Mouse and Dragon
May. 2nd, 2015 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearMouse and Dragon is the next (or so I thought) in the Liaden Universe series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.
When I started listening to it, most of the characters were already familiar to me, and I was intrigued by the fact that the story seemed to begin in the aftermath of a terribly exciting adventure. Rather than telling the story of the action-packed events that had apparently occurred just beforehand, it instead focused on the development of the relationship between the two characters most closely involved in those events. Most of the book was taken up with the tale of their love, and the obstacles to it that they had to overcome, and actually contained very little action at all.
I thought this was a really interesting approach to a book, and was impressed by the fact that the adventure part of the story did not need to be told on the page for its impact to be felt and its repercussions to be interesting. Thus, I enjoyed the vast majority of the story immensely.
Two things marred that enjoyment slightly. First, when I discovered that I had actually missed out an entire book in the series - which, of course, told the action-packed tale of how the two characters met. This didn't mean that the book I was listening to was any less good, just that I had deprived myself of a whole audiobook in the series, and had given the authors credit for an unusual approach to storytelling that wasn't actually true.
Secondly, and more importantly, after 90% of the book was done, there was suddenly a semi-tragic conclusion that felt very much tacked on the end, as it jumped five years into the future, revolved around a plot point that had previously not been mentioned, and tore apart the central family to no apparent purpose. It felt as though it was setting up events for the next book in the series, but the series now jumps about twenty years and starts dealing with the younger generation of characters, so it didn't seem to have any point to it at all.
Hey ho - overall, I enjoyed the book, and I still plan to listen to the rest - not least because I started out with one that takes place much later on and which ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, so I'm eager to get back to that point and move on to find out what happens next!
When I started listening to it, most of the characters were already familiar to me, and I was intrigued by the fact that the story seemed to begin in the aftermath of a terribly exciting adventure. Rather than telling the story of the action-packed events that had apparently occurred just beforehand, it instead focused on the development of the relationship between the two characters most closely involved in those events. Most of the book was taken up with the tale of their love, and the obstacles to it that they had to overcome, and actually contained very little action at all.
I thought this was a really interesting approach to a book, and was impressed by the fact that the adventure part of the story did not need to be told on the page for its impact to be felt and its repercussions to be interesting. Thus, I enjoyed the vast majority of the story immensely.
Two things marred that enjoyment slightly. First, when I discovered that I had actually missed out an entire book in the series - which, of course, told the action-packed tale of how the two characters met. This didn't mean that the book I was listening to was any less good, just that I had deprived myself of a whole audiobook in the series, and had given the authors credit for an unusual approach to storytelling that wasn't actually true.
Secondly, and more importantly, after 90% of the book was done, there was suddenly a semi-tragic conclusion that felt very much tacked on the end, as it jumped five years into the future, revolved around a plot point that had previously not been mentioned, and tore apart the central family to no apparent purpose. It felt as though it was setting up events for the next book in the series, but the series now jumps about twenty years and starts dealing with the younger generation of characters, so it didn't seem to have any point to it at all.
Hey ho - overall, I enjoyed the book, and I still plan to listen to the rest - not least because I started out with one that takes place much later on and which ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, so I'm eager to get back to that point and move on to find out what happens next!
