Hippo in a wok

This sneaky Ikea hippo has hitched his way down from the Child Distraction Section into the Cookery! Now he's just waiting for someone to pick up a wok...
This post's theme word is paratenic, an adjective that describes an intermediate host which is not needed for the development of the parasite, but nonetheless serves to maintain the life cycle of the parasite. That poor paratenic hippo!

A Storm of Swords

Some Starks finally died! Whoa! But then, of course, they were magically revived into living-corpses by Rhollor, Lord of Light. The magic is really real, just in case any readers were hoping to lean more toward history than fantasy. Oh well. I really liked the scene in book 2 where some pyromancers (eyes roll) are trying to explain their mystical spells, and Tyrion translates "spell" as "clever trick." I liked that. It's gone now. Pyromancy works, so, yeah... those dragons in the title? The ice zombies? Those are real, I guess.

Plus now that magic is real, the (numerous) dead main characters can be revived under magical conditions. Revivification always exacts a costly toll in literature.


This post's theme word is quisle, "to betray, especially by collaborating with an enemy."