Jimmy

A masterful sci-fi mystery story

Revisado: 03-08-25

I really enjoyed this novel! A thrilling detective story unspools marvelously in a rich sci-fi setting. The mystery and sci-fi elements work really well together, with interesting worldbuilding -people with special abilities and aliens subtly peering over the garden wall- tightly integrated into the mystery story. It also features an ensemble of likeable characters, and the audiobook narrator did an absolutely stellar job. I highly recommend it. When's the sequel coming out?

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Lovely narration by Michael Sheen

Revisado: 12-02-24

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, even though it was quite a bit darker than His Dark Materials in parts, and I'm not entirely sure that was completely necessary.

Michael Sheen did an amazing job with the narration. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Sheen reads Pullman's works in a very similar manner to Pullman's own charming narration, but with the added polish of a professional actor at the top of his craft. Perfect, no notes!

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A Second Age equivalent to the Silmarillion

Revisado: 11-24-22

First, I love the concept: a self-contained tale of the entire Second Age. This greatly improves the prior situation in which Tolkien's 2nd Age writings are scattered across many volumes. Now you can read the whole tale in one place. It's told as a single narrative rather than putting competing versions side by side, so you can read it as a story rather than as a mere history of Tolkien's creative process.

The book stitches together Tolkien's Second Age writings from many different volumes, sometimes spliced together within a single chapter, with editorial comments in-line providing context and connecting remarks for scaffolding the different passages. Purists will be glad to hear that there is no invented content or rewriting, only rearranging and commentary.

The overall approach, in which the writings are organized in "chapters" for each entry of the Tale of Years, is a good one. I like how relevant passages from the Lord of the Rings are also included, to connect the second age lore to the better known third age stories.

While acknowledging that this book was clearly a highly challenging editorial puzzle, some of the editing could have been improved. E.g., it gets off to a slightly rocky start, as the first Tale of Years-based chapter, "Foundation of the Grey Havens, and of Lindon" is a bit unfocused and has issues with flow. That chapter combines passages from the Appendices, the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and Letters, jumping between overviews and thematic discussions of the entire tale to descriptions of specific events. I love the ambition but it felt a bit scattershot. Soon after that, we have three chapters in a row that describe Numenor without advancing the plot. This is a bit dry and slow for the average reader, while not being essential for understanding the story (e.g., we didn't need this information to read essentially the same story in two chapters of the Silmarillion). These chapters would have been better as an appendix. Fortunately, the editing gets easier to do, and is correspondingly more successful, as the book goes on.

The book reads like it were a real-world non-fiction history book, collected from archaeological finds of stories and poems. That basically is what it is, apart from the non-fiction part, and the fact that all of the  writings were by just one person. Tolkien has been referred to as "the creative equivalent of a People" in reference to this phenomenon.

It truly is a Second Age equivalent to the Silmarillion. Like the Silmarillion, casual readers may find it too dry and too challenging for the uninitiated. I couldn't really recommend it to anyone who hadn't already read the Lord of the Rings. The movies and the Rings of Power show are not enough to foster the background knowledge and fan commitment to get through this. But the sort of person who loves the Silmarillion may love this as well.

The audiobook is narrated by Samuel West (for Tolkien) and the editor himself, Brian Sibley (for his own editorial remarks). Samuel West previously narrated some of the exact same content for Unfinished Tales. West does a pretty good job, if somewhat straightforward. His only real trick is his "mysterious voice" for any mysterious bit ("spooooooky!"), otherwise he reads everything the same. His dialogue work is improved over his Unfinished Tales rendition. His Elvish pronunciation is pretty good, for the most part. Unfortunately, Sibley butchers the pronunciation of the letter "i" in almost all Elvish words. I think he knows how to say it, as he occasionally gets it right, but old habits die hard.

The audiobook has the same problem as the Unfinished Tales one: all of the footnotes get read aloud, which breaks the flow and is really distracting and unnecessary. The dates of the reign of the Numenorean Kings and Queens are also read aloud and are pretty tedious in this format. So overall, the audiobook is ok, but given the aforementioned issues and the fact that the artwork is a big part of the attraction, as well as the beauty of the book, I'd recommend the hard copy over the audiobook if you were to pick only one.

So is the book for lore nerds or for casual readers? It walks a line between those two extremes. While I can't recommend it for casual fans (too dry, too slow, too confusing), it doesn't require you to be an uber lore expert, either. Its single narrative format and the editorial comments and footnotes make it accessible to someone who has read the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, and is looking for something to read next. For someone at that stage, I'd suggest they next either read this, the Silmarillion, or the Children of Hurin. It's ahead of Unfinished Tales in the reading order because it's cohesive rather than piecemeal.

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Masterful narration by Rosamund Pike

Revisado: 04-08-22

Rosamund Pike absolutely nailed the performance - perfect! Infinitely better than the other version.

The book is a very well executed high-fantasy story. I very much enjoyed having the rich lore and history of Robert Jordan's world unspool gradually as the story progresses. My only complaint is that he borrows too much from Tolkien. While pretty much all modern fantasy owes a debt to him, this is more than that. I keep recognizing characters, events, places, names, and words from the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion. It's almost like Jordan put a Tolkien jigsaw puzzle back together with the same pieces but in the wrong places. I will certainly keep reading the other books, though. With 15 odd books, hopefully when Jordan runs out of Tolkien cliches, he will be forced to be more completely original! I'm looking forward to finding out.

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Great narration, good story, takes concentration

Revisado: 01-01-22

An unusual science fiction story in which the protagonist must solve a series of science puzzles to save the world. It's a great what-if scenario about a global crisis of extraterrestrial origin.

Without giving anything away, it is about science, friendship, and politics. The science is very realistic, while the friendship and politics are not, but are charmingly optimistic enough that you won't mind too much. It's a great read/listen, though you have to be in the mood to concentrate. I found it more tiring to listen to than other sci-fi and fantasy novels I've listened to recently, including Dune, Leviathan Wakes, and even the Silmarillion.

The narration perfectly captures the protagonist's voice - masterfully done. The only downside is that when the narrator does accents, they are cringeworthy impressions. But that doesn't happen often and it's not a big deal.

If you want a compelling and technically solid sci fi story full of science and math, and you don't mind putting your brain to work, give it a listen. You'll be glad you did.

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Excellent narration

Revisado: 11-06-21

The narration was excellent. I like how he handles the rhythm and poetic flow, and his approach to the voices of each character. Then he goes on to read the poem in Old English - what a boss!

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Voice casting isn't an issue unless you let it be

Revisado: 09-19-21

When I was deciding whether to buy this audiobook, I got worried by all the negative reviews about the voice casting. I wrote my review here to address this concern.

Basically, the narrator does most of the characters' voices himself, but a cast of voice actors sometimes takes over for certain important scenes. Some people found this confusing, but I personally didn't find this an issue once I understood what was going on. There is no difficulty in understanding who is speaking, at least if you are paying attention.

I believe that it is always the same voice actors for each character, and they don't double up. Either the cast is doing all of the voices in a scene, or the narrator is doing all the voices, but this can suddenly switch mid-scene (usually when we get to the important bits). The narrator also switches between reading dialog in his own voice, and putting on an imitation of the character's voice. All internal monologue for all characters is read by the narrator in his own voice. So, there is an internal logic to the casting, but I can see how this might be jarring at first. For me personally, I quickly got used to it and it wasn't a big deal. I am glad that an ensemble cast was used for some of the voices. Although I wish the cast had done all of the dialogue, I greatly prefer this partial casting to just having the narrator read everything.

The narrator is very capable, though a bit dry at times. The voice acting cast are all fine, and their voices match the characters' ages, genders, and personalities. To sum up, I personally found the voice casting to be just fine, once I understood how the audiobook's voice casting logic worked. Your experience may differ, but hopefully you can now decide for yourself whether this is likely to be an issue for you.

Regarding the book, I think we all know that this is a classic. Enjoy! For extra fun, you could play a drinking game where you have to take a sip every time you hear of Paul's "Terrible Purpose." :)

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