The Fall Of The Shell

"Brudoer found living quarters, the remains of an ancient mushroom farm, fish holding tanks, even a slaughterhouse with an icehouse adjacent to it.

One of the rooms contained a large stock of Sentani weapons and some dried clothing of the Sentani type. Brudoer puzzled on this a long time, finally realising that the early city had fed itself in part by having its hunters masquerade as a Sentani band. It seemed hardly possible. Yet he could see no other explanation, unless some Sentani had allied themselves secretly to the Pelbar."

I can think of another, more sinister reason. Is it possible that the early Pelbar in their desperation to feed themselves kept a human larder? Were the early Pelbar in fact cannibals?

More updates as events warrant.

Musical Interlude the Third

'Prime directive, exterminate the whole fuckin' race' indeed ...

Finished 'The Dome In The Forest'

This book wasn't a giant ball of unput-downable excitement like the other books have been. I was happy to see many old characters make an appearance and get up to new and bold hijinks. I just couldn't get into it so well. The pace of this book seemed a bit slow, I kept waiting for something big to happen and not much really did.

As it starts off all the Sentani are all exited about a rod that comes out of a building at the Spring Equinox. Apparently a random group of them had seem it and then went back the next year. So now it seems to be a ritual. This time is different though because after the rod goes up and most of the Sentani have left a girl comes out and meets a Sentani straggler.

This is when Stel makes the realization that there must be loads of people inside. He decides that a rescue operation to save the rest of the people who live in 'The Dome' should be mounted. They need to be saved because well the residents of The Dome don't know that the hill is eroding under them and will soon fall and kill them all.

The first bit exciting hijinks takes place during the rescue. It's pretty goddamn sweet too.

It doesn't take long for the residents of The Dome to deem the Pelbar a bunch of savages and promptly take off and get themselves in trouble. The Pelbar and Sentani not being savages after all mount a second rescue effort. This one is both better and worse than the original rescue at The Dome.

Also if I didn't know that the Pelbar Cycle went on for another four books I would have been certain that the end of Book Three was the real end. It would have been a pretty satisfying conclusion too.

Final thought: even though the book was a bit lack luster I enjoyed the reveal of 'The End'. Made it completely worthwhile. The Dome scientists explaining all the ancient technology was fantastic too.

I'm two chapters into 'The Fall of the Shell'. Jestak has had a mention and Stel's mother Sagen has played an important role. That aside, I bet this book won't have very much to do with the main storyline of the first three books. More updates as events warrant.

Almost time for a blog hiatus...

... and also one from almost everything 'fun'. No more reading from the 'bookshelves of doom' or punishing the liver. Not even anymore reading while punishing my liver. The time of The Great Buckling Down is nearly at hand. I am only one day away from formally submitting my thesis proposal. I will be spending nearly all of my time researching and collecting data about 'The Effects of a 15 -20 Minute Silent Reading Session on the Writing Scores of Fifth Grade Students'. Anyhow what this means is that I am going to do my damnedest to finish reading and reviewing/responding to The Pelbar Cycle before my obligations catch up to me.

All that means in a very short amount of time I will shutter this blog until the summer (worst case scenario) or will perhaps only post once or twice as I give myself a reward/break (best case scenario). It won't be an easy thing either. The bookshelves of doom are in the office here and the temptation to procrastinate will always be there. So four more books and then it's nose to the grindstone.

The Dome in the Forest

"Apparently, it began with a catastrophic shower of meteors, not only as large or larger than the biggest in ancient record, those that landed in Arizona and Siberia, but these came in large numbers, accompanied by innumerable small ones. Their sudden arrival convinced some nations that they were under nuclear attack."

- Thorton Cohen-Davies of The Dome