Things I am enjoying right now

The Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix. The first one, 'Mister Monday' is brilliant, easily as good (for me) as 'Sabriel', and the teaser for the second, 'Grim Tuesday' in the back has made me champ at the bit to read it. Unlike 'Sabriel', 'Mister Monday' reminds me primarily of vintage Diana Wynne Jones, specifically 'The Lives of Christopher Chant', one of my favourite of her books. The level of detail and vivid realisation of the setting and characters is incredible in 'Mister Monday', and it's rare to find something which takes me so completely on a mental journey to places I'd never imagined. It's like reverting to childhood, and I want to explore further.

'Graceling' by Kristin Cashore. My friends love her writing and I've become quite partial to her blog, This Is My Secret, but now I've taken the plunge and started reading 'Graceling', I see what all the fuss is about. The main thing that struck me (as has been commented on by one of my friends in her blog) was that Cashore has created a character who, by all rights, should be a Mary Sue. She's a tough, confident woman who's niece to a nasty king, has different coloured eyes and a magical ability which makes her literally more kickass than everybody else. She's pretty but doesn't wear dresses and doesn't want to marry all of the lords her uncle puts before her as suitors. She has a strange attraction for an elf-a-like (called Lienid in this) with one eye gold and the other silver and has at least two if not three men fancying her, as well as being the leader of a rebel group who help the helpless. But Katsa is just incredibly likeable as a character. Instead of being a Bitch Sue, she's genuinely misanthropic and cynical for a very good reason - her cruel uncle has her torture and kill folk for his amusement and everybody is afraid of her. Instead of her powers making her a Godmode Sue, they're really not very nice and actually cause her to be a feared and hated figure rather than people looking at her in awe. Her love interest (I'm assuming that's what he is) is called Po, which is an awesomely silly nickname but he is an extremely nice fellow, and the only suitor we've actually seen so far in the book (I'm not hugely far through) isn't a weak idiot to make her one true love seem more wonderful and perfect but is actually smart and cool.

'Red Dead Redemption' is...well, it's like 'Grand Theft Auto IV' with the boring bits surgically removed, crossed with 'Sid Meier's Pirates' and then given cowboys. It's well-made, fun and engaging. It's got the charm of having your fearless bounty hunter dismount from his wild ride across the plains to pick some flowers. It's got bizarre and unique characters with special kinds of '-philia' (Seth, as just one example), the horse riding is amazing and soooo much easier than driving a car in any game ever, the combat system is something even I can understand and frankly it's just all kinds of fun. I think it was made for a better player than me, though. I keep dying, like all over the place. And while I've found the one game where I don't utterly suck at race sections, I was grateful of the option to skip over them when I failed enough times the game took pity on me. There are some bizarre glitches: at one point all the horse-drawn vehicles were standing in place vibrating with a weird noise. Like, the horses and driver and everything were just bouncing up and down in place. Hilarious. Then my favourite horse got eaten by a cougar and I haven't been able to catch another of the same kind. So now I have a nice white horsey instead, though I really want either a black one or a pearly beige one. I really really wish you could keep more than one horse, like stable them somewhere, since inevitably just as I get a nice one, it'll get shot, eaten by some of the wildlife that is constantly trying to kill you, or buck me off and disappear into the wild blue yonder. Still, lassoing and breaking horses is ridiculous fun, so I don't object too much, I can just never find the kinds I want when I go looking. The game does keep you constantly supplied with horses, btw, they're just usually the rubbish kind that have average speed. So, froth finished on that one.

'Sherlock Holmes' (can't remember what all the series are called). My mum got me the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series in its entirety for my birthday, and goddamn are they good. I'd forgotten how perfect Brett is as Holmes. Much wuv.