Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Snow Flower: Arara's Tale by Madison Keller
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Look at the book's cover. Look at my rating for this book. Doesn't seem to match, does it?

I got this book expecting it to be awful. I mean, look at the cover! Yeah, yeah, "You can't tell a book by its cover", except usually you can.

While Snow Flower was far from perfect, it was a surprisingly enjoyable read.

It takes place on a fantasy world? alien planet? Somewhere where dogs(?) are the dominant species. There's some other race of things as well (something that's "cold to the touch"), but I have no idea what they're supposed to be.

One of the big downsides of this book was that we were missing all backstory and description -- it's a prequel set in the world of the first book, so I suppose all the information is in that.

The dogs(?) are evolved(?), they can stand and walk on two legs if they want, but are also comfortable on four. They wear minimal clothing (shorts and a harness), and can talk plus have some sort of mental communication system (only within their pack?).

The packs (basically like a town, I think) have alphas/betas/omegas, and the story was about the girl puppy of an omega couple. She was bullied badly, but because of the pack social structure it was an okay thing to do.

For all I didn't know about the story, I quite liked it. That surprises the hell out of me, because... look at that cover. This novella is currently free on Amazon (click the link at the top of this post if you like -- I get nothing if you do). I enjoyed it enough that I paid for the next book, and will be reading it next.

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The new Walking Dead spin-off has a name: Fear the Walking Dead. *cough* Quite, um, original.. I guess they wanted to be sure that people knew the new show was related to the first one. It stars someone named Cliff Curtis, and is set in LA in the early days of the zombie outbreak.

I'll be checking it out, once it airs.

In health news, I'm still quite red all over and feel not so great. Luckily I haven't been light-headed or fainting, but I still feel pretty blah. I took my last pill of the antibiotic I was allergic to on Wednesday night, so you'd think this would be out of my system by now (Google tells me it can take a few days though). I have an appointment with my new doctor on Monday for a follow-up.

- I got FFXIV installed. I had to use my work email address, which I really, really did not want to do, but the game is so pretty I can nearly forgive that. After playing WoW for so long, a pretty game makes me want to cry. I spent almost a half-hour customizing my character just right. Which is something of a joke -- which "Thistle" do I mean at this point? Anyway, I made him look as much like FFXI Thistle as I could, but there's a lot of WoW Thistle in his background/personality (mostly moot, since I'm unlikely to ever RP there).

- I got my review at work. Being new to the tech writing group, I was expected to get 'gaining competency', which is what all people new to a job/position get since they're ramping up to speed. Instead I got all meets or exceeds competency. o.O Woot! Thanks RP for all the writing/editing skills I picked up through the years. Kids, if parents tell you computer games are a waste of time, point this out! But seriously, it was because of my engineering background as well -- I'm a lot more technical than the other writers, so I'm handy in that way.

- The hospital sent me a bill for almost a thousand dollars ($992). While that's a lot better than $144,000, I'm still unhappy. I sent them a reply asking what/why my insurance wasn't covering.

- Toe is healing? It's still red, but my instructions say to gently scrub off the scab three times a day, so... that'd make anything red, I'd think. The swelling is gone and it only hurts a little now and then (see also: removing the scab three times a day). I still have two days left of the antibiotics though, so we'll see what happens after that.

- Way too many medical appointments next week. x.x Tuesday is the nutritionist, Wednesday the doctor for my leg/toe, Friday my car to the shop, then Monday is the dentist. My cat needs to go to the vet soon after (delaying that as much as I can), and two other new appointments for myself, along with that darned sleep study.

- Still need to do my taxes. Every year I have to pay hundreds of dollars, so I always drag my feet. Blah. I still want to get it done with though.

- I bought a panini maker. I debated for a week, since once I have my surgery I won't be eating sandwiches anymore (I think?), but it was only $30 so if I enjoy it for four months or so it should be worth it. Eventually I'll find a new home for it and the Soda Stream twins.