More books

Runemarks, Joanne Harris

Lent by ghoti, I've wanted to read this for ages and I really enjoyed it.

It's set in a world after Ragnarok, when many of the gods are dead or weakened, and humanity is slowly regaining ground. The magic is really interesting, based on runemarks, both people born with them, and incorporated into various spells. The protagonist is born with a mark, which everyone in her village distrusts; she meets a mysterious one-eyed stranger; and eventually travels to the various underworlds.

Apparently Harris wrote lots of quite *different* books, so I should look to see if there's any others I might like.

Scorpion Rules

In the future, peace is kept between nations by keeping hostages of the people closest to power, of whom the protagonist is one. I'd hoped for more actual politics, but enjoyed descriptions of her mostly-pastoral hostage life, and the AI who rules the world and set up this system.

Iron Druid #N, Kevin Hearne

Urban fantasy about an immortal pre-Christian Irish druid, now on a par with many of the gods, but constantly on the run from his own pantheon. He forged an iron talisman which turns his aura to iron, which makes it harder to do some magic, but makes him immune to most of the magic of the Tuatha De Danann, his his epithet.

Generally enjoyable. It feels a bit fussy, with too much "every possible myth is true", and not enough overarching plot, but not as much as many urban fantasy. I kind of think it might be horrible offensive to people actually from Ireland, though I don't know enough to know either way.

Russel's Attic

Thanks to everyone who recommended this to me, I finally read it. Urban fantasy without much fantasy (?) about a woman whose superhuman maths powers give her supernatural physical skills, who works as a PI/retrieval specialist/mercenary. And runs into trouble defending herself from a secret organisation with mind-control powers.

I love her relationship with the other characters, the obligatory mercenary-sociopath-with-a-close-bond-to-the-protagonist, the hacker, the PI-who-didn't-intend-to-get-this-deep.

Islamic Calendar

AIUI the Islamic calendar is purely lunar. ie. the year is a fixed number of lunar months, and the seasons drift round the year, unlike a solar calendar (Gregorian) or lunisolar (Jewish, Chinese (?)).

Traditionally, a month starts when you first see the new moon. However, with astronomical calculation, it's easy to predict what day you are GOING to see the moon (provided it's not cloudy). There's also an understanding that after thirty days you move on to the next month anyway, so even if you follow the traditional system, the months never *accumulate* errors, there's always one month per new moon, and if one starts a bit late, it's correspondingly shorter.

In particular, this Ramadan, for many people following the traditional system, it started one day late, but it finishes a day late at random other years, not particularly the same year it started late, so it's likely everyone will celebrate finishing at the same time.

What I could NOT find in a quick google was which countries used which calendar in practice, for civil use (Gregorian or an astronomical version of the Islamic calendar? usually not an observation-based Islamic calendar?) and which countries' tradition used which calendar for religious festivals (astronomical calendar? observation calendar)? I'd assumed that would be fairly obvious, anyone able to fill me in?

This came about, because someone was complaining that in order to get timezone code correct, you had to take into account that Egypt cancelled daylight saving during ramadan. But I don't know what calendar they actually used for that.