Boston

I'm in the middle of a business trip in Boston. Well, technically I'm in Danvers, which is about 19 miles north of Boston. Danvers used to be Salem Village which is where the witch trials all started. This is the view out of my hotel window.

Today's Saturday, i.e. I'm not working, so I decided to take the train to Boston. The train station dropped me off at North Station and I started walking towards Faneuil Hall. While walking, I came across a street called something like Robert "RIP" Valenti Way. It made me wonder, if we don't include "RIP" for all streets named after deceased persons are we being insensitive...?

I finally got there. Here's a few pics.



There were several street performers there including a human statue and a guy riding a unicycle while flinging out two yoyos.


I kept walking along the Freedom trail and came across this:


This is a picture inside the Old South Meeting House. Benjamin Franklin was baptized here and the seeds of the rebellion that led to the Tea Party in Boston Harbor started inside these walls. Here's a picture of the pulpit.

I figured I'd just keep walking to Boston Commons. It was on the Freedom Trail. When I get there I see two live bands at different spots in the park. There are food vendors and concession stands selling souvenirs, etc. There was a sea of humanity milling about and I was curious what kind of festival was going on. I get to the middle of the festival, passing through the middle of very interesting people, to see these booths:


Yes, unknown to me, I walked smack dab into a "Legalize Marijuana," festival. It was at this point that I truly realized I was no longer in Utah...
I wondered what that distinctive odor was that wafted through the crowds. I might still be buzzed. Thank you Boston for making me have to go confess to my bishop about indirectly breaking the Word of Wisdom...

Anyway, once I realized what the festival was celebrating I decided it was time to leave.

As I was on the outskirts of Faneuil Hall I came across an epic group of street dancers. Still images do not do them justice. They contorted their bodies into positions that I don't think humans were meant to twist into. I loved the guy that did a back handspring flip over four people.

The Key of Kilenya

The Key of Kilenya is the debut novel of Andrea Pearson. From the back cover of the book:

When two vicious wolves chase fourteen-year-old Jacob Clark down a path from our world into another, his life is forever changed. He has no idea they have been sent by the Lorkon--evil, immortal beings who are jealous of powers he doesn't know he possesses--powers they desire to control.

The inhabitants of the new world desperately need Jacob's help in recovering a magical key that was stolen by the Lorkon and is somehow linked to him. If he helps them, his life will be at risk. But if he chooses not to help them, both our world and theirs will be in danger. The Lorkon will stop at nothing to unleash the power of the key--and Jacob's special abilities.

I love fantasy novels and found this to be a worthy first effort into the genre. Andrea's writing improved as the book went along.

The protagonist, Jacob, is assisted by a race of people called the Makalos. Someone else described this race in their mind as being a cross between Native Americans and Ewoks. That's about how I pictured them too. The pacing in the book is good, I would've liked more descriptions of what the primary characters looked like, i.e. Jacob, but the action of the book helped me overlook some of the lack of descriptions.

One minor nit, sometimes the characters all spoke with the same voice. They all used the word, "wow" way more than they should have.

The beginning of each chapter had a journal entry from another person in the tale. I really enjoyed that. While following the primary line of the story, I was allowed to see briefly another character line. That gave two very different and distinct views of what was happening, and why it was happening.

I look forward to the sequel and reading the continuing saga of Jacob and his friends as they try to save damsels in distress and two worlds from annihilation.

You can purchase a copy of the book here.

You can learn more about the author here.