We've had some beautiful weather the past week or so. The temperature has been in the upper 60s to lower 70s for the past two days. The trees are budding, the grass has gone from yellowish brown to rich green in the course of a week, and the birds and the crickets are making my rural home as noisy as a busy city street. Like the wave of passing color in the fall, this week has been a rapid flush of greens on the lawns, red buds at the end of the trees, and purples, whites, and yellows of spring flowers.

Yesterday, having caught up on my taxes and other items, I went to the 3 mile reservoir that is fairly near from my house. I climbed to the earthen dam at the front and flew a kite for a while.

In my voracious, endless appetite for books, this week I read "Fledgling" by Octavia Butler, and "The Other Wind" by Ursula K. LeGuin. Octavia Butler just passed away at the age of 62. She had been writing science fiction and fantasy for over thirty years and had won Nebula and Hugo awards. I think I've read 75% of everything she has ever written. From everything I can tell, Octavia Butler was a overweight ,single black woman who lived in a messy apartment in Southern California with a bunch of cats. Based on her characters though, if she hadn't been twenty years older than me, I'd have liked to have jumped her bones. With rare exceptions, her main character was always the same person: a strong minded, kind black woman. I liked that person though. Race is frequently an element in her novels, but it usually isn't "the element".

"Fledgling", Butler's last novel before she passed away, is typical of her writing. Her main character is a 53 year old vampire, which for vampires in this world gives her the body of an eleven year-old, but the sexual appetite and emotional maturity of someone much older. Two other things set the stage for our main character at the beginning of this novel: 1) Due to genetic engineering experiments involving cross breeding with African Americans, this vampire can survive in sunlight, and 2) As a result of a horrible fire, this vampire has lost all of her family and her memory. The novel then revolves around the main character finding her family and discovering the reason behind the fire. Along the way, she develops blood bonds with a number of humans including a redneck construction worker, and a middle aged woman who bears a striking resemblance to the author. This is not Butler's best work, but it is a pretty decent read. I've found Butler's work to be consistently enjoyable over the years.

Ursula K. LeGuin has been writing for 40 years. Like Butler, LeGuin is a multiple award winner, probably regarded as being a slightly better writer. I find her to be less consistent than Butler. Sometimes I absolutely love what she is writing, like in "The Earthsea Trilogy", which ranks up there with "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" for a lot of people, in science fiction novels like "The Dispossessed" and "The Left Hand of Dasrkness", and in shorter fiction like "Buffalo Gals" and "Solitude", which I quoted from earlier this month. Some of her fiction I don't enjoy as much though, and some just plain does not work for me at all.

Her latest work in the "Earthsea" world, "The Other Wind" falls somewhere in the middle. Once again we are returned to an empire of islands ruled by a wise, dark skinned people sometimes at odd with a fairer skinned people to the north, sometimes at odds with powerful dragons, and sometimes at odds with nefarious necromancers. There is a wonderful school of magic in the center of the world that puts Hogwarts to shame.

Like Butler, LeGuin's characters have a sense of great strength about them. For LeGuin's characters this is more of internal, inner quiet strength rather than than Butler's more direct, demonstrative heroines. I liked re-visiting LeGuin's world and reacquainting myself with her characters. It felt somehow though like watching the 300th episode of Star Trek II or some other series that had slightly overstayed its welcome. Yes, it is a beautiful world, and yes I like these people, but things had already reached their logical conclusion 2 books ago, and the one follow up was a pleasant surprise, but by now it is close to being enough. Villains have become familiar and transformed into nice guys, and a bit too much of the world is now in our grasp, making it seem smaller and more transparent. It was still worth the trip though, and LeGuin managed to put in a few interesting twists and turns, but I think this should be the last.

Ok. I have some urge to play games tonight. So I'm off to Big Collegetown.