Dry January

I’m doing Dry January to kickstart a longer streak of no drinking and help me resist the urge when it inevitably shows up.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve cut back my consumption of alcohol quite a bit, and the time between the mindless urges to drink has become longer and longer, which is terrific news! But I’ve still got some work to do.

For most of my life, I fell somewhere between a casual and heavy drinker, essentially someone who often drank, sometimes to excess but never suffered from any significant problems. But as I’ve aged, I’ve found it harder and harder to recover from an evening of even light drinking, and it became impossible to deny the effect it had on my sleep, moods, and general health. All of which was quantifiably reinforced when I started wearing my Oura ring. If you want to see how booze affects your sleep and health, get one of those.

It was terrible at times and getting worse, so I decided to try and cut back, which I have done, and I am feeling better overall.

So, it’s been challenging, but I’ve been able to cut back. I drink less often and in less volume than three or four years ago when it started to wear on me. I drink less now than I think I have my whole adult life, which feels like a big win. I’ll go long stretches without drinking, and most of the time, when I do drink, it’s not much. One or two drinks usually, with the occasional one or two more. Drinking beyond that has been rare, and oh boy, do I regret it every time I do that. Especially if I have two nights in a row of more than a couple, it isn’t easy to bounce back. I’m looking at you football trip to Seattle. Oof.

I’ve found counting streaks and participating in non-drinking challenges to be very helpful. They were something I used to scoff at. But I realize now can be helpful to circumvent the habit of drinking. A habit built over years of happy hours, parties, and overcoming social anxiety that, I now realize, was also a result of drinking in social situations, resulting in a crazy bad habit loop.

That habit is still there; only the loop has become longer and easier to circumvent. It doesn’t feel like it’s written into my bones like it once did. The thing is: I like to drink. I like the taste of many drinks—though I have grown less and less fond of beer—and how it feels, and it helps me relax and slow down my anxious brain (at first, anyway) and the social conventions around it. I like the ritual of drinking and the variety of trying something new. I know a lot of this is marketing and societal conditioning, but it’s a thing for me.

As an aside, I’ve also been playing with some alternatives to varying degrees of success. Kava, Ethanol-free libations (both of which do mess me up a bit, but in a much milder way), as well as micro-dosing THC, which works fantastic most of the time to help me shut off my brain. Maybe more on that in a later entry.

Now—most of the time—when I drink, I’d say it’s at least somewhat mindful. For lack of a better way to describe it, I decide to drink. Do I regret that choice? Sometimes, but not often, thankfully. I’m still coming to terms with it and trying to figure out what’s right. I know that alcohol is overall a net negative, and I often question why I do it. If this all sounds a bit crazy to you, I will say that I agree, and I don’t fully understand it myself. Nature of the beast, I suppose.

If you’re thinking about doing Dry January yourself, I wish you the best of luck and can say without reservation that a dry month (week, year, etc.) will be good for you. If nothing else, it should help you sleep, and solid sleep is the foundation for many good things in life.

Aphantasia

I’ve been working with Midjouney a bit to try and express what it’s like to experience Aphantasia. This is just a quick cut and doesn’t capture it. It turns out it’s hard to get a prompt that encapsulates what it’s like in a way that’s not just a large fuzzy black box. I’ll keep working on it as a nice artistic challenge. I have a hunch it’ll require some human adjustment in addition to the prompt.

Last year I learned that I’ve got a condition—I guess—that prevents me from picturing images in my mind. It’s a bit hard to explain to people. Put as simply as I can manage; I can’t see pictures in my mind’s eye. For example, when asked to picture a red apple with closed eyes, most people see it. For me, I see mostly darkness most of the time. However, I can hold the concept of a red apple and imagine it fully without actually seeing it, and occasionally, I can see…something. Still, it’s not a complete or accurate picture.

From aphantasia.com

Aphantasia is the inability to visualize. Otherwise known as image-free thinking.

People with aphantasia don’t create any pictures of familiar objects, people, or places in their mind’s eye. Not for thoughts, memories, or images of the future.

Much like another condition I have, Anosmia, which is an almost complete lack of smell, people's first impressions when they hear about it are wrong. It doesn’t feel debilitating at all, and I don’t feel like something is missing. Some people who find out they are affected by Aphantasia are left with a terrible sense of loss. I can understand that, even though it’s not what I feel. Mostly I feel curious about how others perceive things in their mind’s eyes. I have a wild imagination and vivid dreams, where I visualize quite a bit. I’m also a reasonably visual thinker; despite my inability to see things with closed eyes, I have a strong eye for patterns, colors, and the like. All of which is good, considering I’m a designer by trade. What I do not have—and what finding out about my Aphantasia has shed some light on—is an excellent visual memory. I’m terrible with faces, for example. This seems common among Aphants, and I’ve read anecdotally that many are more okay with loss, as that visual memory isn’t nearly as crisp as it would be for most people.

Another thing I’ve always struggled with is visualizing without reference, though I never really saw it as much of a constraint. I’ve always been a writer, and I think I’m very good both with reading comprehension and written communication, and I have a hunch that many others with aphantasia are as well.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and tools like Midjourney—a controversial topic that will come up in this journal—have been invaluable to me as they work as assistive technology for my imagination. I can now describe what I can’t see in my head to AI and have it provide me with images. Sometimes wild and creative images that spark further my imagination. I’m still on the fence about AI’s broad application, but for assisting my imagination, I’m all for it.

2023: Embrace, learn, and grow stronger.

I’m doing Ryan Holiday’s New Year New You challenge—I enjoy a good challenge or two, or five, to start the year—and the first day has us coming up with a Stoic mantra. I spent too much time on this, especially considering I had a fairly good thought right away. Both on wordsmithing and also thinking about all the little sayings I’ve collected over the years.

Here are a few existing candidates I thought about and used for inspiration. All of these are good, but I challenged myself to find something new.

Acknowledge and move on. When I was very young, I saw this on a t-shirt or something, and I think it was a Powell Peralta Bones Brigade shirt. But, as memory tends to be a bit fuzzy, I can’t say for sure. This has always meant taking a beat, slowing down, and knowing that whatever is happening will pass.

Amor Fati. Love one’s fate. I like this reasonably famous stoic mantra better than some other, more well-known stoicisms. Take everything that happens to you as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Ryan Holiday talks about mantras.

Damned if you do, bored if you don’t. One of my devising and something I have lived by for many years. It’s an oldie but a goodie that I think about often. It’s a bit less practical as I’ve grown older, though. Heh.

Fall in love with the problem. A designer’s mantra, for sure. Not sure where I first heard this, but it’s come up a few times in my life.

The obstacle is the way. This comes from Ryan Holiday and a bit of a spin on Amor Fati. Every obstacle is an opportunity and can be leveraged for learning and growth.

Action begets action. I think of this as a “Just Do It” mantra. The first, best step to doing anything worth doing is to start.

Memento Mori. It’s a nice, if a bit maudlin, mantra, but the message there—to know you’re mortal, that life is short, and every moment could be one of your last—is beautiful.

I think there is a bit of a pattern here. All of the above sort of fit what I was thinking about. I want something positive and proactive, a mantra that works as an active principle in my life and inspires some agency and action. I also want something not limited to the challenging things in life.

Embrace, learn, and grow stronger.

I’m not all that excited about the phrasing here, but I couldn’t find a better way to say it without being too wordy. The gist is: welcome whatever comes each day, good or bad, embrace it as an opportunity, learn from it, and get better.

On practice and habits

“We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

~ Aristotle

I’ve been thinking about nature vs. nurture quite a bit. It’s always been interesting to me, as someone who has been striving—to various degrees of success—my whole adult life to learn more, challenge myself, and become a better person in almost every aspect of life. With some things, it’s come easily. With others, it can be so damn difficult. Why is that? This is something I explore a lot. Sometimes it just feels like we’re wired a certain way, and the resistance in changing that wiring can feel insurmountable.

But. BUT. Practice, especially daily or regular, has worked well for me despite the difficulty. We can, it turns out, go against what is naturally challenging and break through resistance a little bit at a time.

In addition to improvement, I’ve found other benefits to daily practice. For one, practice itself becomes easier if a regular habit is involved. Habit stacking—a method described by James Clear in his excellent book Atomic Habits by which you link habits together for better effect—works well to smooth out the bumps of resistance. But the most significant benefit I’m hoping to cultivate more in my life is leveraging practice to get into a flow state.

I’ll be journaling more about flow in the future, as it’s a big part of why I started this experiment in the first place. In a nutshell, flow is the delightful state you achieve when you’re so immersed in doing something that the rest of the world seems to fade into the background. And it’s key to doing great things.

So I hope to use practice and daily habit-building as an on-ramp toward a more productive and creative mindset. This has worked well for me in the past, and I suspect it will be one of the best tools I can use to find more focus and flow in 2023.

Heavy Covenant: 2021

2021 was a decent year overall, and a year of great change and fluctuation. He’s a little post to reflect and recap the year that was 2021.

The quick personal reflection

From the get-go 2021 was uneven, and it never really seemed to get stable. A lot of this was lingering anxiety, frustration, and mixed signals related to COVID. Sadly, 2022 is off to a similar start. But we can only control what we can control, and just as with 2021, we’ll do our best. For me, I saw a year with great strides at work, a stable personal life, progress towards some small nagging health issues, and quite a bit of creative growth. Yep, you can still grow and learn and improve, even after 50. :)

I had planned on writing a lot more here on this blog, but…yeah, I’m just not all that interested anymore. With anything “online” if I’m being honest. I’ve done a ton of writing, a fair bit of photography, making, etc. but sharing that crafting is just not a priority.

I hardly did anything related to social media this past year, and I think I’m just about done with it aside from the occasional peak and share. I hate to say it, but it’s just all the half-baked opinions I can’t deal with. So much is shared without even a second thought, and even the things I agree with I find annoying. So, yeah, not for me anymore. I do miss friends, and much of 2021 was pretty lonely, but the online interactions I used to get a little thrill from just frustrate me or feel half-hearted and shallow. So, yeah, miss me on all of that and hit me up IRL if you want.

2021 in my ears

The first song to make it to my 2021 rolling playlist on Spotify was “Heavy Covenant” by the ever-prolific The Hold Steady, who put out another terrific album in 2021. My favorite track off of which was probably, “Unpleasant Breakfast”—but the whole thing is great.

One of the best things 2021 had going for it was the return, albeit uneven, of live music. I didn’t see many shows and had more things canceled than I was able to attend, but I did get to revisit the band I saw just before the pandemic wrecked everything—IDLES—and it was amazing. Their new album is solid as well.

Overall 2021 was really great for new music, and I think I’ve got a lot of discoveries to point out. Let’s start with a song and video that brought me a ton of joy this year. “Scratchcard Lanyard” from Dry Cleaning. Their album, Strong Feelings, is stellar, but this video? Just watch. So good.

2021 was terrific for both newer discoveries and some old favorites that put out new stuff. I really loved new music from Quicksilver, AFI (really), Cloud Nothings, Clowns, Frank Carter, Maximo Park and so much more more.

A few new (to me) standouts, listed here in no particular order aside from the general chronologic I found them in.

First up, oh boy, Billy Nomates and Sleaford Mods, both of which were on regular and repeat pretty much all year. I’d never heard of either and spent a fair bit of time acquainting myself with their work.

Next up, the mellow funk of The Goon Sax. They’ve got an oddly compelling groove that strikes me as slightly depressing yet fun to listen to. They’re like random rain on a sunny day. It’s sort of weird, but I love it.

The first show I saw this year—the first one back—was a fabulously eclectic line up of fabulously eclectic bands headlined by The World Is A Terrible Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die who I thoroughly enjoyed and really want to see again. There was a lot to take in with every song, and the whole show was a little overwhelming. In a good way.

Speaking of overwhelming, the opener for that show was Bent Knee, and they were awesome. But also probably the loudest band I’ve seen in many years. You can’t really tell it from “Queer Gods” but, believe me, they almost knocked the house down.

Last I’ll mention two albums I listened to more than most and share cuts from them. First up is I won’t Care How You Remember Me by Tiger’s Jaw, a refined-yet-still-essentially-midwest-emo hit parade. Such a great album. Next was the latest from Delta Sleep, Old Soul, which helped me fill a gap left by Minus The Bear’s retirement.

Want more, check out the whole playlist on Spotify, there is a lot of great music in there, I promise.

2021 in Books

I read quite a few books this year. I think I got over sixty and they were a mix of old classics and new. As usual, most of them fall into the “speculative fiction” genres, but I did pick out a few biographies and read a decent share of books on writing and other non-fiction. Here’s a sampling of my favorites this year.

• The Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio. I’ve done a longer review of the first book in this epic series, Empire of Silence, but the gist? These are sneaky great and I think they’re classics in the making. They check all the boxes for me and are highly recommended if you’re into science fiction.

• The Storyteller by Dave Grohl. What can I say about this book? It’s fun. Dave Grohl is a terrific storyteller and has some terrific stories to tell. I loved it.

• Consider This by Chuck Palahnuik. Fun fact: I’ve never read one of his novels. This is kind of hilarious because this might be the best book on writing I’ve ever read. Sort of makes sense in a mad sort of way.

• The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. This damn book was so good.

• The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft. I’m not sure The Fall of Babel was the best book I’ve read this year, but this series is easily one of the best I’ve EVER read. It’s so unique in a variety of ways and it really stands out as something everyone should try.

2021 in TV, Movies and Games

I’m having a really hard time thinking of other media I enjoyed this year, with the exception of a few standouts. I didn’t watch many movies, didn’t have much time for gaming, and spent most of my TV time watching the Warriors play or picking up older “easy” shows like Lucifer and Doom Patrol. Here are the standouts.

• Arcane. For me, this was the best show of the year. I loved the artful animation and the story was fantastic as well. Loki and Wandavision were also favorites, so fun. I enjoyed Wheel of Time. I liked the books and, frankly, thought the changes were more than fine. Ted Lasso was solid, as was Succession and Mare of Easttown. I still need to catch the latest season of The Expanse and would like to check out Foundation.

• Dune was great. I’m not sure I saw much else that really stands out.

• Returnal (PS5). This game was way, way too hard for me, but I still managed to play the hell out of it. Fantastic concept and execution. I didn’t really get into much else…maybe just some Destiny 2 grind here and there, but just didn’t have much time for gaming this past year. Womp.

That’s all I have for 2021. I think it was a good year overall and I have high hopes for 2022. Let’s get after it!

Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio

File under: Fantasy Space Opera

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Empire of Silence is a brilliant debut, the first in the forebodingly named Sun Eater series. It has been described as The Name of The Wind meets Dune and that’s…a pretty good description actually. Maybe throw in a little Star Wars and some Red Rising and you’d get a pretty good picture of what you’re in for.

Empire of Silence works as both a traditional coming of age fantasy and an epic space opera. To be sure, it wears its influences on its sleeves, especially Dune, but also feels unique and, as the first outing for a young author especially, it’s fairly remarkable, but maybe not for everyone. If you’re looking for a top-down view of an epic universe, this isn’t it, but the story might go there in later volumes.

The backdrop is grand, but we only see the smallest corner of the universe and only through the eyes of Hadrian, the protagonist. Most of the scenes and the story itself are fairly intimate. If you’ve read The Name of The Wind you’ll get that comparison right away, the viewpoint is similarly structured as is the purple prose, which I grew to enjoy once I got used to it. I felt like it worked, both for me as a reader, and as a voice for a character representing an entire universe. It didn’t work all the time, and it might be fun to see these worlds from another’s point of view, but in the main, I thought it felt right.

I think what I liked most, though, was a bit surprising to me. I had gone in expecting to immerse myself in a universe sweeping drama but found myself more and more invested in Hadrian and his day-to-day. As the tale moved on I realized I could relate to him quite a bit. Not so much the epic struggles, but the more mundane elements within them and within him. He struggles with privilege, fitting in, simple things like creativity and feeling trapped by circumstance. He’s unable, for a variety of reasons, to unlock himself and find his best future and his purpose, which is hinted at throughout and I’m sure I’ll be revealed in later volumes as beyond epic. He’s not always likable, but he grew on me and by the end, I felt like I was pretty invested in what was going on with him and his friends.

If you pick this up and are at first put off by the structure, prose and awkwardness of its main character, I’d press you to stick with it. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but I’m very glad I kept going and I’m very excited to read future volumes.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

A magical, ephemeral mystery set in a house that contains an ocean.

File under: Magic and Mystery

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I was one of the few people I know who read Susanna Clarke’s first novel, "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell," and didn't absolutely love it. I'm not actually sure why, I just found it slow, almost tedious, despite the objectively brilliant prose and compelling setting. I think I need to try it again sometime.

This short novel, "Piranesi", however, I thoroughly enjoyed.

I don't want to speculate too much about the Meaning or Theme behind "Piranesi" or give away any details. I think going in, as I did, with very little idea of what to expect is probably best. It's a short but dense book, a magical mystery that unfolds slowly; it's sort of like piecing together a puzzle, but there is so much symbolism, allusion and allegory in there, that you might feel like you're constructing the pieces yourself. At the same time, it works well as a straight-forward portal fantasy/mystery, guiding the reader just enough so that the pieces, ephemeral as they feel at times, fit together in a perfectly imperfect way.

When you've finished, look up Giovanni Battista Piranesi and his imaginary prison engravings. Very cool stuff.

What Does a Lead Designer Even Do?

A quick look into the work of a Lead Designer on a digital product.

I've meant to write a bit more about a lead designer's role, and with my Leading Design talk coming up, I think it's time to share a bit of context. This quick post is for the folks who will be watching me deliver said talk and anyone interested in what it's like to be a leader on the individual contributor (IC) track.

So, as tricky as I think this is likely to be, I wanted to try to give you an idea of what I believe a "lead" or "staff" designer does and how that might be different to, say, a senior designer. In my mind, it's that Senior -> Lead jump that signals a fairly significant change in one's career. Probably as much, but in a different way, to someone moving from IC into management.

So what does the day-to-day of an IC leader look like? What kind of work does a Lead (or Staff) Designer do? How is it different, both in terms of IC and in terms of management? I'll try and give you a quick idea of what my workdays are like, as I think it might be fairly typical.

Well, as you might guess, it's a bit of a messy, mixed bag. Mostly of goodies, though.

How is IC different from management? And what’s the day-to-day?

A lead is usually the one on the hook for outcomes of larger streams of work or focus areas. There are as many ways it can go as there are designers who advance in their careers. One of the things I'll cover in my talk is how we might better accommodate the many varied paths and skillsets that come with growth. In my experience—and my primary focus—most of the day-to-day effort falls in the place where the buck ultimately stops when it comes to user's experience for the streams I'm working on.

In the past, this has been for a specific product. But it could be a specific feature, vertical or focus area, depending on a variety of factors. Currently, my purview is a program of work that runs cross-product and within several different cross-functional groups.

I'm working on metrics, insights, and data visualizations, but I'm not limited to a particular product or stream. I've been in this specific role since before it there was a program of work, and I'm, at the moment, the only designer in a leadership position that works directly for the program. As well, we don't yet have a manager role for the program, so in my leadership capacity, I do a lot of what a manager would do without all of the people management responsibilities. Nobody reports directly to me, but I lead a variety of people across streams of work.

I think this is a pretty common scenario for leads; you might be in a spot where you're a solo designer or working with folks from many teams, doing both the day-to-day design work and all the things a manager might do outside of the "people" aspect. I attend many meetings, do a lot of mentoring, and represent design to cross-functional team members.

So my weeks are often relatively evenly split between "leadership" things like alignment and strategy meetings on one side and tactical product design work on the other. I do anything and everything from design explorations to supporting research to pairing with developers to get things implemented.

The most significant difference between a Lead/Staff and a Senior is the circle of influence. A lead's influence and areas of responsibility are likely to be wider (more people) and deeper (more responsibility). That will also like grow as you get on in your career.

For those looking to take a step, making a move into leadership without going down the management track can be tricky, and it's something we need to work on as an industry. Growing as an IC can be very rewarding; it's just a bit of a tough spot for many in the industry right now. We've got the scale, I think many organizations have the business need, and we've got people wanting to make that leap. What we're missing is the structure and the systems to support everyone and their growth quite yet. It’s a tough problem. But we'll get there.

🗣️A quick shout-out and caveat around growth. Wilson Minor recently shared some brilliant thinking on this and has some terrific insight into the subject, as well as the role of an IC in general. If you've made it this far and are still with me, you should read the interview. One of the things he points out is that it should be ok to "just hold where you are."

I 100% agree with this and can relate. I think we put too much emphasis on constant and unrelenting growth and feel like, especially later in your career, sometimes the best value you can bring to your work is by settling in and just being really fucking good at what you do. We need to normalize and embrace just doing consistently good work.

If this tickled your brain or are interested in learning more about the shift into leadership on the IC track and how we might make that better, please, check out my talk if you can and/or follow this space for more on that subject.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

A sweet, thought-provoking tale about finding family in unlikely places.

File under: Cozy Magical Realism?

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This fucking book. :) It lives up to the hype. It truly is the sweetest damned book. You could stop here and read it if you want. You'll love it unless you're a monster. If you continue, I'll try and give some more impressions and reflections, but beware of small spoilers.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune is a little hard to review. It's a beautiful, well-written, and immensely thought-provoking book. And that's the problem. There are too many reasons to like this book, far too many to really capture in any meaningful way.

And what's it's about? Well, Amazon's blurb has the plot down as "Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He's tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world. Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light." That's accurate, but it's not really about all that. That's the plot, but what about the story? That's where Cerulean Sea really shines. It's the story of how Lunus finds his place and helps to bring a lot of light and love into world in the process.

While entertaining me and warming my heart with its easy, yet compelling story and charming characters, it's a book that made me think about a whole slew of different things.

It's about love, care, and intention. It's about lifelong learning, feeling like you don't fit in (more Linus than the kids, as he's ostensibly "normal"), positive reinforcement in teaching, diversity and acceptance. Recovery (from trauma and abuse but also more in general). It's about accepting responsibility for things that need work and creative problem-solving. About learning to love yourself and seeing the value within you that others see.

It's also got some sharp social commentary delivered with sweetness and wit. And some astute observations about systemic prejudice and bureaucracy, how it serves the status quo and the lengths people will do to maintain it, and the absurdity and pointlessness of it all.

Reading about the children's situation, the nearby villagers' attitudes, and the role of DICOMY, I thought a lot about parallels with real-world divisiveness (which probably wasn't intended by Klune) left me wondering why people NEED to have an "other" they can beat at life. Is that just part of our nature? And, if so, how can we evolve past it, as it clearly doesn't serve us anymore, doing much harm and no good as far as I can tell. Tribalism without accepting (or worse, actively working against) those that are different feels like a weakness to me.

The theme that hit me the hardest was parenthood and what it's like to be a parent to children who aren't yours. As someone learning to be a step-father to a group of kids who are all vastly different, as different as they are the same, it's...fascinating to reflect on the ways Linus changes from bureaucratic worker to father.

But these musings took a backseat to the hopeful, sweet messages about tolerance, acceptance, and family littered throughout. "In order to change the minds of the many, you have to first start with the minds of the few."

So, yeah, a lot is going on here, but don't let that stop you; it's an easy, delightful read and highly recommended.

Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny

I love this cover, but I’m not sure who the artist is. A googling for covers of this book is fun, as they’re all weird and awesome.

A classic blending of sci-fi and fantasy from a master of both.

File under: Classic sword and lazer

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Roger Zelazny, one of the masters of early sci-fi and fantasy, is one of the absolute best at cramming a ton of interesting world-building and compelling story into small packages. Jack of Shadows, which tackles both of those genres, is a fantastic example. It's a small, odd, jewel. Not Amber, but similar enough, both in the flaws and smooth edges. The writing is terrific if dated-feeling (it was first published in 1971 and it shows) with a brash style that I very much enjoy, despite the quirks and passages that are a bit hard to follow.

The story here is a bit strange, both epic and prosaic as shifts back and forth between Shadowjack's internal struggle and the saga of the world. It's about literal polar opposites, day and night, science and magic, winter and summer, but also an examination of the shadows that lay along the edges and in-between. Within Jack's world, they're all split, yet intertwined and evolving, much Jack himself changes as he struggles to understand the world, and himself.

Sounds like a lot, yeah? It is, and while Zelazny doesn't give you all the answers to the questions that arise along the way, he does a killer job of exploring complicated themes, while also packing in plenty of action and adventure. The result is a lot of fun.