The Ionia Sanction by Gary Corby

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The Ionia Sanc­tion is a sequel to The Pericles Com­mis­sion. It fea­tures Nic­ol­aos, the young Athenian who has inven­ted the job of agent in order to learn polit­ics to avoid becom­ing a sculptor like his father.

I liked The Pericles Com­mis­sion and the only quibble I had was that Athens wasn’t as grim in Gary Corby’s book as I thought it might be. That’s no bad thing because I thought the ancient world could be an unpleas­ant place. Pretty much as unpleas­ant as in The Ionia Sanc­tion, which is slightly darker and more viol­ent than the first book.

The book opens with the appar­ent sui­cide of Thor­ion, a prox­enos. A prox­enos was someone who would help with the interests of a for­eign city. Thor­ion was an Athenian cit­izen with con­nec­tions to Eph­esus, so when his sui­cide note sug­gests he’s com­mit­ted treason Pericles decides someone needs to find out what has happened. He sends Nic­ol­aos to invest­ig­ate. It quickly becomes clear Thor­ion was murdered, and events lead to Nic­ol­aos leav­ing the safety of Athens and trav­el­ling to Ionia, inside the Per­sian empire.

Like the first book, The Ionia Sanc­tion is based around a his­tor­ical fact. In this case it’s the life of Themistocles. Themistocles was the gen­eral respons­ible for the defeat of the Per­sians at Sala­mis. How­ever, Themistocles was not a mod­est man and with some Spartan help he was framed for treason and ostra­cised. To flee to safety Themistocles sur­rendered him­self to the Per­sian king and became sat­rap of Mag­ne­sia, on the coast of what is now Turkey.

The text runs smoothly. The only jar­ring note for me is that these are edited for the Amer­ican mar­ket. It means Themistocles talks about assholes, which looks odd. Assholes fea­ture in a sec­tion of the book due to a method of exe­cu­tion that uses a sharp wooden stake, tip­toes and a slow death through exhaus­tion. Gary Corby also had to find a sexual vice that a man had that could be used for black­mail. This man was an ancient Greek, so a small round of applause is due for find­ing one.

A com­mon prob­lem for any book like this is that there were some things known in ancient Greece that the reader doesn’t know. How do you get this inform­a­tion in? Fantasy authors have that well-used standby “As you know your father, the king…” before launch­ing on five pages of expos­i­tion. Here the source of know­ledge is Diotima, the (ex)girlfriend of Nic­ol­aos who left for Eph­esus a few months before and a female slave, Asia. It’s not stretch­ing cred­ib­il­ity for Nic­ol­aos to know very little about the Per­sian empire, so it works without the sound of nar­rat­ive gears crunching.

For­tu­nately the amount of expos­i­tion needed wasn’t too much. The book is a story, not a his­tory les­son. As a story it works. Not everything was obvi­ous, I didn’t work out any of the murders before they were revealed, but there was noth­ing that seemed too contrived. 

It’s taken me a while to read it. I didn’t want to read it while work­ing on any­thing ancient because I didn’t want it to feel like work. I’ll prob­ably make a point of get­ting Sac­red Games when it comes out and buy­ing an authors next book is prob­ably a pretty good indic­a­tion of how his last one went.

The thing I’ll grouch about this time is the cover. As art I like it, but it doesn’t fit well with the book. It looks a bit YA, and I think The Ionia Sanc­tion is more 18+. The first two books will be out shortly in paper­back, with the Aus­tralian cov­ers. After a couple more books I’ll com­plain if the cov­ers aren’t in the same style, so this isn’t a major gripe.

If you enjoyed The Pericles Com­mis­sion then the The Ionia Sanc­tion is worth your money. If you’ve read neither then start­ing with the first book is the bet­ter bet.

#blog #twt #books #Ancient­Greece

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Senna versus Prost by Malcolm Folley

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This past sea­son of For­mula One has been the best since 1993. The next sea­son, I think, will be the first where no one on the grid has driven against Senna. Depend­ing on how you feel about Schu­macher, it’s pos­sible Senna was the last great driver in For­mula One. He wasn’t the most suc­cess­ful, but Senna raced in era when other drivers had access to poten­tially race-winning cars. His biggest rival, Prost, was in the same car for a couple of seasons.

It’s easy to fix­ate on one of the drivers, but the book cov­ers the devel­op­ment both of the. Prost’s tale starts with his first spell with McLaren of that rivalry from Prost’s arrival at McLaren in 1980. Fol­ley doesn’t simply take Prost’s recol­lec­tions. He also draws on other people around at the time, such as Tony Jardine. Senna’s early career is covered with his time in For­mula Ford in the UK. Mar­tin Brundle gives an hon­est view of how it was like to race Senna at the time.

Jo Ramirez, who worked at McLaren dur­ing the Senna/Prost era is another source of mater­ial for their time in the team. Other drivers gave brief accounts to fill out the story. There are inter­views with Hill and Wil­li­ams too. Senna’s time before his death at Wil­li­ams was brief, but it was Wil­li­ams who gave Senna his first F1 drive as a part of a test session.

Obvi­ously the two title char­ac­ters dom­in­ate the book, but it is a taste of what For­mula One was like in the 1980s. The extra back­ground adds more con­text to what was going on. For example, the clas­sic clip of Senna first com­ing to threaten Prost is from Monaco 1984 where an irres­ist­ible Senna in a poor car chased down Alain Prost in almost undrive­able con­di­tions. Prost’s hand wav­ing in the down­pour is eas­ily mis­taken for someone appeal­ing to be given the win (1984 Monaco Grand Prix — part 7). How­ever it is clear from the book that Prost was deeply affected his acci­dent in prac­tice for the 1982 Ger­man Grand Prix where Didier Pironi came out of heavy rain­spray to smash into the back of Prost’s Renault. Pironi never raced in For­mula One again. (Didier Pironi — Hock­en­heim ’82, crash and recov­ery)

1982 was a black year for For­mula One. Along with Pironi’s career-ending acci­dent, Vil­len­euve and Paletti died in races. Paletti’s death would be the last at a For­mula One race till the week­end in 1994 when Roland Ratzen­ber­ger and Ayr­ton Senna died. Prost was aware that F1 was a dan­ger­ous career. Ayr­ton Senna didn’t start in F1 till 1984. His faith was a worry for some other drivers, espe­cially in his later years, when some thought Senna  believed he had divine protection.

There is a prob­lem with any book like this. Prost is alive to give his side of the story. Senna is not. It’s hard to judge now if Senna really thought he was invul­ner­able. If you’re already a fan of one over the other I don’t think you’ll find any­thing here to change your mind. But the other drivers come well out of this. Derek War­wick in par­tic­u­lar could have been bit­ter after Senna effect­ively ended Warwick’s hopes of get­ting in a race-winning car.

The close of the book is inev­it­able, but even here Fol­ley is able to add some­thing, like the pres­sure Senna felt from Schu­macher. Everything Senna had thrown at Prost was now com­ing back at him from Schu­macher. A sur­prise in the book is how is seems Senna appre­ci­ated what a rival he had lost after Prost’s retire­ment. It also emphas­ises the shadow left by claims over the Benetton team using trac­tion con­trol. Did Senna die chas­ing an illegal car? http://www1.skysports.com/formula-1/news/12433/7362401/Verstappen-Schuey-s-car-different–

With no Schu­macher or Bar­ri­chello on the grid for 2013, this will be the first sea­son in a long while where none of the drivers will have known a death at Grand Prix week­end. The massive advances in safety are due in part to the death of Senna. No other event could have shocked the sport into improv­ing safety by so much.

#blog   #f1  

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A hydrophobic oil absorbing marshmallow

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via +Cheryl Hur­kett is this video demon­strat­ing a marshmallow-like mac­ro­por­ous gel that could be used for sep­ar­at­ing oil and water. Like the accom­pa­ny­ing press release says, this is obvi­ously use­ful for mar­ine oil spills, but there are many more applications.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/01/marshmallow-aerogel-mops-oil

#twt   #chem­istry  

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My head has just exploded

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Rockabye Baby have a lul­laby ver­sion of Lul­laby by The Cure. If you’ve not heard of Rockabye Baby they’re repack­aged ver­sions of hits slowed down to more som­no­lent pace.

Except for the ver­sions of Cold­play songs obviously.

If you haven’t heard any of them there’s plenty to choose from by search­ing You­Tube for Rockabye Baby. My favour­ites include:
Queen Under Pres­sure Rockabye Baby! Under Pres­sure Queen
Smash­ing Pump­kins Today Rockabye Baby! — Lul­laby Rendi­tions of Smash­ing Pump­kins — Today
and Nir­vana Smells Like Teen Spirit Rockabye Baby Lul­laby Rendi­tions of Nir­vana — Smells Like Teens Spirit which will give babies night­mares to scar them for the rest of their lives.

Other bands covered include U2, Metal­lica, the Smiths and Guns ‘n’ Roses.

and I’m not jok­ing about Cold­play not being slowed down. Rockabye Baby! Lul­laby Rendi­tions of Cold­play — Clocks

#music  

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Phases of the Moon Pro

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I’ve finally added my review of Phases of the Moon Pro to the Play store. This brings my total of Play reviews up to… umm… one.

I’ve been using it on my Galaxy Note 2, but I’ve just seen on the Vir­tual Star Party (as I type this) that it’s avail­able on iOS. It looks like it’s bet­ter on a Nexus 7 or iPad.

It’s a simple thing really, you start it up and it shows the moon phase. But it’s done very well. You can put your fin­ger on the moon and sweep it to increase or decrease the phase, set it to full and then see when that is. Or sweep it on or back to new and get a time for that phase.

The app name is a little bit mis­lead­ing now. You can use two fin­gers to zoom into the moon and craters, seas and Apollo land­ing sites get labelled. You need to pan two fin­gers round to move the image on the screen once you’ve zoomed in.

This week’s +Vir­tual Star Party is a good one too, with more moon than usual. Vir­tual Star Party — Jan. 20, 2013

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Quote of the day

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For non-Welsh people, Mer­thyr Tyd­fil is town half an hour or so inland.

“We don’t get a lot of sharks around here, so he did very well.”

Embed­ded Link

Paul Mar­shall­sea drags Bronze whaler shark away from Noosa beach
A BRITISH hol­i­day­maker grabbed a six-foot shark by its tail and dragged it away from a group of tod­dlers as they played in shal­low water off the coast of Queensland.

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Hysteria as a response to snow

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As with many things Charlie Brooker was there first. The video below was from three years ago. #Snow­maged­don has become a staple story in the UK with the first winter snow.

What might be inter­est­ing is what snow ter­ror tells us about cli­mate change.

There’s an inter­est­ing news story from 2000, with an awful head­line but a couple of inter­est­ing quotes.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

Accord­ing to Dr David Viner, a senior research sci­ent­ist at the cli­matic research unit (CRU) of the Uni­ver­sity of East Anglia,within a few years winter snow­fall will become “a very rare and excit­ing event”.

Heavy snow will return occa­sion­ally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unpre­pared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will prob­ably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.

So apart from the quotes com­pletely dis­agree­ing with the head­line in the story, has Dr Viner’s pre­dic­tion come true? Does global warm­ing mean we’ll freak out when snow comes?

In the Tele­graph Boris John­son has just pos­ted: It’s snow­ing, and it really feels like the start of a mini ice age.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9814618/Its-snowing-and-it-really-feels-like-the-start-of-a-mini-ice-age.html

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