Darren > Recent Status Updates

Really enjoying this so far. By the author of The Company, another fantastic book of early history of the lands and peoples which became Canada.

I'm listening to this, largely on dog walks right now, so I'm also looking at nature while listening. I still found myself thinking "Man, this is the longest intro/backstory to set up the narrative..." before realizing that is just how Shaara writes. It's essentially historical facts so far, in order. Not really a narrative.

Okay, this is a technical complaint more than anything, but this book must have been laid out in the early days of audiobooks or something. There are only six breaks, which mimic the novel. Part One ends after 30 minutes. Part Two? Oh that's 6 Hours long.... The number of times I've accidentally had to manually scroll through the timeline to find where I was is too many. That I did it so many times shows I'm in.

Finding Tash a little bit much.

I'm really enjoying this. I've loved Arthurian fiction forever, and still do. There was some large foreshadowing about Collum's birth. I'm thinking Fisher King?

Flagging a bit..

It's.... been a minute since I last read this. I've been wondering the whole time if I was just imagining the whole "Russia needs grain" aspect of the plot, since it's all been about oil, and doubting my memory, honestly. But it's starting to kick in again as a major factor in a possible war.

I read this book when I was a kid... 14 or 15. I haven't read it since, which is to say it's been a long time. I wish I had the F. Murray Abraham version, just because, but the book still pulls you in. Clancy in the 80s was a different beast than he became. Engineers and analysts are the heroes, as much or more as the soldiers. Still very rah rah rah, but immersive.

Not sure why I've never heard of this series before. The author is clearly a Sharpe fan (as I am). Stiger is a legionary captain with a scourged back, a "proper bastard" despite being nobly born. Except for those last four words, we're describing Richard Sharpe in a portal fantasy where he has been transported from the battlefields of Napoleonic Asia and Europe to an Imperial Rome where elves also.... roam? I love it

The thing is, I know a lot of conservation officers. They all hunt. Like, every one of them. And Ranger Ren fishes, but this animosity he has to all hunters, it rings really false.

I finished "The Sword in the Stone", which is the first third. Really enjoyed it. Read it aloud to my child, wo read the rest independently, so this is where I'm stopping.

One tiny thing keeps bothering me.

I've always read her name "Paksenarrion" as having a short a in the first syllable. So that her abbreviated nickname "Paks" would rhyme with:
packs
tacks
sacks
or even pax, meaning peace, in Latin. This narrator reads it with a short "o" sound, so that the shortened name is essentially "pox". No wordplay on this, and hard to believe she would choose this as a nickname for herself.

Already hooked.

I'm stopping here.

I'm about 100 pages in and not feeling it. Obviously a lot of people love this book. I'm just not sure why.

Been wanting to read this one for so long. No time at all but I'm going for it anyway.


"I am heavy and light tonight,
entangled and drifting, both
at once. The city
is so full of my father."

Tamasic

"'Nice eyes,' said Malati...
'Yes,' she agreed. 'But so what? I have nice eyes too, and one pair is enough.'

First time reading this since '93. Shocking to realize that I am now almost as old as Mrs. Rupa Mehra.

"Be like tryin' to find a needle in a crack house."

... can't.... stop....