Dream London - Review

 Title: Dream London 
Author: Tony Ballantyne 

Synopsis: “Captain Jim Wedderburn has looks, style and courage. He’s adored by women, respected by men and feared by his enemies. He’s the man to find out who has twisted London into this strange new world. 
      “But in Dream London the city changes a little every night and the people change a little every day. The towers are growing taller, the parks have hidden themselves away and the streets form themselves into strange new patterns. There are people sailing in from new lands down the river, new criminals emerging in the East End and a path spiraling down to another world. 
      “Everyone is changing, no one is who they seem to be.” 

Review: Dream London is truly a fantastic read! Ballantyne’s writing is superb. The main character of James Wedderburn is a very good example of the antihero, you aren’t supposed to like him and you won’t. But who he is has been molded by Dream London, just like it’s changed everyone else, it’s not who he really is so you feel sorry for him and find yourself cheering for him when he fights back. Even the minor characters are intriguing and well thought out. Ballantyne has even turned London itself into a character is this imaginative novel. 
      I highly recommend Dream London for anyone looking for an urban fantasy novel with a much different plot from the “normal” urban fantasy novels that are flooding the shelves (No sparkling vampires or sex addict werewolves here). I look forward to reading more of Tony Ballantyne’s work. 

Publisher: Solaris Books 

If you like this book you may want to read: 

 Midnight Riot (Rivers of London #1) by Ben Aaronovitch (see BookGirlR’s review here) 

 Sixty-One Nails (Courts of the Feyre #1) by Mike Shevdon

It's Not Different, Except It Is

   

BookGirlR & SuperSteve 9-20-2014
Photo: Daniel Fischer Photography

     Married life isn’t really all that different from unmarried life, except that it is. I married SuperSteve on September 20th. It was a fantastic, small, outdoors Browncoat wedding. With some other nerd fandoms being represented because we are both total nerds.

Yes, we were married by Captain Malcolm Reynolds
9-20-2014

BookGirlR & SuperSteve
9-20-2014

BookGirlR & SuperSteve
9-20-2014

Badger and River were also in attendance.
9-20-2014

    After the wedding, and the reception the next day, we were exhausted. Life didn’t seem to go back to normal as we expected it to. The whole summer seemed to build up to this one fantastic weekend, and honestly I was just ready for it to be over. Then suddenly it was over and we could go back to normal, except we couldn’t seem to remember what normal was.
      What did we used to do in the evenings before wedding planning took over our lives? And of course October is a big month for us, we both love fall and Halloween.

BookGirlR & SuperSteve Halloween 2014
Photo: Saurian Arts

     Nothing seemed to get done. We worked. We came home. We lay on the couch and ate junk food. On the weekends we did fun Halloween and fall related activities with friends and family. What happened to the hobbies we used to enjoy before wedding planning? I only read one book in September and three books in October, and I didn’t blog about any of them, and I’ve barely written anything at all. I can’t remember the last full meal I cooked; we’ve been eating a ton of junk food. We didn’t do any fall hiking. SuperSteve hasn’t sat down with a sketch pad and a pencil in months. Married life isn’t really all that different from unmarried life. We were already living together. We were already sharing the responsibility for the bills, and the groceries, and the cooking and the cleaning (he doesn’t cook and I hate to clean). He still squeezes the toothpaste tube from the middle and snores. I’m still an antisocial hermit and a slob. But it is different.
      People kept telling us that, even though we were already living together, marriage would be different. We scoffed at them. It’s not going to be different! But secretly, we wondered if they were right. Marriage is hard, they kept telling us. Why is it any different we wondered? And now we are having trouble settling into married life. It’s almost like the expectation is that it is supposed to be different (aren’t we supposed to spend every free minute together and do everything together?) But it isn’t differnt (we are still individuals with different hobbies and responsibilities). It’s the same and we’re just having trouble settling back into a routine.
      We will get there. We’ve decided to ignore anyone else’s expectations of what a happy married couple should be like and go with what makes us happy. I’m trying to cook more and get back into my reading and writing. SuperSteve is trying to get back into a regular cleaning schedule and draw and read more. We’re eating less junk food and sitting down at the table, with the television off, for dinner as often as possible (3 nights a week minimum). We are accepting that we don’t have to spend every minute together. It’s okay to do things separately and indulge in our individual hobbies. We have decided that married life isn’t all that different from unmarried life, unless you give in to the expectation that it is.