Mostly boulders

A solid afternoon of finishing off problems ahead of the changes for this week's comps. I completed two of the last three V3 problems on the circuit I hadn't quite finished. I easily sent the new problem E had given me the beta on at the weekend — when I'd been too pumped to follow through on it — and polished off another of the new ones without too much trouble.

Even better my bad had seems to improved massively over the last couple of weeks, thanks to the passage of time, a certain amount of babying, and some stretches to keep everything from tightening up. It's still a bit bumpy, but nothing like as bad as it was and with none of the pain or haematomas of last month.

Silence in Solitude

On to the next of Melissa Scott's Roads of Heaven novels in the form of Silence in Solitude. Set about six months after the events of Five Twelfths of Heaven, Silence Leigh has settled into her new role as the only female magus in universe and is still trying to find a way to pay off her debt to Doctor Isambard.

The story opens with the arrival of Silence's husbands — Balthasar and Chase Mago — on their way back from a refit of Silence's old ship, now renamed Recusante. This coincides with Isambard's discovery that the Hegemony are still after them; that the time has come to pack up and leave Solitudo Hermae and to resume their search for Earth. After undergoing a magic exam and gaining access to new sections of the library of the magi, Silence has uncovered evidence of an ancient artefact called a portolan that should help them navigate their way to their goal.

Discovering that the Satrap of Inarime, an old patron of Isambard's, happens to have a portolan, the Recusante travels to Inarime only to find the place in lockdown. Taken into the Satrap's confidence, the crew realise that he will only help them if they rescue his daughter from the Women's Palace on the Hegemon home world of Asterion. Silence, as the only female magus in existence, seems perfectly suited for the role of rescuer assuming she can manage to pass for an aristocrat.

Silence in Solitude is a pretty good escape-from-the-harem story, with Silence pitting her newly developed & trained powers against the wards surrounding the Women's Palace whilst also playing her wits against the Hegemon's suspicious sister. The action generally works well and the two main female characters, Radiah and Aili, are well drawn and serve to emphasise just how short-sighted the Hegemony's institutional misogyny really is in depriving itself of such power people.