Temeraire

I read the first book a few months ago, and subsequently bought the rest for my Kindle. The 2nd in the series in likely the next thing I'll start reading.

 

the reason we enjoy fantasies is because they turn out as we want or expect them to. real life does not.

real life follows no moral, logical, reasonable or sensible guidelines of any kind which is another reason fantasy works so well for us. all fantasies have characters who are born of their forefathers who dutifully follow in their footsteps forever protecting the good family name.

there is distinct black and white, gray issues have no place here. the path, be it easy or vague is always easily recognized when found. it lends a predictability that we have very little of in our own lives.

 

daniel,

at the risk of creating the impression that I am trying to highjack your
thread, I feel compelled to say somethings about the Lord of the Rings
Trilogy.

I would strongly encourage you to reread the Trilogy at your leisure.
There is far more there than can be comprehended and appreciated by
the teen-age mind. As a beginning, the Trilogy can be likened to the
last three innings of the seventh game of a baseball "World Series"
competition. Any reasonably intelligent reader cannot help but ask the
questions:
* How did we get here?
* What happened before this story?
* Why does the action seem driven by "off stage" forces at critical
points?
* What are the relationships between the races and individuals of
Elves, Dwarfs, and Humans? -- and most certainly the Wizards!
* If, as Tolkien himself asserted, all this is not about totalitarianism,
what then is its essential message?

The only way to truly appreciate what happens in the Trilogy; front
and center, at the periphery, and off stage is to begin your reading
with The Silmarillion -- J.R.R.'s work edited by his son, Christopher
Tolkien. This book tells the some 6,000 year history of Middle Earth
and Numenor that precedes the Trilogy. Just as is said of sports, "you
can't tell the players without a program," this book gives all the details
of who done what ,when, why, where, and how, in the preceding eons.

To my mind though even The Silmarilliion needs some critical
comment. One of the best books I have found for this is The Road to
Middle Earth, by Tom Shippley. You might consider reading this as well
as prepatory material.

Finally, all of J.R.R. Tolkien's work has not been fully published yet,
even though it too contributes to the full story of Middle Earth and
Numenor. Christopher Tolkiens's collection and discussion of other of
J.R.R.'s writings, Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle Earth is not
an essential read, but it too helps complete the story.

If you should want to take this journey, gather the materials now. In this
way you can spend many pleasant and enriching evenings this fall and
winter as the winds howl and the snows settle ever deeper on the other
side of your frosted window panes.

 

granted, its long, but i dont personally know anyone who only read LOTR only one time. as for me, read it in the Air Force (night CQ duty... nothing better to do, TRUST ME ON THAT!!...also read the entire Conan series, Narnia, along with a few others)

but had read it before as a kid, but will admit it too months back then and really forgot a lot of it. most recently read it the summer before ROTK, total times read, 5

 

I have read, and re-read, hundreds of fantasy books. There are many I love, and many I've not only NOT RE-read, but could never finish. Among the ones I love are the Temeraire ones. I love the real, meticulously researched history. It's our REAL world, just with dragons. I have tried, over the years, to read The Lord of the Rings books. I just could never get into them. I enjoyed The Hobbit, but just did not like the others. And the movies bored me. I read fiction for entertainment. They didn't entertain me. Rokeby, if that makes me unintelligent, so be it. There are too many books out there for me to worry about one series I found to be overrated. Bottom line is, nothing I found in Tolkein's work made me care about Middle Earth. Somehow, Novik makes me care about how dragons could have skewed the Napoleonic wars. You pick your fantasies and I'll pick mine.

 

well daniel, cannot deny that i run with a somewhat unusual crowd... one person i went to see ROTK was wearing over $500 in "elven" jewelry including the Evenstar. just about everyone i knew had read the LOTR earlier in their lives but reread the books when the movies came out.

i guess if you were not part of that crowd, its hard to imagine what it was like. just as rabid as any Star Wars or Star Trek groupie, we were pretty extreme. i scheduled a day off work to see the ROTK premiere, watched it at midnite, stayed up all night at Denny's with about 10 people talking about it, then went and saw the 6 AM showing.

but, what can i say? was single at the time and it was a great time... walked out of the theater after the 2nd showing and it was an uncharacteristically bright sunny day (it was in December...or November...around in there) and it really seemed so surreal at the time to come back to modern times... it was like walking thru a time portal.

the feeling was probably from being up all night, but who cares?

 

the movies did not stray from the books at all. the movies left out HUGE parts of the story, but only because a true retelling of the trilogy would have been about a 30 hour movie instead of the 10 hours it became.

so much of the books was the fantastically complex imagery Tolkien was able to create in the reader's mind. his detailed descriptions of the elves' kingdom, the way he prepared a scene, the multitudes of languages, songs, etc., all that, as beautiful and compelling as it was, was ultimately the reason why it took so long to become a movie.

my admiration for Jackson who basically took on a project that was long considered extremely difficult to do, impossible to do well, and, well $2.8 Billion dollars later, the results are hard to argue with.

the only thing about the movies that did not come across well was the build up and the suspense of certain events. Tolkien was simply masterful at keeping the reader on the edge... i remember hating it when something was about to happen, then the next chapter switched to another part of the story. i would curse him, consider skipping the chapter and coming back to it later and so on, but the next thing i knew, i was just as invested on the next part.

so sure, the movie could have been better, but what in life couldnt?

 

Gee, too bad this is a thread about movies then, huh?...

 

:doh:

 

When I was in high school, college, and first "out on my own" --
I'd like to think of that time as more recent than it actually is --
I was an avid science fiction reader. I had limited funds, and there
were innumerable sci-fi books on the shelves, most of them rubbish.
My strategy to pre-screen them was to pick up only award winning
books. These would be the annual Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell prize
winners.

After choosing books from the resulting much shortened list, I was
generally satisfied with the books that I then bought. Here is a good
site for listings of the various award winning novels over the years:

Famous Science Fiction Authors - Criteria Indicating Fame

I won't bore you with the books and authors that I came to revere
and return to again and again.

I will be honest, one of my general rules was to never read a book
that prominently featured dragons in the cover art. Whether or not
the rule was good or bad I can't say. But before that I had gotten
burned too often with wholly unbelievable story lines, situations and
just bad science. The garbled stories just could not sustain a "willing
suspension of disbelief" for more than a dozen pages or so...
good money down a rat hole.

Based on the comments here, I am going to suspend my No Dragons
Rule and look into the Temeraire series.

On a somewhat tangential note, Newt Gingrich's trilogy, Gettysburg,
is in my opinion worth consideration if you are a Civil War or military
buff. It is speculative fiction that asks the question, What might have
been the outcome had the Confederacy won the Battle of Gettysburg.
To be safe, it is best to have a working understanding of why the actual
historical battle turned out the way it did. Even after Pickett's fateful
charge, it could have gone either way...
if only XX had done YY before ZZ.

I won't give away the story line, but I found the work well researched.
well written, and believable within the restraints, limitations of the times,
assets available to the combatants, and limitations due distances, and
modes of transportation and communication. Gingrich and his co-author
are scrupulous in adhering to historically accurate conventions of how
troops, cavalry, and artillery could be and were used by the two sides,
and the strategic nd tactical imperatives created by the logistics of
supplying large armies on the move.

A very good read.

 

daniel, i fully agree with you on the translation from sentences to screen. the best you can hope for is really acceptance that it tells s "similar" story (many movies based on books DO NOT ACCOMPLISH THIS)

in fact, if i know a movie is based on a book, i will read the book first. another travesty for the printed word was the movie version of "Prayer for Owen Meany" an excellent book, the movie was confusing. it simply told a different story.