The Amber Fury

I like Natalie Haynes' classics-related comedy stuff a lot, so it was interesting to discover she'd written a novel. It's about a young woman who takes a job teaching at a unit for troubled kids in Edinburgh, after a devastating personal tragedy. She introduces the kids to ancient Greek tragedies, and events spiral out of control when one of them gets obsessed with her past.

It's one of those books where you know at the start that something terrible has happened, and the book gradually reveals the background and the events leading up to the event, with the big reveal at the end. It's not a story structure I'm a particular fan of, but it's done quite well here, and it's helped by a very strong narrative voice (both in the main text and the student's diary entries) and well-portrayed characters.

It kept me reading, and the narrative itself was compelling enough that I didn't just want to skim to find out what happened, which is often how it goes for me with these kinds of stories. So, that demonstrated good writing and good storytelling from Haynes.

A solid book, which I enjoyed.

Nutcracker and Imhotep

Last night, I went to see Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker! for the second time (the first was almost exactly ten years ago) and really enjoyed it again. Afterwards, I turned to my friend and said, "I bet when you came out tonight, you weren't expecting to see 13 ballet dancers simulating sex with a giant layer cake!"

Interestingly, my review from ten years ago said I enjoyed the first half (in the dreary orphanage) more than the second half (in the day-glo Sweetland, with all the licking) - but this time, it was the other way around.

Highlights were the female lead's dance with her doll, the ice skating, the humbug bouncer, and the girls in the pink fluffy hats and tutus. As ever with Matthew Bourne ballets, there was a great deal of distinctive characterisation in the corps, and a lot more storytelling than you usually get from a traditional Nutcracker ballet.

Lots of fun, and it felt like the Christmas period had truly begun.


Tonight, we played Imhotep online with some friends - this is the main game version of the two-player variant I played on the Isle of Wight in August. You place stones on ships, then transport them to different locations to get points in various different ways. But, you can be royally screwed by the other players moving your blocks to entirely different places than the one you wanted, and it's very hard to manage how many blocks you have available and when you'll be able to move the ships yourself. I'm not that keen on games where it's in the other players' interests to screw you over, rather than getting points for themselves, and so I found this very annoying at times. I definitely preferred the two-player version, which had less of that, and felt more strategic and easier to figure out.