Chapter 12 opens with a sandal nudging Pavek in the ribs and a voice saying “It’s morning.” He groans. His head is full of bad memories from the night before. He argued with Akashia about zarneeka, then parked himself next to the Moonracer’s honey-ale barrel and drank too much.
Let’s talk about the part of beekeeping that scares most people. Getting stung.
Chapter 12 of Backyard Farming: Keeping Honey Bees by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-453-7) covers bee stings, honey allergies, and a centuries-old practice called apitherapy. There is a lot more going on here than just “ouch.”
Book: Thieves’ World: Turning Points Editor: Lynn Abbey Story: “Apocalypse Noun” by Jeff Grubb
“Apocalypse Noun.” Two words that shouldn’t go together but absolutely do. Jeff Grubb gives us one of the most purely entertaining stories in this entire anthology. It’s got humor, action, a chase scene through the streets of Sanctuary, and a very dangerous linguist who just wants to be left alone with his books.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
Chapter 2 shifts us completely away from Kakzim and Codesh. We enter Urik itself, in the predawn hours, and meet one of the most unusual characters I’ve come across in fantasy fiction.
Chapter 11 is a quieter one. No poison. No midnight crises. Just Pavek grinding through druid lessons and slowly building a life at Quraite. But Abbey packs so much character detail into this chapter that it ends up doing more heavy lifting than the action scenes.
Beekeeping is not a set-it-and-forget-it hobby. What your bees need in January is completely different from what they need in July. Chapter 11 of Backyard Farming: Keeping Honey Bees by Kim Pezza walks through the entire year, season by season, so you know what to expect and when.
Book: Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey | Series: Dark Sun - Chronicles of Athas, Book 4 | ISBN: 0-7869-0181-0
The book opens with a bird’s-eye view. Literally. We see the city of Urik through the eyes of a soaring kes’trekel (a scaled bird native to Athas). The city looks like a giant sulfur growth rising from a green plain, its walls covered with murals of the same figure over and over: a powerful man with a lion’s head, bronze skin, black mane, and fierce yellow eyes that flash in the sunlight.
This chapter opens in the middle of the night with Akashia bolting out of her hut because Telhami summoned her in a dream. Not on purpose. Telhami was asleep and her subconscious worries reached out through the guardian’s magic and dragged Akashia out of bed. That’s how stressed the old woman is about Laq.
Book: Thieves’ World: Turning Points Editor: Lynn Abbey Series: Thieves’ World New Series, Book 1 Publisher: Tor Books, 2002
This is the chapter nobody wants to read but everybody needs to. Your bees have enemies. A lot of them.