Parents visited today. I'd lent my dad jaylake's Escapement. My dad's so weird. I asked him what he thought, and he said, "I liked it, it sounded like he researched things!" I think that means he was impressed with the worldbuilding. We ended up talking about god and heaven and people who get stuck in the radical atheists vs. radical theists battle. Such people seem to get confused by people like me, who don't have hard and fast beliefs, but get pissed off when people accuse us of being wishy-washy and indecisive. I told Dad that I could call myself both agnostic and Catholic, because even though I follow (and I use "follow" very loosely) something I choose to call God (which is certainly not an Old Man In the Sky,) I can't know for sure that such a thing exists. He responded by saying that's how a good Catholic should think.

Anyway, based on our conversations of atheism and Escapement, Dad thinks jaylake would be an interesting person to talk to. So maybe I'll be able to get Dad to come to Foolscap for a day, someday.

And my final, "gee, my dad's weird" moment. We passed a huge garden spider in the park, a kind that's as common as dirt around here, and my dad wondered if it was a brown recluse. He knows local birds up down and sideways, but doesn't recognize a garden spider?

I typed up a review of Jay Lake's latest book, Escapement ages ago, and of course, promptly forgot to post it until days after the darn book actually comes out.

Short version: This book is wonderful and fun, with unique characters and the most fascinating worldbuilding you'll see in a long time. I liked Mainspring all right, but it occasionally dragged, and I didn't care much about the main character, but in Escapement, all those problems are non-existent.

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