Also as continuously happens through the early chapters, the initial sense of it as outside the Shire, a definite other, followed by Merry pointing out how porous the border actually is in practice

It's both realism of nature writing but also realism in how people live in nature rather than on maps

In delightful facts I'd never spotted until Adam Roberts pointed it out in Fantasy: A Short History is that we learn that a stone or a bit of earth in True Speech is tolk and the name of the sea is inien thus making Earthsea...

tolk-inien

I'd really recommend When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift.

Thoughtful, hopeful but not untinged by grief near future climate fiction. The author was up for the Clarke Award with her previous novel The Coral Bones and this was of the same high standard.

The likely Australia QF won't be easy, them being at home and can clearly in 2 years get much better than they were this Autumn, but it's a World Cup QF. Then it's a semi that if we played tomorrow we'd be favourites for.

You're going to have to beat decent teams to win so it could be a lot worse.

The feel of an author who's actually tramped his way through nature in his own life and the wrinkles and hitches in those journeys give such texture and depth to the world. Journeying as actual process rather than simply scene change.

Anyway, great fun to listen to people discuss similar points.

Good Morning Womble!

I'm about to start The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo which is our SFF bookclub book this month. Not really got any preconceptions going in so interested to see how it turns out.