21st.



• Wonder if he got rapture insurance for his dog...



• One wonders, however, if the people not taken up are all untrustowrthy, do you really want to trust your pets to them?



• Neatnik still enjoys the Webkinz. The other day, she was playing online and whatever it was she was playing scared the daylights out of the pet.



• No, I am not clear at all on the details.



• She said that the pet was a 0% happiness so she took her to the spa and the happiness meter zoomed up to 100%.



• Wish all of life's problems could be solved so easily, don't you?



• Not counting water, tea is the most perfect beverage. Especially my preferred flavor/brand, Twinings English Breakfast Tea.



• Helps make the allergy symptoms a little more bearable.



• Everyone around me seems to be coughing, sneezing, sniffling, and scrubbing at their sore, swollen, bloodshot eyes.



• Yes, me too.



• I am not complaining.



• Better living through pharmaceuticals!



• And nasal lavage.



• I use a straight bottle provided by Dr PreciousMetal.



• I don't think I could use this particular model by Blue Rhino...

In which trek reviews James Potter

Some fans of JK Rowling's Harry Potter series might be interested in reading G Norman Lippert's fan fiction series about James Sirius Potter, Harry's elder son. Lippert's web site branches to accommodate your Internet connection speed: Wizarding and Muggle versions are both available. The website is very slick, very professional. The stories themselves, however, well, judge for yourself.

I downloaded Kindle-friendly, DRM-free copies a while back and recently got around to reading the three of them in rapid succession. The pacing is pretty good - not much in the way of great swampy middle bogging one down, though, like most stories, there are some times when the author needs to provide the reader with a bit of information and the action slows a bit to allow the data to flow. It was interesting and fun to see how a total stranger envisioned Rowling's characters 19 years later. Lippert is also pretty good at coming up with logical explanations for why magic works in a particular way and why certain things cannot be accomplished magically.

What he is not so good at doing is coming up with his own plots. He freely admits that James Potter and the Hall of Elders Crossing is a retelling of That Hideous Strength,the third volume of CS Lewis' Space Trilogy.The second James Potter book, James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper, is a revisitation of Rowling's second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.Book three, James Potter and the Vault of Destinies, opens as if it is going to be original and unique, as the action travels to the other side of the pond, but is is still pretty much a rehash of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Purists will probably not be pleased with Lippert's prose. I'm not sure if Lippert really has his own author's "voice", since he seems to be deliberately trying to emulate Rowling's. At the same time, he blatantly violates Rowling's canon on many points. Minor issues can be forgiven as a slip of the mind: even authors with paid, professional editors sometimes have glitches like that make it to the printing press. Major departures are harder to ignore. One of the most glaring in my mind was when he had Harry state that thestrals could not be employed as transportation in The Hall of Elders Crossing: "Thestrals can only carry one person, and none as heavy as Titus or myself." Um, yeah, right. So how exactly did Bill and Fleur and Kingsley and Hermione manage during the flight from Privet Drive?

Those who do not mind playing a little fast and loose with the established rules and who are currently double-jonesing for a Potter fix while waiting for the second half of Deathly Hallowsto reach the theaters might enjoy Lippert's speculation on what might happen a couple of decades have elapsed.