A Great Review for Dragon Queen

 plus Spring Coming Soon to the Illawarra!

Patt O'Neil, American author: This is my review for the book, Dragon Queen,

by Rod Charles Marsden.

4/5 Stars

"Reading this book on my Kindle made it feel longer than it truly was, but it was well worth the time spent. The author created a new world order that carried its message through until the very end. The characters were endearing and the pace of the plot never dragged. I definitely enjoyed reading this book and look forward to reading others by this author."

     Spring will soon be with us. Already we have lots more wildlife making its presence known in and around the Illawarra, south coast, NSW, Australia.

     On Sunday I was greeted by a butcherbird in Corrimal. A magnificent sight and a regular for the area.  

     A Sunday trip to Bulli resulted in lots of photos of birds enjoying the good weather. Of course you also have to watch out for other people also enjoying being out and about but that's life. Here are some terns I have come to name The Three Amigos since they appear to be travelling together. 

       The first time I came across a tern it was keeping company with gulls. As it turned out, my Three Amigos were also happy to hang out with gulls.

 Could The Three Amigos be in hiding among the gulls? I suppose there is that possibility.

 

     There were plenty of galahs on the move, looking for food. 

 Of course there has to be a Willie-Wagtail showing off!

 

     At Bulli that day, the seas were rough and there was plenty of wind about as well as people getting away from their homes for a day. COVID-19 restrictions getting everyone down.

   

 On Saturday I visited Corrimal Beach and came across an Eastern Yellow Robin. New Zealand novelist Lyn McConchie has come to refer to these robins as flying lemons. Well, they are a brilliant yellow and they do fly!

   

 
   

                         CATS, CRIMES and 

                          NEW ZEALAND, AMERICAN 

                          and AUSTRALIAN WRITERS!

     Lyn McConchie, a New Zealand writer with her own farm in the heart of the main north island of New Zealand, has long time been a cat lover. It shows in many of her stories and is definitely not absent in this collection of four stories titled Sherlock Holmes: Catalyst. 

     She opens with Something the Cat Dragged In which introduces the reader to both Mandalay the cat and his owner Miss Emily Jackson. How a cat fond of salmon might save a life in his scrounging you would have to read this intriguing tale.

     In Cat with a Vested Interest we have Mandalay bringing home part of a vest and thus prompting an investigation. There is a dead woman and a young life only just saved because of the cat and Doctor Watson's actions. 

     My favourite of the four is Cat with Enough Rope in which Mandalay brings back to Miss Emily a most unusual creature and thus begins a circus mystery. What animal you say? A grand female alpaca. In recent years the breeding of alpacas in both Australia and New Zealand has grown in popularity. In fact, not far from Lyn's farm she has a neighbour with alpacas so when she writes about them she knows what she is talking about. In this story there is also spy versus spy which, in this case, is fun.

     Pinned to a Crime doesn't take Mandalay too far from home to create a mystery for Holmes and Doctor Watson to solve. In fact it is a small treasure found at Miss Emily's home with the potential to do much damage to existing reputations. 

     Catalyst is a Wildside publication released in 2016. 

     Lyn's fondness for cats is well established as I hope is my fascination for birdlife. 

               Two-Fisted Tales Number Two : 

                An EC Comic Book Reprint 

     It has long been my held belief that if we do look at all the ramifications of going into battle we would most likely choose not to do so. Pre-code EC comic books were known to pull no punches when it comes to this.

     We are reminded in the first tale War Story that not much time has passed between the end of the Second World War and the Korean War. In fact, it has been only five years!

      In Brutal Capt. Bull we are brought into the world of press gangs and young men not wanting to be sailors, back in  the days of the tall masts, but having to somehow find a way to survive the ordeal. 

Dragon Queen is a novel that touches upon how class systems work and how the desire to find a substitute for war can lead to rebellion. It is science fiction set in the future where dragons are human mutations with scales and tales. If you have read and enjoyed 1984 you will like this book.

    Second-Hand Creeps, with horror from around the globe, continues to gather readers from everywhere.  

       

         

                THE 1920s VERSUS THE 2020s

     To begin with, my parents were born  in the 1920s and grew up during the Great Depression, so I do have a personal interest in this time period. 

     The 1920s was the jazz age in which American music and dance was the go in Australia and elsewhere.  Radio was king and kids would crowd around their family at night to listen to their favourite radio programs.

     The Great War had come to an end in 1918 and so the 1920s was a time to look for a better way to live and a way out of future conflicts in which millions of lives, the world over, are affected either by death or horrific injury. 

     In 1919 there was a treaty signed by the Germans that would eventually result in a Second World War but this war was in the future. For now, in the 1920s, there was the desire to enjoy one's self and seek out new freedoms.

     The League of Nations had been born and so there was hope that another full scale world war would never eventuate. 

   

     In Germany and elsewhere there was cabaret. Young women in black, calling themselves Vamps, made the night life something special. Skirts rose and there was a general feeling of elation at least in western style countries, a desire to get away from past miseries such as war in the trenches and in the air. 

     This was the silent film era where you had stunt flying and comedians such as Charlie Chaplin making audiences laugh. 

     Life was not so good in China, especially in Shanghai. Meanwhile, in Japan, there was a British airman teaching Japanese airmen how to handle take-off and landing on aircraft carriers. There seemed little harm in this since the Japanese had been the allies of the British during the Great War. 

        In the USA, during the 1920s, there was a ban on drinking alcohol that resulted in criminals finding new ways to make money. Speakeasies came into being. Meanwhile, in France and elsewhere in Europe, black entertainers, such as Josephine Baker, became popular, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Tender is the Night and also The Great Gatsby.

 

     Photography became more popular in the 1920s as cameras became more affordable to the average person. Also cars became less expensive to buy and to run. Swimming was more popular than ever. There were rock pools and trips to various beaches. There was also more travel by train. There was also the beginnings of television. An experiment conducted in the 1920s resulted a single image being transmitted through the air and received. 

     Forms of communication were improving. Mail could be sent via air. People were more and more likely to have  phones in their homes and there were stores selling records.

     It is strange to think that a hundred years ago there was more freedom and less censorship than in our 21st Century. People seem to have been more open back then to new ideas. What's more, opinions could differ. People were looking for new ways to express themselves in the arts. Ancient Egypt came back into vogue.

     Not long ago, we celebrated the end of the First World War. The Lighthouse at Kiama was decked out for this celebration. So what did we get out of an end to a terrible war and a decade of relative peace? There was optimism back then in the 1920s. Is there much optimism now, at the beginning of the 2020s?  

     In the 1960s and 1970s there were movements in the USA, the UK and Australia against the Vietnam War. It was make love, not war. The notion appealed to me at the time. With the war over though, the young people who had protested against it didn't seem to know what to do next other than find a way to make a living, marry and raise a family like their parents had done. 

     Then, in the 1980s, AIDS brought an end, once and for all, to the free love movement. Those who had dreams of living like Hippies were then out of luck. Today we have a virus that threatens us all. And yes, there was the Spanish Flu a hundred years ago that killed a lot of people and had Australians masking up. Maybe we are due for something like that every hundred years or so. Regardless, are we better off now than we were back then? There are better ways today of combating disease. We also have new ways of communicating with one another as well as brand new censorship in the form of political correctness. 

     Political correctness as well as reverse racism began in Australia in the 1990s and has been going strong ever since. This stifles creativity and so gives so-called Reality shows their opportunity to spread like weeds. Television today has suffered greatly from this as well as the notion that we must cater for all in any and all historic drama. I have on occasions made fun of this very idea. Yes, there have been examples in the 20th Century of bad casting such as John Wayne in the the 1954 film The Conqueror where he played the role of Genghis Khan. Even so,  what is happening right now with this inclusion bias is distortion of history and historical events for political point scoring. 

Will we soon be over this corona virus crisis? Yes, in Australia, by the end of the year, hopefully, with fingers crossed. I have had my first jab and will soon have my second one. 

     Is there a chance political correctness, Reality shows and the distortion of history on television coming to an end?  No! Not a chance in  Hell! But there is still some creativity out and about produced by free thinkers.

          If you haven't already, please check out Dragon Queen. Science fiction available through Amazon.