paulus

A confusing, depressing ramble of a book

Revisado: 03-22-25

The author cannot help putting these tedious, artificial speeches into the protagonist's diary and his dialogues. (My own journals have plenty of tedious, artificial stuff in them, so there it's realistic even if unreadable, but the dialogues veer off into the absurd.) They are, I suppose, snapshots of thought from the French Church in freefall in the early 20th century, full of vague stuff about "the social problem" and "the poor" and caught in a bizarre sentimentality and set of social expectations that I cannot parse. Frequently I seem expected to understand why a character has responded in some inexplicable way without explanation.

All of that said, the book does not lack for poignant and sharp insights on the tedium, confusion, and hypocrisy of modern life and the attempt to be Christian in a world that believes it is leaving Christianity, and certainly sacramental, ritual Christianity behind. It is remarkable, from almost a century later, how much of this does not look the same now that the process of secularization has gotten so close to completion. The world really does not have any answers. The objections that seemed so damning to faith then often look ridiculous to me now. I myself have lived long enough to see this change to some extent.

It is good to revisit this and force myself to experience it again (particularly in Lent, I suppose). I had already started it when my new spiritual director suggested it. But I doubt I will ever pick up this book again in any format.

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Come for Murderbot, stay for Murderbot

Revisado: 07-31-18

The intro establishing Murderbot is just fabulous. The ensuing story is kinda linear, with too much "Murderbot and The Leader knew what that meant / exactly what to do." The narrator disappears in a good way; nothing in the way he read any of the piece struck me as off at all.

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Too much and too little for the format

Revisado: 07-22-18

This was a painful and disappointing listen. There is too much to cram into this short novella and yet the time is not spent well...it gets very repetitive. Sort of actual setup would be required for me to actually care about the crisis event that starts the story...it's just the sketch of an Oh Wow Terrible Thing. The setting of the story is likewise a sketch that got loose from a zero order outline: the geography consists of the (Jeweled) Valley (at least it has a name), the Western Mountains, and the Eastern Seas. Perhaps the intention was to try to write some sort of meta-generic ur-story?

On the "too little" front, the characters are flat entities that basically go around willing themselves to be emotionless and do what they randomly (i.e. without thought, deliberation, decision between options) decide to be their duty. Line in, line out, this is probably the most painful aspect of the story. The suicide at the beginning seems to be entirely imposed by plot considerations without any hint of character motivation, and the lapidary's decision to cut off all her "vows" so as not to make noise while running away strains my suspension of disbelief way past the breaking point; it is likewise a heavy-handed necessity for where the character arc, such as it is, is intended to go. Kind of. I guess. Really, this story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so it's hard to say anything in particular is "necessary" to the plot. Then there's the "teenage girls with absolutely no competence at anything related to the plot linearly move forward without making anything that turns out to be a mistake" aspect.

The narrator has a beautiful voice. Her pitch and accent of sentences often don't seem consistent with the content of the sentence (disclaimer: I think this about many audiobook narrators, although I would estimate that this was more true of this performance than my average sample). I must admit to being quite annoyed by the way she delivers the word "strength" without any "g" sound.

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Keep Paul in the real world.

Revisado: 08-12-15

What about Paul Boehmer’s performance did you like?

He actually makes a decent effort to pronounce Slavic, etc. names properly, and his sense of drama meshes with the fin de siecle tone of Sinclair well. Having endured him reading the first Dragonlance trilogy, I was horrified to realize he was narrating this as well, then quite pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be listenable.

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Probably not the way to experience this classic.

Revisado: 04-14-15

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

This book is like a patchwork quilt where many of the squares (certain characters, Raistlyn in particular) are beautiful, intriguing, and appear to have been sewn with great talent and attention to detail. They are held together by mediocre stitching and interspersed with squares that are flat and unimaginative.

Would you recommend Dragons of Autumn Twilight to your friends? Why or why not?

As an aspiring fantasy author I'm glad I'm reading this series to see and digest the good parts and draw some cautionary lessons from the bad parts. As a straight reader, this may not be worth your time.

What didn’t you like about Paul Boehmer’s performance?

His emphases are in all the wrong places; that's the primary thing. He is perpetually slowing down and weighting some pointless word in, say, a descriptive introduction to a scene, like this (taken from Winter Night, but typical of both books): "...in the *grip*...of winter." I don't think he knows what cliches are. Also up there is his use of annoying accents for various characters, coupled with a fairly poor degree of consistency in their use.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I'm glad I'm finally reading it after all these years. There are very interesting characters and character relationships to digest in this series: Raistlyn-Carigwen [I have no idea how these are actually spelled], Riverwind-Goldmoon in this book. There are some ways in which this series handles verisimilitude of people with divergent outlooks and goals trying to cooperate very well.

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