frosenblum

Council Alberts admitted to being the ruler of this evil empire when he told Belland: "The only option would be Russia, and I’ll be damned if I let any of those Siberian dogs claim a piece of my empire that I’ve built." The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

It was produced by BBC. I watched it on Amazon Prime's IMDB-TV channel. It has a great premise: A werewolf and a vampire move in as roommates to a flat that turns out to have a resident ghost.

But how did you get the iceberg into the castle?

Sounds like CJ is going to win a second term. I had wondered if he would keep his promise to Owen in HTTC to leave office after one term so they could spend time together.

Another enjoyable chapter, full of warmth (including the Ambassadors burning of Northman). With presidential support for the project, represented by his wife cutting the ribbon, there should be no problems in getting the rest of centers opened quickly.

We read about Liebe at 22 in HTTC. How soon will we get to read about Liebe at 27? 😁

Which one of the dads is based on you, Carlos?

It's very sweet whenever one of Liebe's dads read her one of Owen's stories about the fictional Liebe.

I noticed something on rereading this chapter. 'The German businessman looked appalled. “But life shouldn’t be about competition and defeating someone else. If you want children to practice sports it should be about participation, not beating an opponent. That’s barbaric.”' Jürgen works for Bayer, a company that is very competitive. It is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world and has been gobbling up other companies around the world, including Monsanto. (It has a large campus here in the SF Bay Area.) Bayer may have patented aspirin, but it also invented heroin. And speaking of being barbaric, Bayer was part of the IG Farben conglomerate during WWII, which used slave labor from concentration camps for supporting the Nazi industrial war effort and anti-Jewish policies. It produced the poison gas that killed over one million people in the concentration camp gas chambers. Was Jürgen blind to this contradiction or is he oblivious to, or in denial about, Bayer's history?

Granted Circumnavigation was really l-o-n-g at one million words and it's shortest chapters were the length of your lonest. On the other hand, what a great read it was! The finale was as exciting, clever and well-written as any naval story I've read, as good as Patrick O'Brien or Tom Clancy. IMHO well worth the challenge of reading such a long story!

I'm not a biblical expert, but if memory serves, it is stoning that the bible recommends rather than hitting with signs.😟

These women may intellectually understand this and may even want to stand up. But emotionally, it can be a different story, suffering from the crippling trauma of the rapes.

I had missed TBY. After you mentioned it, I started reading it. I'm up to Chapter 9 and loving it. You probably have a week or two before I'm caught up and demanding you get going again.😁 I'm not a writer, but "tucking my head and soldiering on" doesn't sound enjoyable not the sort of mindset that would lead to writing that thrills your readers. Is tucking & soldiering something that writers just have to do from time to time to produce quality writing?

The moral of the video is "Don't screw with Chusi," especially if she's hungry. One wonders: Can Chusi's jaws spread wide enough to swallow a wolf or a bear? If one of the council members is in their human form and Chusi shiftily gets their head in her mouth, would the pressure of her muscles keep that shifter from shifting?

@84Mags posited (at last! I've wanted to drop that word into conversation for a long time) shifter/supernatural rats and flies on the wall. Oh, all powerful author, can Ben sense those types of beings???

Tim wanted to check on the mood in the town and got a loud wake up call that things haven't changed from his high school days as much as he hoped. Tim needs more than a judge on his side to end the area's homophobia. (Donnie's supernatural intervention?) There don't appear to be any other non- heteros that are publicly out besides Tim and Stephan, and now Tom. One of the biggest impacts on one's homophobia is knowing glbt+ folks personally. It also seems that basic feminism has passed Dad by, to tell others about plans to retire and move before discussing it with his own wife. Mom must feel powerless in her life.

What's with all the anti-snake bias. Chusi reminds me of the python 10-year old Harry Potter freed from the zoo. People ran screaming but all the snake wanted to do was head home to the jungle. It must feel like prison for Chusi to be stuck in a castle in the middle of a German forest with winter approaching. The wolves can shift and run through the forest whenever they want. The grizzly bear probably can, too. The falcon can shift and fly. But Chusi and the polar bear are way out of their natural habitats.

Ben could suss out sneaky supernatural spies.

I loved the chapter. But it's more like a Halloween trick than a Christmas present.

I particularly loved that the coin-flipping, it's so low-tech it's pre-tech! Using a Canadian loonie would have better fit the mood of your comment.😁 Seriously, thanks for taking the time to shar3 your reasoning behind not doing a sequel. It strengthens the mutual respect between you and us readers. Given your criteria, I think the only thing that might warrant a sequel -- it would be more accurate to call it another story in the same universe -- would be the how the family deals with the challenges and changes of Ridley's dad coming home.

This chapter hit very close to home. I grew up in the 1940s and 50s. This was a time before sex education in schools. Sex wasn't spoken of at home, by either my mother or father. (Nothing was even said about my stiff-with-cum pajamas in the weekly wash.) What I picked up on the streets was spotty, and I was too scared and ashamed to ask questions. I don't remember any specific incident or thing said, but I knew without a doubt that sex was dirty and shameful and that most shameful was to be homosexual. It was very stifling and confusing for a pre-pubescent and teenager trying to make sense of my sexual urges and fantasies.

That is the perfect reason for both people to change their surnames to a hyphenated joint name -- "we're together, as one."

The arrival in the castle reminds me of the scene in the Seven Samurai when the samurai first walked into the town and the forty bandits had no idea what was about to hit them. (Hint to anyone who hasn't seen the movie: all forty bandits ended up dead.)

DAs don't want to prosecute cases they think they might lose. Also, DAs are elected and they might feel prosecuting such a case (standing up for a gay man) could cost them votes. Both outcomes are a real possibility in this religiously conservative, homophobic community.