At least I am reading!

My hobby has been suffering of late! I am very busy at the moment between going back to Ireland for a weekend and looking for work. At least with all the travels I am getting a lot of reading done. My flight on Friday was delayed by two hours so I really got caught up in the book while waiting. Currently I am reading Toll the Hounds part of the wonderful Malazan series by Stephen Erikkson. I am almost at the end and I have enjoyed the book a lot. The authors style has changed a bit from his earlier books with a lot more narrative introspection but the action still delivers. I read the first five books in the series one after another while long distance commuting a number of years ago. Then I had to wait for the rest of the series to come out. In the meantime I was busy travelling the world! Once I got back a lot of time had passed and it was difficult to get back into the series. I had forgotten a lot of the characters and events. I could even be wrong about the evolution of style but my memory tells me that the writing was more concise and focused (but not better) in the earlier books. Dust of Dreams is already out. It claims to be the penultimate book in the series. I hope so as I do like my storeis to eventually finish!

I picked up Drood today. It is what I will read while waiting for Dust of Dreams to come out in a better format. I really like Dan Simmons and have read all his Sci-Fi books so far. I found this in the Crime section of Thalia books in Hamburg. I am not quite sure if it is in the right place but I bought it anyway. I hope he follows his usual wonderful style that have made Hyperion and Olympos some of my favorite books. I recommend them highly especially if you have any interest in either the poetry of John Keats or in Homer's ancient writings. On another note the latest in the Wheel of Time series has been released. Seemingly it has gone from a single tome to three books. I hope they will be good and that the series does end eventually! I will await the publishing of all three before I restart that series. The initial reviews from friends have said that it is at least promising and that the styles of the authors compliment each other well.

I am hoping to get right back on track with the painting soon. Tomorrow may be a relaxing day and if so I will be breaking out the brushes and attempting to finish some test marauders I have been doing. I noticed in the almost local Games Store that a Crom the Conqueror model was still on sale. I believe that he is now out of production? I bought him anyway as I wanted to get a nice collection of characters for the army. I am already trying to dream up how I will convert him. Oh and the weather in Hamburg is terrible at the moment!

Less than three weeks!

Hmmm I have just realised that I have less than three weeks to go to the tournament where I am hoping to field my Warriors of Chaos. I currently have less than two hundred points worth assembled. I do have the bulk of the army done though with thirty eight models on their bases. Sadly that means fourteen hounds and twenty four marauders! Tomorrow I will have to sort out some characters to make sure I can meet the points. I have been looking to order a mounted Deamonette on all the online retailers but it seems that they are now out of production. I will have to head to the local games store in Hamburg 'Spieleland' which is fantatic! Failing that I will once again venture into GW in the hope that nobody speaks English so that they can't haunt me while in the shop.

Spending the weekend helping reonvate a house by the sea didn't give me much time to construct more little grey men this weekend. I spent all of Sunday asaulting an unruly hedge with a chainsaw. The novelty of a heavy spinning blade wears off rather quickly. My arms are broken in pieces. I have muscles now I didn't realise I had! Stevens Eriksson's books have also proved a distraction. I am currently enjoying the seventh book Reaper's Gale. Thankfully I have spotted a few retailers of english books as I doubt if I will ever have enough mastery of german to manage a novel of that complexity! I do have to get my 'Krieger des Chaos' tomorrow to figure out what I will bring to the tournament.

The upcoming tournament is being hosted by theNorth Wexford Gamers. I guess it will be a complete cheesefest as it is the first Irish ranking tournament. I don't think I will manage to core too highly, especially as my army won't even be painted. I would like to get a feel for how my regiments are doing though so I can be prepared for the next ranking tournament, which was just announced today, the Resurgence 2009. It is being held in Ballymena, Northern Ireland by the Northern Wasters. I hope it lives up to its previous incarnations as Bloodstorm. The last one was 2004 I believe. They were great fun!

I am still waiting on getting into some gaming fun here in Hamburg. Once I get more boot on bases I will organise some games properly. I am really looking forward to seeing how Warhammer is played here!