I'm glad that Bernie came up with a project that requires some online research today. I'm feeling disconnected, a mood which generally leads to me "losing" time during the day and eventually coding time recklessly to anything that looks plausible.

I really need to start going to bed at a more reasonable hour, but I've been indulging in an obsessive bout of fiction reading.

I haven't read much "alternate history fantasy" but I read Naomi Novik's new series (what's available so far) recently and enjoyed it quite a lot. I'm looking forward to the next book, whenever it comes out.

I'm not quite sure what to expect out of "alternate history" books, but I'm a tad disappointed that, at least so far, the actual historical implications are tangential to the stories themselves. I'd anticipated placing magical dragons in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars would produce....

Well, I don't know, now that I come to think about it. I was kind of hoping for more about the Wars, I guess. It's a time period that interests me, but neither the culture nor the battles seem, so far, to be that important to the books. In fact, beyond providing her with a ready-made "villain" and a vague timeline, I haven't yet seen any advantages to setting this series in an "alternate history" instead of just creating a new world. (Granted, she'd have had to do more world-building in the first book which, I suppose, might have been sufficient reason in and of itself.)

I've read most of the "sea" books, at least the major series, around that era. Alexander Kent and Dudley Pope and Merryat, etc. I really enjoyed those, not the least for the discussion of the battles and tactics.

I just started on Cornwall's Sharp series, although that's in India (at least so far) and not, of course, set on the sea.

It's a bit of a surprise to me to find myself reading fiction of the non-genre variety (meaning, non-SF and non-fantasy) these days, but there you go. Something I'd have sworn I couldn't be bothered with a year ago is suddenly fascinating to me. (Before, when I wanted to "learn" about something historical, I generally read non-fiction. I guess, these days, my brain is more interested in stories than accuracy.)