Dark Matter

I mentioned that we heard Michelle Paver speak at this years PicoCon and I had bought the hardback of her book Dark Matter.

Though this is not the sort of story I would normally pick up, it's a ghost story, the research that Michelle puts into her novels made me want to read it.  It is beautifully written and disturbingly atmospheric, reminding me of H. P. Lovecraft but without the baggage he can bring to a story.  Up until the end the narrative can be read one of two ways: madness or the supernatural.  And to some extent even by the end the interpretation is that the narrator believes he experienced a supernatural horror but the evidence is based on the narrator telling us what others said and saw.  As such, given that he clearly has a nervous breakdown and the whole over wrought emotional milieu one is left to decide for oneself.

The scenes and the description of the landscape are stunning and while I'm undecided about reading any other of her books, I need to go away and look them up, I can recommend this to anyone who wants to read something different for a change.  It's certainly inspired me to have a go at writing my alien Arctic waste novel.

Yesterday we went into town.  Town being what people who live in London call the West End.

The trip involved my partner buying a new pair of shoes, popping into Selfridges, the halls of Mammon, and having a coffee – marveling at the extravagance of everything (feeling like proles from District 12 visiting the Capital of Panem – you can tell we have recently watched the Hunger Games series), and then we went on window shopping before having lunch in a small family owned Italian restaurant called Rossodisera.

After that it was time to go to Forbidden Planet, check out the books and then off to Orcs Nest to pick up this month's issues of Miniature Wargames & Battlegames, a bottle of paint and a Y-Wing to complete my Gold Squadron.  After that it was time to come home and put my feet up and have a nice cup of tea.  In short, we had a lovely day out together, which is after all what nice memories are made of.