Thursday, October 12, 2006

The latest

Not a lot of really Ozzy stuff going on. I've had a little time, so I went ahead and re-updated my inventory. In the course of cleaning up my Oz room, I found several items that hadn't been put in earlier, including a complete run of the Oz Club's calendars from 1979 to 2005 (and 2006 is on the wall). So now I have 871 items, and more to enter in once I've read them.

Speaking of which, I'm currently working my way through a not terribly Ozzy book, River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams. It's part two of a series, so already it's a little confusing, although there's a decent summary of book one in the front. It's also 634 pages, so it's taking a long time to get through. It also has multiple plot threads and characters, so it's a little hard to keep track of everything and everyone. But at least I'm over halfway done now. Maybe I can finish by Thanksgiving. The book is set in the future (late 21st century, I believe), and virtual reality has come a l-o-n-g way. Mosts of the characters are trapped in Otherland, the best simulation that money can buy. It's so good that one character doesn't even realize he's in a simulation for a very long time, and he just thinks he's nuts until he's straightened out. There are many, many realms in Otherland, including many based on history and literature. Guess what one of them is? Yuop, the Scarecrow is the King of Kansas! Huh? Yeah, something's going wrong in Otherland, and scenarios are not playing out the way they're supposed to. Oz is not the only place that needs fixing. I will probably finish this book, but I doubt I'll read any others in the series. Come on, people, you don't have to say so much!

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