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| The City Who Fought - Anne McCaffrey & S. M. Stirling |
Goodreads
Google summary:
. . . a 1993 science fiction novel, part of the "Brainships" series, about a "shellperson" (a disembodied brain) named Simeon who runs a space station and must use his hobby of wargaming to defend it and refugees from brutal pirates. The story follows Simeon and his new, strong-willed human partner, Channa Hap, as they work together to save the station and its inhabitants from the invading Kolnari.
Not the greatest book, but the exploration of the psychological aspects of the characters in the middle section was pretty good. There is a weak attempt at fitting Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel with local space travel, but why do you need cold-sleep if you have FTL? Yeah, and when you start looking at tactics, you really need details on how this flavor of FTL works, and that is pretty much completely missing. Never mind, all the important characters and important action are going on on the space station.
Some items that caught my eye:
Page 164 paragraph 3 new-to-me word: sicatooth - "... and I want you to start pulling together those tasty goods we're going to use to tempt the ... sicatooth ." Google can't find it. I suspect it means something like a wolf-like attacker, a pirate, for instance.Page 184 new-to-me word: antiphonally - in a manner characterized by the alternation of musical parts in a responsive manner between two groups of singers or musicians
Page 184 also a sex scene without using any sexual terms. Clever.
Page 202 paragraph 6 - a new-to-me term: stranger'n - contraction of 'stranger than' I expect.
Page 203 paragraph 9 - new-to-me word: chatelaine - the mistress of a household or of a large establishmentPage 234 "lost her rag" - all the good people say it means she has lost her temper, but I like this explanation I found on English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Men have always dismissed women who have lost their temper as losing their rags meaning they were only in a bad mood/short tempered because of their period.
Page 237 paragraph 3 - Another unknown word: precocity - it is just the noun version of the adjective 'precocious' which means 'exceptionally early in development or occurrence'.
Page 249 paragraph 10 - In the last sentence we get some clever invented slang from Joat, a renegade girl, describing crawling around in the station's maintenance access tunnels: "Some of the places pinch grudly but they're in-able if you're sveltsome."
Page 276 paragraph 2 - Hebrides Suite. Hmm, there is The Hebrides, a concert overture that was composed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1830, but there is also Clare Grundman's Hebrides Suite (1962), a popular four-movement concert band work based on Scottish folk songs from the Hebrides Islands.
Page 276 last paragraph - whipped Jersey - Jersey cow cream is so rich that you can thicken it with a few good shakes (as used on an Irish Coffee), and whip it in no time at all. - Foodie Pilgrim
Page 287 and Page 288 fragments of three poems
Page 293 paragraph 8 - Carmina Burana could be a medieval collection of poetry or it might be the a cantata composed in 1935 and 1936 by Carl Orff. Video. Includes O Fortuna. I suspect the cantata is the correct one here.
Page 313 top, fragment of a poem - The Quest by Rudyard Kipling
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