the wintersmith

So I finished The Wintersmith. It's a good read.

I think if I was criticising, I would pick on two things. First off, it starts with a later event in the narrative and then the next three quarters of the book are effectively flashback.

The trouble with this is it kinda robs it of tension. I mean, the book still has it because the bit it starts with isn't the end, but it is close. If you know up-front that characters are alive and well at the end, then you also know they're not going to die in a flashback. That's a bit extreme, but you see what I mean.

Also there was a bit of a lack of Wee Free Men. I guess that's sensible in the fact that this is the third novel, so there's not much left in the way of surprises, but they're so entertaining it could have done with a bit more of them.

A bit more of them on there own, I mean - they were present in a lot of scenes, but didn't really do much of anything.

However, saying that, what had replaced them was all good stuff. It was a lot more 'witchy' than the previous books, as Tiffany had grown up a bit and done more training, etc. It was especially nice to see plenty of the elder witches - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, etc - as they're such great character.

The book did leave a few sort-of loose ends that could be carried over into new books, but equally don't really matter or could easily be explored by your own imagination.

The plan to watch some anime has got off to a good start. I started on Gatekeepers.
For some reason I thought this was a very old anime, but it seems it was only broadcast in Japan in 2000. If you allow the normal couple of years for it to make it across from Japan it's not that old at all.

It's a good show as well - I was kinda unsure what to expect. It's basically a shounen action / monster-of-the-week show with some harem type elements so it's not hugely innovative in that sense, but there's a mean streak of wit and imagination runnign through it. Some of the monster designs are particularly clever, for example.