Gnine

I genuinely can't believe I finished this BUT I DID.



The cover is .... there. It may need work.

Anyway - another Fated Mountain Lodge novella arrives for the holidays to answer the question everyone is asking: will the lodge's reservation system work any better this time than it has in the previous four books?

Download from Bookfunnel if you'd like a copy! It comes out on Dec. 7, so the link will stop working then.

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/lzcdk6pga8

Under the cut: a brief history of how this book came to be written.

( Click for details )

I read this book over the last couple of days on sheron's recommendation as bedtime reading, which backfired occasionally because I couldn't actually fall asleep due to needing to know what happened next. I had already read a couple of MacIntyre's WWII books back when I went through my phase of Read All The WWII Spy Things that I got into via Agent Carter, and I had bought this and a couple of other MacIntyre books at some point that I never read. Anyway, sheron has been reading this recently and sending me excerpts. Example:

In the West, of course, blood is donated by members of the public. The only payment is a cookie, and sometimes a cup of juice. The Kremlin, however, assuming that capitalism penetrated every aspect of Western life, believed that a “blood bank” was, in fact, a bank, where blood could be bought and sold. No one in the KGB outstations dared to draw attention to this elemental misunderstanding. In a craven and hierarchical organization, the only thing more dangerous than revealing your own ignorance is to draw attention to the stupidity of the boss.

So obviously I had to read this book.

This is the story of Oleg Gordievsky, KGB station chief and spy for the British, but it's also about the waning days of the Cold War in the late 1970s through the mid-80s. I found it fascinating on that level alone, because the world I grew up in (born in 1976) was obviously very heavily shaped by the events of this time period, but it would be a few years yet before I was old enough to pay attention to the news or politics. So it's truly fascinating to see this as a window into events that created the life-shaping politics I actually did follow as a teen and young adult. And it's also simply a fast-paced, engaging, very readable story of relatable people getting caught up in world events and life-threatening danger. If parts of this were a spy novel, it would be almost too fantastic to be believed.

( Spoilers for actual historical events, so not that spoilery )

Biggles Holiday Airdrop signups close on the evening of Fri, Nov 21 (tomorrow). Countdown here!

2025 AO3 Collection | Signup Page | Tagset

I'm excited by the lineup we have so far! So many different ships and characters.