PERSONA 3
GUNDAM 00
PANDORA HEARTS
MISC. (the world ends with you, original, vocaloid, code geass)



here @ wisemango
Sorry if I spam your f-list ♥

61. Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey - 816 pages (7.5/10)

Firstly, I must say I absolutely hate these covers. Her mark looks like a giant tramp stamp. It doesn't even look like a real tattoo--it looks like a peel on sticker you'd get from a machine for a quarter, honestly.

Secondly, I re-read this for the first time since I was 15. All I can say is: wow, I can't believe I read this kinky stuff when I was so young! This novel tells the story of Phedre no'Delaunay, a girl sold off as a whore from a young, tender age to the god (of love) Naamah's service. Luckily, she is fostered first by the Night Court and then by a handsome and mysterious man alongside a fair boy and becomes a learned and multi-talented courtesan, among other things.

Phedre has been marked from birth with both an unlucky name and an unlucky scarlet mote in her eye. The scarlet mote represents Kushiel's Dart, meaning she's been struck by the god to be very kinky, horny, and submissive. This makes her a one-of-a-kind commodity among the rich sadists of Terre D'Ange (Land of Angels), a near-medieval France.

The setting was quite interesting. There is the nearly French Terre D'ange, the Nordic Skaldi, the Scottish Alba, the Roman Tiberius, among others. The reader ends up seeing several of these lands throughout the course of the novel. The varying religions and politics were engaging enough to keep me interested.

In general, the writing is fairly good, but the prose can be much wordier than it need me. Over and over Phedre says things like "although how this happened, I cannot say" or "I did not learn it then, but I learned of it later." Just explain at the beginning that this is your "memory" and it's imperfect, and leave it at that! Phedre also weeps frequently and usually has sex with most of the men she meets.

Overall, it's an entertaining enough novel and worth reading if erotic fantasy is your cup of tea.


If you like my reviews, this journal is full of reviews of books I read, some films and tv shows I watch, gadget reviews, occasional looks into what it's like being an ex-pat American in Scotland...feel free to add me as a friend if that sounds vaguely interesting to you!

Hey, this is my first tutorial, show me your results!

To make this:



From this:



( [brickbyboringbrick] )

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Hello! I'm an author and when I posted here a while ago about my young adult fantasy novel, Basajaun. Some of the people who commented asked me to give a heads up when the book was more widely available, so I wanted to let you guys know that you can now buy Basajaun on Amazon.com, here:



"Basajaun is a beautiful book, written by a masterful wordsmith!" --T. A. Barron (The Lost Years Of Merlin, Merlin's Dragon, The Great Tree Of Avalon)

"an original and memorable tale that young adults and older children will certainly enjoy" --Fantasy Book Review

"an unusual, intriguing young adult fantasy" --Lansing State Journal newspaper

( I've also included the back cover & blurb under the cut )

I'm not giving anything out quite yet, but I'd like to gauge interest in the possibility of giving out two Pokemon.

These Pokemon are both event Pokemon recently given out by various means- The first would be the Toys 'R' Us Movie Arceus, currently being given out by TRU around America (And it's the same one as the current Australian giveaway as well), which I believe would benefit anyone who can't get to a store.

The second Pokemon would be the Pokemon Gold and Silver 10th Anniversary Mew, currently being given out over Wi-Fi to owners of HeartGold and SoulSilver to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the second generation of Pokemon being released.

If you'd be interested in either one of these, let me know! I'd probably be giving out around thirty of each.

(crossposted to pokemon and pokewifi, sorry if you see this twice!)

These are strictly my PERSONAL opinios of these books, and I hope it's helpful!
--"Graceling" by Kristin Cashore
(5/5): This is now my 2nd favorite book of all time! Katsa is a strong woman who stands by what she believe and learns to make her own choices and not be a subject in society. This is a heart-wrenching tale of power and love that will leave you breathless. I would recommend this book to EVERYONE! It is so beautifully written. Props on it being her DEBUT novel as well!!
--"Fire" by Kristin Cashore
(4.5/5): Another job well done. It's two different women in two different places all in the same world. This is her second novel, but it takes place 30 years before 'Graceling'. Fire is a woman of a different kind and the only one of her kind. She doesn't quite fit and she learns to embrace it. This is another truly beautiful story. From the moment I started reading, I never wanted it to end. SERIOUSLY, read these books!! You will not be dissappointed!

I want your opinions! And now, more book recommendations, :D
---Happy Reading

I wanted to layer the event dresses under the Time Travel dresses, which are after all HUGE, so that I could get the champagne pyramid to appear while wearing the Time Travel dresses I don't have enough opportunities to wear.

It doesn't work. T_T;;;

( Cut for image. )

Hi! I was just wondering what color Eric's eyes are. I need to know for a story I'm writing. And since i can't see that well, I was hoping someone here could help me out.
Thanks!

Hi fellow booksters!

This is my first post here and it's a question (sorry! I'll do a review soon!!) about a book whose title I've been desperately trying to remember:

The book was actually (as far as I can remember) part of a short YA series. It was about a little black cat who moved into a new neighborhood who starts making friends and having adventures with all her new cat friends. Some fun parts of the book were that the black cat was really skilled at dancing "The Sailor's Hornpipe," another cat played a diamond "nose flute" and there were a pair of twin cats named "Romulus" and "Remus."

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I remember really loving those books as a kid and was trying to figure out how to get my paws (hahaha...*cough* ahem...) on that series.

Thanks in advance for you help! :)

I'm trying to make a blinkie. I used a pixel and make a couple of small boxes to put text in.
( problem under the cut )

CTKT #135 20091111 screencaps & veoh streaming

 

a continuation of last week's episode, it's maru and koki's turn to introduce their okite this week. koki introduces expensive and useless devices, while maru totally fails in cracking eggs. ueda then shows off his skills in skipping, causing one of the guests to feel really dejected. ♥

( 「絶対真似したくなるオキテ 後編」 )

*btw, jin will be back next week :D

The announcement of the winners of the Veterans Day Giveaway. And the winners are...

sweet_mel is the winner of the unabridged CD copy of "Silks", by Felix Francis.

sleep_aurora, virtueandvice, and im_writing are the winners of the Packet O' Dragon*con Stuff. Congratulations, everyone!

I am looking for some horror/thriller or just all around disturbing books. Since my book list is growing pretty short again, I would like to make a new list and I figured you guys could help me :)

I've already read "The Girl Next Door" by Jack Ketchum
"Perfect Victim: The true story of the girl in the box"
 
and many books by Stephen King.

EDIT:

Thank you everyone for your quick and helpful responses! ♪

I have a DS, one of the older ones, I think it was one of the first models to come out (my friend nicknamed it "The Dinosaur", haha.) Anyway, I have Pokémon Sapphire and Pokémon Platinum both inserted into it. I was wondering, is there a way to trade or transfer my old Sapphire team into my Platinum game? I'm really missing my Vigoroth and Dodrio. I heard there was a way to do it, but for some reason, any place I look for for instructions has been almost completely unhelpful. Any help would be appreciated!

(Sorry if this is a newbish question, I'm kind of new to DS and have only recently started playing Platinum, just on the third gym leader, which incidentally is giving me quite a hard time...)

I also was wondering that if there is a method of trading solo, could I use it to evolve my Haunter and Machoke? I don't have WiFi, and none of my local friends play Pokémon, and I reallllyyy want a Machamp and Gengar. Thanks again!

Also, Bonus Newbie question:

For secret bases in Platinum, is there a way to get rid of those annoying boulders, or to know where to dig for a place that HAS no boulders? They're incredibly annoying.

♥ Thank you.