Welcome to the Surway House

Let me preface this review by saying that I found no fault with this book, I did not enjoy it.

Some in the Walls by Teymour Shahabi follows Andrew Day as he survives his inaugeration as the Surway heir. Andrew is required to take on an alternate identity and lead a double life as both the master of the 'Surway House' and an ordinary private school student who is the ranger of the Surway House. This book contains many fancifal elements that are vaguely reminiscent of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, and in some ways the plot seems similar as well, but with higher stakes.

The actual writing style was slightly off-putting, although I could not give a clear reason why. It felt a bit as if it was an adult book written to be read to children.

In no way is this a bad book, nor one which I would tell others to steer clear of, but it didn't suit my personal tastes.

I received an advanced review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Sheep Adventures: Escape

One of my husband's friends came up for a visit recently, and we decided to do some escape rooms while he was here. My favorite escape room, (honestly, the only one I have been to) is Adventures in Time and Space in Champaign-Urbana. Don't worry, there are no real spoilers.

The first room we did was a fantasy adventure. We had to solve a variety of puzzles in order to acquire a magic wand and a book of spells with which to defeat the wizard. We finished with less than 2 minutes left.

The second escape room was the one that I was most excited about. It was a horror game with a creepy cabin in the woods. I pretty much volunteered to explore everything first and got to watch my husband put on torn up clown costume and perform a sacred ritual to purify the cabin and save the world. It was pretty amazing.

I absolutely love Adventures in Time in Space because their rooms are challenging, but not difficult. The puzzles make sense and the staff is incredibly friendly and helpful.

Don't Let Mommy Die

I think that one of the dangers of being an adult is that we forget what it’s like to be a child. All of our logic and teachings and understanding of the world have influenced our views. It’s more difficult to reach that place of innocence and wonder. The ability to experience the world through my own child’s eyes is a wonderful thing. We have had some spectacular misunderstandings.

One of the fun things about this younger generation is how commonplace cell phones and tablets are. My son knows that when a phone dies, you have to recharge its batteries. At some point, he concluded that humans have percentages the same way. Sound logic. But one day, when I got up after very little sleep, I told him that I was at one percent. He started desperately dragging me back to bed and telling my husband that I needed to get more sleep so I didn’t die.

Another day we were all going to a pathfinder game together, but I dropped out of the game because I hadn’t slept and needed to go to work later. So my son stayed home with me, and I asked him to protect the house from Kobolds while I slept. (We usually ask him to protect the house from dragons, but we had spent the whole weekend talking about kobolds because my husband was super excited about getting to play a kobold that day). I got up a few minutes later, because I had forgotten something, and found my son standing outside my door wringing his hands. I asked him what was wrong and he looked up at me and asked, “Do kobolds die people?”

It was terribly sweet and heartwrenching. I quickly assured him that they just make it difficult for people to sleep, and then asked you could make traps for them. So he set up traps at the doors to my bedroom.

I have the sweetest, most thoughtful child a mother could ask for. I only hope that he knows how much I love and appreciate him.