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I received a Net Galley copy of Rule of Law as part of the Litfuse Blog Tour with no expectations of a favourable review. |
Spirit Bridge is the third and final episode in the Well Spring series. And wow, it sure finishes in a mighty way, so much so I’m very sad that it has now ended. |
I’d suggest all readers read the first two in the series: Soul’s Gate and Memory’s Door, not just because they are fabulous novels but they provide a valuable introduction to this final episode. |
This one starts where the last one ended, the Warriors Riding hoping to take some time out to rest and convalesce after the battle with Zennon and his demonic warlords. However, the Spirit has other ideas and it isn’t long before the battle is renewed and with tragic circumstances. |
Two additional characters play pivotal roles. Simon, who we’ve met previously, and are never quite sure whose side he’s on. Rubart manages this ambiguity brilliantly. The second, Miyo, is in fact a new character and she plays an important leadership role in discerning the insidious plot of Zennon. |
Brandon and Dana’s characters are well developed in this episode and I especially grew to like both of them. The romantic tension between them continues as an undercurrent but doesn’t distract the reader in developing empathy for them both. |
What I particularly appreciated about this episode is how Rubart presents spiritual warfare in the context of the daily battle we all have in surrendering our desires and hopes to God. He explores it through Reece, Brandon and Dana demonstrating how each of them unknowingly allows the enemy to infiltrate through some f... |
This culminates in a fantastic final battle scene that is magnificently described allowing the reader to visualize it effortlessly. |
This is a wonderful series that so powerfully demonstrates spiritual warfare in a fictional context that is uplifting, challenging and thrilling in its suspensefulness. |
I can’t recommend it enough and so look forward to reading Rubart’s next creation. |
Seventeen year old Nyah Parks is a genius hacker whose world is unraveling. Desperate and with no other choice, Nyah turns her programming skills to cracking the firewalls of the world’s largest corporations. She exposes their weaknesses, and then offers her services to secure their systems from hackers. |
But when the most dangerous job of her life backfires and forces her to go on the run, she encounters an impossible reality that shouldn’t exist, but does. |
A hack unlike any other. A hack that will take her beyond the firewall of the human brain itself. A hack, which may be the only way to save her mother now. |
What if there was a way to tap into the unseen reality that surrounds us all? Would you hack in? How far would you go to find the answers to your deepest questions? The answer lies deep beyond the firewall. |
As part of the FirstLook Blog Tour Worthy Publishing provided a Q&A with Ted Dekker which adds good background to the above teaser. |
I was given the opportunity to participate in Worthy Publishing’s First Look blog tour for Ted Dekker’s latest novel: “Hacker”. |
“THE OUTLAW CHRONICLES consist of EYES WIDE OPEN, WATER WALKER and HACKER. Although related through one common character, Stephen, they can be read in any order. |
Written in the vein of Ted’s thrillers like Thr3e and Blink, these are transformational stories that take the reader on an intense ride full of twists that unravel the deep mystery or reality in ways rarely seen. |
This first instalment in “The Quiet Professionals” series has everything we’ve come to love about Kendig’s writing: thrills a plenty, heart-pounding pace, solid character development, great military heroes, some crazy mad bad guys and a love story in a war zone. |
But in this novel, it’s wonderful to see how Kendig has excelled in upping the ante so everything I’ve mentioned is even better. |
What I’ve always loved about Kendig’s writing is her tremendous craftsmanship in drawing the reader into her war zone. In Raptor 6 it is no exception. She takes us right into the thick of it. We can feel the tension, hear the guns being fired, smell the sweaty testosterone within the cramped confines of the military ve... |
And then there’s the love story. A young military leader passionately responsible for leading his small troop go where very few dare but emotionally wounded by events of the past. Torn by serving his nation and opening his heart to what has only led to heartbreak in his past. |
The soldier soon meets a striking American but with Afghani blood and an absolute ripper of a name: Zahrah Zarrick. The daughter of a military hero who has returned to her mother’s homeland to bring hope to the children who know no other life than living in a war zone. |
Zahrah falls hard for her soldier hero, he reminds her of her father, the decorated General. But it’s her faith and willingness to die serving God that attracts me the most to Zahrah. Kendig handles this well in demonstrating the challenge it can be when faced with terrible consequences for one’s faith. |
I’ll stop there before I start giving too much of the engrossing story away. |
This is a great start to the series and I can’t wait for next one. |
This is different to Tom Pawlik’s first two novels that I enjoyed immensely. Pawlik describes it himself as a ‘coming-of-age’ sort of novel which it is, but one filled with gripping suspense that kept me turning (well flicking, is that what it’s called on a Kindle?) the pages. |
Pawlik is masterful in how he describes his settings. In particular, the way he describes Jake and Buck’s boat trip through a creepy swamp had me feeling like I was a third passenger on it. The suspense he creates when danger is at hand is riveting. His scenes with a certain large crocodilian creature reminded me a lot... |
But it was his character, Abe Garner, an elderly man, misunderstood and rejected by his small community, that grabbed my heart. It is his story that lingers in my mind on finishing the novel. His story is such a beautiful one of grace in action, of forgiveness and not allowing one’s mistreatment to malign one’s life wi... |
Read this so you can meet Abe Garner. Oh, and one very large water-dwelling reptile. |
Two teenage friends, Austin and Christy, both with “forgotten” childhoods get accidentally lost in a mental hospital. You’d think once they could explain their situation, all would be fine and they’d leave and go on their way. |
But this is a Ted Dekker novel. |
The hospital authorities re-admit them both as Scott and Alice. So who are they? Are they Austin and Christy or Scott and Alice? Dekker weaves his clever story telling skills in a thrill-of-a-minute ride where even we the reader are unsure of the truth. |
The truth? What is it? How can we be certain we know the truth? Why do our perceptions of our reality play such an important part in our understanding of our individual lives? Who can provide the truth, about who we are? about our childhood? |
These are great questions which Dekker asks as we the confused reader try to understand what’s going on in the two protagonists lives. Are the doctors and even delightful psychiatrist Nancy really the bad guys? |
I love the Gabriel Allon series. |
And this one sure doesn’t disappoint. As other reviewers have stated, Daniel Silva has used the same formula with the other books in the series. This is now my third so I’m not tired of it. |
I thoroughly enjoy Gabriel’s character, however, wish we’d see some development in Chiara, his wife. She’s obviously very smart but we seem to see her mostly presented as the gorgeous, young wife who is also an extraordinary cook. |
Nadia who plays a critical role in this book is a strong character. Rich due to inheritance and desiring to make a difference in the Saudi world as a woman who cares, she is both captivating and very believable. |
Later today, the Super Bowl will have its first male cheerleader. Australia has been more progressive with male NRL cheerleaders for awhile now – when Patrick isn’t playing games, he’s probably not rooting for the Parramatta Eels, but it’s the best picture that I could find. |
We’re coming to the end of the reviews generated by our Essen Review weekend now. A bit more winnowing, a bit more culling, but some keypers (ahem) as well. There are more coming still, being in the hands of friends, but they just haven’t got to the table yet. And there are so many more out there we’ll never get to. We... |
I was pleasantly surprised by this thinky filler. It’s in the Hey, That’s My Fish vein of taking the tile that you move off, but moves it away from territory denial and into set collection instead. Each tile has two elements – animals (majorities in each will score) and symbols (for bonus movement points, or a majoriti... |
Your initial plays are hampered by too much explaining – all the different scoring systems (this goes with that at Sussan), to begin with and throughout, and then for each character as it’s revealed in each of the 22 rounds (they’re all unique). The second issue is that the game is laden with the dreaded simultaneous b... |
This felt like fresh Euro. The main point of interest was that the dice selection felt non-mean. The chosen dice have two functions – the pips indicate your bid for card selection (and card synergies are the bread and butter) and the colour indicates which of the four income tracks you’ll score. If you get to take thre... |
A by-the-numbers light Euro. Play tiles to earn resources. Spend resources to buy VP cards from the draft. Repeat for 13 rounds. It has a nice mini-Java-esque approach of playing tiles on top of tiles, building up your house. There are the inevitable bonus cards for buying cards of this type, or your tiles this many le... |
All the nice things about Keyflower in waaayy less time. Get cards 7 Wonders style, play a building card, or a one off resource creator card, or play a meeple card to trigger a building (which to start with usually means triggering your home building to move resources off their creator cards over to building cards that... |
Ahh, this is the game that Villa Paletti always wanted to be and should have been. The stupid win condition (where you win if the player after you crashes) is replaced by co-op mode where you’re setting up the next player to succeed. There’s a decision to make each turn on how challenging a turn you want and how much r... |
Clever and interesting, but plastering over a layer of perhaps too much randomness to climb higher up the replay ladder. You build resource converter buildings (from cards in your hand). At the beginning of the round, half the resources available this turn will be flipped from the deck. You decide which of your buildin... |
Team based real-time dexterity game that hits the right spots. One side plays up to 3 pieces on the base, and flips the timer. Then the other teams adds up to 3 pieces on top, flips the timer, and turns continue to alternate, adding pieces to the pile. A team gets points if they get their last piece on, or if the other... |
Some fun for when you have 6 players and a real-time dice rolling team game is called for. Which isn’t often, but it’s nice to have up your sleeve when the time comes (Strand Cup used to be an option here.) This channels the Space Alert vibe, having to co-ordinate the allocation of dice to the right places at the right... |
This is quite the fun card game that I imagine a lot of people don’t know given its lack of ratings and comments on BGG. I’m told it has Dutch / German pub heritage, where the loser of the round buys the next round. There’s a lot of luck with the cards, with only 4 cards in the hand plus benefits to leading in the firs... |
Jeff Allers: I picked up MENARA in Essen and wonder why someone hasn’t thought of a cooperative dexterity game before (maybe someone already has, but I hadn’t heard of it). In any case, it’s the best thing since chocolate met peanut butter. It’s not only a Villa Paletti-killer (which hasn’t seen any playing time in my ... |
Alan How: I’ve only played Carson City: The Card Game, but it works really well and is a solid little filler. For me it’s a 7. I want to get some multiplayer games in to check this style of game out. |
I was a play tester for Key Flow, so maybe I’m slightly biased, but I’d agree with Patrick’s thoughts. The simultaneous play is a major plus for me, as well as only needing to focus on your neighbours for options to place your Keyple cards. My rating would be 8 or 9. I’ve also found it easy to teach to newcomers and it... |
Oh My Goods works really well and it’s only downside was it was over too quickly for me. I’ve picked up the expansions but not yet tried them out yet to see if the games last a bit longer. Pretty enjoyable engine building fun though. A least a 7. |
Larry: Coimbra is very good and the best thing about it is it’s very elegant dice selection mechanism. Another great game from that wonderful crop of Italian designers. I love it. |
Key Flow is also excellent. Keyflower is a wonderful design, but there’s too much going on for me to deal with. Key Flow focuses things much better by taking away the auction. I came up with a variant where you keep two of your Winter scoring cards during the Winter Is Coming interphase instead of one and it’s worked s... |
Oh My Goods is another clever design from Pfister, but it’s really hard to set up your building combinations in time before the game ends. I understand the second edition of the game introduced some new rules that made long chains of buildings more feasible, but I’ve never had the chance to try it out. I like it. |
Brandon: Gingerbread House was one of the surprises of all the Essen time releases. A nice gateway, thematic tile placement game, with fun little micro transactions to drive the victory points. |
Menara is easily in my Top 10 games of 2018, a wonderful production from the folks at Zoch and it works wonderfully. I love how the towers can grow separate from each other but the necessity to bring them together for architectural sturdiness is quickly learned. |
Fraser: What Larry said about Oh My Goods. |
I have enjoyed Gingerbread House, it is reasonably lightweight, but has some things going on in terms of positioning your tiles for future moves. It has been very popular with the people I have taught it to, including non-gamers and casual gamers. |
Matt Carlson: I do enjoy the real time dice games so am a fan of both Escape the Curse of the Temple and Space Cadets: Dice Duel. Escape is cooperative, so that is nice, but Dice Duel has the advantage of a stronger interdependence between players. Trying to communicate more involved topics (than just “I need suns”) du... |
I love these articles! I walk away with a couple of titles to bug my dealer into getting (Key Flow and Menara). I don’t really see how I would have noticed these without OG. That makes for a lot of thanks from me. |
Oh My Goods! falls a little short for me. I like the idea of it and think there is possibly a great game in there but the actual plays seem to end up being less interesting and more frustrating as things often don’t go your way (and the workers mechanism is very rigid so hard to make that better). The revised end of ga... |
Only have one learning game of Coimbra but I enjoyed it a lot. |
Interested and qualified candidate can download the website from tnteu.ac.in in prescribed form and send your application on or before 27-09-2018. The prescribed format with photocopy of all relevant documents should be submitted to the address specified below. |
"Registrar i / c (by designation only), Tamil Nadu Teacher Education University, Chennai-600 097" |
"Registrar I / C, Tamil Nadu Teachers Education University" payable in Chennai. |
An optical experiment realizes one of the room-changing operations in the Hilbert Hotel—a fictitious establishment that illustrates some perplexing properties of infinity. |
The Hilbert Hotel is a famous mathematical paradox about an imaginary inn with infinite rooms. Even when completely full, vacancies can be made through coordinated room switching. You obviously won’t find this place in any guidebook, but the energy levels in a quantum system can mimic the rooms in the Hilbert Hotel. In... |
In 1924, the mathematician David Hilbert highlighted the counterintuitive nature of infinity with a tale about a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, each having a single occupant. If a new guest arrives, the hotel manager can create a vacancy in room 1 by moving all occupants up one room ( n→n+1). If infinite guest... |
In a recent study, John Jeffers from the University of Strathclyde, UK, and his colleagues showed how to perform the n→n+1 shift in a quantum system with an unlimited number of energy levels. The same group has now extended this work to the n→2n shift using a laser beam with discrete orbital angular momentum modes, or ... |
On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the dark Wentshire Forest Pass, when his father, Sorrel, stopped the car to investigate a mysterious knocking sound. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995. Elusive online journal... |
So first of all I’m going to apologise as I’m really not sure my review can ever put across how utterly brilliant this book really is. Even weeks later I am still thinking about the events in this story which is a true sign of a book ticking every box. As usual in this series you hear six stories from six different peo... |
I really can’t recommend this book enough it has a very special appeal with a little bit of everything to draw the reader in. If you are like me you will feel plenty of emotions while reading Changeling along with being completely on edge just waiting to discover the truth. I felt like I wanted to fly through the pages... |
With folklore, tension and twists along with an ending where I just sat there thinking wow! Changeling is an absolutely amazing story! |
With thanks to Anne Cater & Orenda Books for the invite to join the tour and for my copy. |
I’ve seen this book pop up on twitter and other blogs quite a bit, it does sound really good. |
Excellent review of an excellent novel :-)! |
How to Find the Right Wooden Doors for Your Home? |
A wooden door can add appeal to your home. No matter whether you choose a classic or vintage style, it remains one of the oldest structures in the human history. You can find its significance in history where alder, cherry, timber, oak or mahogany was used for the protection of forts. Now customization on doors is avai... |
You should stay updated about various options to make it a good choice for you. |
These doors feature a frame which is covered with a layer of wood or veneer on its both sides. Solid timber strips with its edges are also available in the market. The supports in between the face veneers provide the rigidity. Face veneers can also be availed in varnished or painted plywood. Different in-fills make it ... |
Flush doors have the thin sheets of hardwood veneer which is placed on the top of the core of particle board, wood or fiberboard. The veneer helps in protecting the door from stabilizing and warping. You can always enhance the face veneers using decorative panels. Two kinds of cores are used in flush doors. It includes... |
Panel doors are more popular nowadays. They feature a series of solid wood panels that are available in a variety of shapes and sizes. These panels are arranged next to each other. Panel doors have grooved frames coupled with thinner panels of pine, oak or beech. The moldings can be installed to ensure the panels remai... |
Due to inset glass panels, the lited doors are in demand. There are doors with interior or exterior openings. For instance, the office doors or patio doors serve as the perfect example of the lited doors. Often wooden door manufacturers call doors lited doors because of the number of glass panels they have. |
Welcome to D.P. Woodtech Pvt. Ltd, one of the India’s leading manufacturer, supplier, and exporter of high-quality wooden furniture for homes and offices. |
A four star luxury Hotel that defines tradition, prestige and hospitality in a peaceful atmosphere.The hotel is ideally situated just a walking distance from the centre of Tirana, cultural and tourist attractions. The hotel offer a unique blend of Albanian hospitality and friendly service which makes it the Inspired Ch... |
The comfortable and spacious accommodation features the latest facilities and outstanding view over Tirana. It is defined as best quality hotel in Tirana, and it has conference rooms, restaurant and luxury accommodation. |
With 53 rooms and professional conference facilities, Hotel Doro City is the ideal location and a best value hotel for a business or leisure activity in Tirana. Its location makes this four star Hotel pretty accessible from either Mother Theresa Airport which takes 20 minutes or Center Tirana only 5 minutes far away re... |
The scheme has a range of several hundred thousand years. Test your knowledge of food vocabulary! While uranium is water-soluble, thorium and protactinium are not, and so they are selectively precipitated into ocean-floor sediments , from which their ratios are measured. The residence time of 36 Cl in the atmosphere is... |
Omar Hassan: thanks for sharing. Liked it a lot. |
Quentin Aziz: ime so impressed and turned on.oh to spend a night stretching eachothers asses. |
SteelJM1: So, did she get white bred? |
Daquan Bayne: Theres more to this.plz upload the rest! |
Uranium—lead dating is often performed on the mineral zircon ZrSiO 4 , though it can be used on other materials, such as baddeleyite , as well as monazite see: When an organism dies, it ceases to take in new carbon, and the existing isotope decays with a characteristic half-life years. By allowing the establishment of ... |
Ask the Editors Ghost Word The story of an imaginary word that managed to sneak past our editors and enter the dictionary. This converts the only stable isotope of iodine I into Xe via neutron capture followed by beta decay of I. |
The Swedish National Heritage Board. After one half-life has elapsed, one half of the atoms of the nuclide in question will have decayed into a "daughter" nuclide or decay product. |
This is well-established for most isotopic systems. The use of radiometric dating was first published in by Bertram Boltwood and is now the principal source of information about the absolute age of rocks and other geological features, including the age of the Earth itself, and can be used to date a wide range of natura... |
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