Shadow Over the Urals recc & Rant about the SU
The people at the Student's Union are stupid. Stupid and lazy. I went last Friday, with all the horrible heat, and asked for a CD I needed. They said they would have it for Monday. As I am an intelligent person, I gathered that they wouldn't have it for Monday at all, so I went today. Again, with all the horrible horrible heat.
They didn't have my CD, and had misplaced my order.
"But no worries," the guy said "we'll do it now. Give us five minutes."
Since the semester has been over for two weeks, both today and last Friday there were an incredible amount of iddle people at the place. I have no problem with iddle people. I have a problem with iddle people who chitchat, eat yoghurt and sing while I am standing there for ten minutes, waiting for somebody to say "oh, did you want something?". If burning the CD was going to take five minutes, and so many people were, literally, doing NOTHING, why wouldn't you just burn it last Friday? Just so I didn't have to spend an hour and a half commuting from home to uni and uni from home AGAIN? ON THIS HEAT?
*pouts* I didn't even vote for them. I voted for the sensible ones.
OK, rant's over.
I have a new rec for you:
Shadow Over the Urals At FictionAlley
Author: Perhenwen
Genre: murder-mystery (this one has a murder)
Lenght: short novel
Written: post-DH
Happens: VW1- y'know, around 1980.
I have already recced the sequel to this, The Necromancer Amulet, in my last post. There, Secessa Laburouva, Durmstrang's Dark Arts teacher, is forced to abandon her school. This prequel tells of Secessa's very first months as an Apprentice teacher, placed there not by Karkaroff, but by the Russian Ministry of Magic, who are very concerned by former Headmaster Gregorovich sudden, mysterious death. Secessa has to carve herself a place at the school, deal with Karkaroff's new regime, deal with the experiments the Dark Arts teacher is doing and solve the murder.
I loved the mystery, and the story also sheds light on several minor characters from The Necromancer Amulet bringing them to life. What most fascinates me is the cultural exposition of Russia- it's full of delicious details that link the story both to Russia itself as a magical community and as a communist society. The author's creativity for this is endless, and that makes this fic an especially good read.
On top of things, my Internet service is being bitchy and my antivirus won't stop reminding me that it became aware I am using a pirate version. And did I remember to mention the HORRIBLE HEAT?