Reading Interphase: Book Two. I’m going n a mission to read all the SCE books.
Is this the next Book Club episode?
Yes. The Christopher Lee who played Saruman and read The Lord of the Rings once a year was hired to narrate the Hurin audiobook.Christopher Lee as in Count Dooku? Christopher Lee as in the old SNL "Death makes an apology" sketch?
I enjoyed Húrin a bit but the most interesting bit to me was the afterword about how the complete text was assembled! I found myself wishing someone would adapt it; because of the weird way it was assembled, some parts that should be important are just summarized, and some threads don't really pay off. A good adapter could expand and smooth out some of that stuff; I reckon it would make a good comic book miniseries.I am trying my first audiobook: The Children of Hurin by JRR and Christopher Tolkien, read by Christopher Lee. I generally do best with ebooks and paper books, but Tolkien's works lend themselves more readily to being read aloud than most others. Once I got past the family tree information at the start, I found myself really digging the book.
Book four of Temeraire was my most recent. I actually loved the boat trip; other than the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire, my favorite part of the series is how Novik so skilfully weaves dragons into nineteenth-century norms, and the boat trip really showed that off in great detail. For me, book four was the weakest of the ones I've read, and though I enjoyed book two more than you obviously are, I would say book three is better. (Book one is my favorite so far, but book three has some truly excellent sequences.)I'm throwing in the towel on Throne of Jade. It does not have the same charm as His Majesty's Dragon, and I am seeing a lot of reviewers saying that their boat trip is a tough slog.
That's fair. As a big Hornblower fan (and someone who studies the nineteenth-century too), the big appeal of the series is that I totally believe that if the nineteenth century had really had dragon transport ships going to China, it would have been exactly as depicted in Throne of Jade.I enjoyed His Majesty's Dragon despite 19th century norms. The relationship between man and dragon is the best part, but I am not terribly interested in the alt-history setting. Modern or future technology is what I prefer, especially in the medical areas.
I'm throwing in the towel on Throne of Jade. It does not have the same charm as His Majesty's Dragon, and I am seeing a lot of reviewers saying that their boat trip is a tough slog.
I really liked Black Powder War! It does have another long journey (overland this time, from China to Turkey), which I could see being offputting, though I did enjoy it. Once the characters get back to the western Europe, though, it becomes utterly gripping.After loving the first two Temeraire books--I imported the hardcovers from the UK, before Del Rey published the paperbacks--Throne of Jade defeated me utterly. And I never returned to the series.
Scratch all this. Throne of Jade was the second book. It was Black Powder War that bogged me down. I do not recall why. I only remember that the third book stopped me cold.
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