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Day 299: false alarm, it’s not quiet anymore

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 299:

I dug through a wall and met a zombie horde — about ten of them, including the children.

They chased me up a cliff and I destroyed the stone bridge I crossed.

They then spent the next two hours climbing the cliff, attempting to jump across, and falling to their increasing injury.

Once they’d finally all died, skeletons tried the same thing. But skeletons are generally armed with bows and arrows, so I actually had to shoot them to stay safe.

Still, it was very much the opposite of yesterday and I am glad to be alive and back in my cave.

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Day 298: Quiet, too quiet

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 298:

I don’t know why, but I didn’t see a single monster today.

Now, if I spend the entire day in a well-lit chamber with solid doors, that’s not unusual. But I spent the day mining up through twisty curvy areas and big wide areas, and there was nothing. No rock rats, no skeletons, no exploding giraffe-corgis, no zombies.

I’m nervous.

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Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine: Clocktaur Wars series by T. Kingfisher

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

Okay so the first thing you need to know, because I tip my biases, is I’ve essentially loved everything that Ursula Vernon / T. Kingfisher has written since Digger was just another webcomic in the list of 100 I hit daily.

That being said, most of the works of hers I’ve read have been in the form of either modern retellings of old fairy tales (of which Bryony and Roses is probably my favorite) or Dragonbreath chapter books (because you’re never too old for good chapter books).

The Clocktaur Wars aren’t like that. Way way not like that.

My understanding is that Ursula Vernon got annoyed about how poorly other people told the “tortured Paladin rejected by his god” trope, and decided to fix it. And fix it she did.

This book has supernatural dealings. It has a pantheon of gods. It has tattoos that bite. It has a very talented forger who I want to be when I grow up. It has a tortured paladin. It has dead demons and live ones. It has romance and tension and cute talking animals and not-cute-at-all terrifying monsters and an ending that had me both going “wait what the FUCK just happened?” and “well of course because that’s the only logical thing that can happen no wait WHAT THE FUCK.”

Oh, yeah, this one is certainly not a chapter book for the kiddies.  (Although frankly 12-year-old me would’ve loved it as much as I do now.)

So read Clockwork Boys and love it and then read The Wonder Engine because after the first one you’re not just going to hang on that cliff forever.

 

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Day 297: Went back for more tools already

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 297:

I broke all my iron tools already, which tells me something about the oxygen or carbon or something in this last set was way off. It had been really rainy the day I smelted that iron, so maybe it was the weather, or maybe it was something in the ore, I don’t know.

It does mean I get to sleep in my most comfortable bed tonight, though, so I’m excited about that.

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Day 296: Still going up to go down

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 296:

More ore above me so I’m still digging up.  I can hear zombies rolling off the walls and down to smack the ground below.

I wonder if they have some kind of pupal zombie state where they hang from the walls until adults?

Seems dumb, but so does an exploding giraffe-corgi.