No new nails ...

 as unfortunately the person who does them has fallen sick again. I am off to France with 9 half grown out daisy and bee nails and one that is currently bare, as the gel came off in one piece a week ago. I'll be painting it in a contrasting colour before we catch the plane on Thursday; best I could do as green nail varnish is thin on the ground. How very not surprising.  The actual holiday is by Eurostar but we're flying from Glasgow to London on Thursday morning early, with what in theory is plenty of time to get to  St Pancras to check in on the train. We've never been on the Eurostar before so that will be a new experience and I'm looking forward to it. 

In the absence of exciting new nails I thought I would review the Waterstones Fantasy/Sci-Fi book of the month for March. No, I haven't read February's yet. Maybe when I get back. Meanwhile this was March's offering

I should perhaps  have liked this more than I did, but I was disappointed in it. It was a bit of a Boys Own Adventure Yarn albeit one with a middle aged female Muslim  (retired pirate) protagonist, rather than a white male public school educated explorer type. And it was set around places in the  Indian Ocean rather than in the 'dark heart of Africa' which was something a bit different too, and during the Crusades, although they take place off to the left as it were.  Think The Arabian Nights with the occasional reality check - the heroine has a bad knee for example which occasionally lets her down during her fantastical adventures, and a bit of 'real history thrown in as a sort of anchor. 

Chakraborty has been recommended to me before, for  her Daevabad series, but I never finished the first of those, so perhaps I should have realised that I wouldn't necessarily find this one particularly gripping either. I did like it enough to finish it though. It was obviously setting up for several sequels, but I won't be buying nay of those, as I'm not sufficiently invested in any of the characters.

So the current score is; January a hit, March a miss, February not yet started, April waiting for me to pick up in Glasgow and May just about to be announced. Hoping to be caught up before the June one comes out.