Tag: Adventure

Perilous Times: A Novel by Thomas D. Lee

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Perilous Times: A Novel by Thomas D. Lee

This was, by far, the most imaginative novel I have read this year. This is speculative fiction at its very best. Perilous Times will keep you hooked from start to end.

The novel opens with a strange awakening. Kay, an Arthurian knight emerges from the earth, no longer a corpse, but alive and tasked with a mission to save Britain – only he has no clue what this means or what he has to do. Immediately, he becomes entangled with a young woman, Mariam, who is on her own mission: to rid the world of corrupt corporate leaders who are poisoning the world and leading its few remaining inhabitants closer to environmental ruin.

The novel is set in the near future, when our climate has been so altered that most of Britain is now underwater and our environment is a grey wreck. Small bands of people live in squatter-like conditions and even smaller bands of rebels have formed to bring order to the world.

Fracking and profit-greedy corporations run public operations. A magical cadre operates on the highest level of corruption and government, and they have a secret weapon: King Arthur and the immortal knights of his roundtable.

But… this all it seems? This is a world stripped of romance and chivalry, and the knights of this mythic time are no less human than those they are tasked to save.

I will leave my description there. If this has not intrigued you yet, well… Hmph.

The ending will also put you in a spiral.

Lee also delivers the story with tremendous skill, the right dollop of humor, and the perfect dry drip of British snark. This novel is a joy to read on multiple levels.

London 2010 – Portobello Street Market &tc.

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Traveling solo does something to the eyes. It opens them up to things you never noticed before because you were too busy paying attention to another person. In 2010 I got to visit London on my own, and since I didn’t have a lot of money, I spent a lot of time walking around and just looking at things through my camera. Mind you, it wasn’t a great camera either.

I have so many photos from the British Museum, and really I didn’t get to fully explore the whole place. It’s huge! What I loved about it – aside from the artifacts – was its interior architecture, my favorite part of which I captured here. It’s the “front” of the museum before you even get to the good stuff.
Spent time just walking around, taking the bus. Here I am crossing one of London’s bridges by foot.
Spent so much time walking back and forth across bridges… And of course, the buses fascinated me.
The food at Portobello Market was incredible. Here a vendor is selling paella and crusty bread.
The crowds were out in full force, tourists and locals alike it seemed like – even though it was a pretty cloudy, chilly day early on.
Everyone was lining up for this vendor.
Had to capture the sign, just because it’s a touristy thing to do. And well, that’s what I was.
This is one of my favorite pictures from walking around Portobello Street Market. There are tourists and locals and all kinds of people just looking, shopping, spending an afternoon here.

Cambodia 2013 – Angkor Complex & Phnom Penh

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I got the chance last year to visit one of the most amazing places on Earth: Cambodia and specifically, the ruins of Angkor! I took so many photos in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, my vacation there lasting about 2 weeks, so these photos are only a sampling of the photos I took. I’ve tried to caption them to give some context to the image.

I was at one of the temples at Angkor – I think it was Pre-Rup – just around sunset when the complex closes and tourists have to leave for the day. This girl was trying to make one last sale of the day, offering these post cards and bracelets to me for $1USD.
In Phnom Penh this is the equivalent of a taxi. Here’s a driver taking a nap during the mid-day heat. Often tourists engage a tuk-tuk for the day, agreeing with the driver on a price and the number of and which sites he will drive them to that day.
This was taken at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. These are the photos of many of the Khmer Rouge’s prisoners, those who lived and died at the school-turned-torture house. This was a really rough site to visit.
Within the Angkor complex there are lots of Khmer selling arts and crafts, including this one, an oil painting of a temple.
This is sunrise at Angkor Wat; that is, the main temple site named Angkor Wat. This one site is often mistaken for representing the entire complex, but it is actually just one of MANY temple and building sites. The thing to do for tourists is to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat, to get that Super Sunrise Shot. We came at the end of the rainy season so it was cloudy most of our days there. Not such a bad thing considering how hot Cambodia is.
My friend Eve and I rode the bus up north from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, and along the highway you could see people’s homes and shops.
PreRup temple has a pretty fantastic view from the top, overlooking the jungle, so tourists climb up and wait for sunset. We came on a cloudy day, so the view wasn’t as spectacular, but anthropologist that I am, I found the tourists just as mesmerizing in their behavior.