Book Review: WebMage by Kelly McCullough

Ravirn and his sidekick Melchoir lead us on a merry adventure in Kelly McCullough’s fantasy novel WebMage. I know if I had a family as vindictive and arrogant as Ravirn I would wish I were an orphan, but he continues to respect and live by the convoluted rules of this dysfunctional family.

Take the cyberpunk movement and add a dash of Greek mythology, shake well and you might approach an entertaining adventure – but you must add the genius of Mr. McCullough. I was enthralled with the relationship of Ravirn, the errant hero of this story, and Melchoir, his web construct familiar. He lives in a world where the web is not just a place for information-gathering and communication, but also a magical nexus, and a mode for travel, along with a place to live.

Most of us have been exposed to the Greek myths about the three Sisters of Fate and the aspect of Discordance and her family. Well, poor Ravirn is a minor member of the family with a talent for hacking and he loves to break into his family’s networks. His aunts see his talent as a boon to their plans for setting up a utopia they control, but he rebels. Thus the adventure begins and we are led on a fast-paced adventure through familiar and sometimes new territory.

I would heartily encourage anyone who reads to give WebMage a try and would bet that you won’t want to set it down.

Developers resources

When I first started in the world of the Internet I depended on a lot of on-line resources to educate myself , get tools and build a network of people to help me do the page building and programming I wanted to do. Some of these were corporate site like MSDN , CNET ,and others. Some were organization sites like W3C the World Wide Web Consortium and others.

Now that I am back out here I know that I have fallen behind. My wife referred me to Programmers Heaven which looks pretty good, but I could use your help in finding others. Please add comments with your favourite on-line resources and i will be glad to research them and write about them On Ed’s Thread. Thank you all in advance for your help

Ed’s reasoning

My wife has been trying to get me to start a Blog for about a year. Her Blog Joy Story has given her a lot of pleasure and has taken an increasing amount of effort. I have vacillated about doing a Blog wanting to have a firm idea of it’s topic  and structure before I started. Well the time has come.

First a little information abut me. I currently work as a shipping supervisor at Bear Creek Co. Before that I spent 7 years in the software industry, primarily as a Internet application consultant focused on JAVA application. I worked in the supply chain management and exchange areas of B to B e-commerce. When the bubble burst I went back to shipping and found that the skills and knowledge I had gained served me well as a user.

Obviously in the past 5 years I have fallen significantly behind the technology curve and have decided to use this Blog as a tool to catch up. I intend to use this forum to explore the new state of the technology, the state of the industry and the political decisions affecting them. As i study I will share the information here and I encourage all comment. I would especially appreciate leads to sources of information that I have not stumbled across myself.

I see this as a first step in developing athe network I used to have and look forward to the process and my interaction with you.

Hello world!

Welcome to Ed’s Thread. This is going to start slow but should pick up momentum soon.