Books from 22/10/2006 to 13/6/2007

Voyage of the Boadicea
Voyage of the Raisonable

Voyage of the Leopard

The wombat stared him straight in the eye, drew a length of gold lace from its mouth, and then deliberately sucked it in again.

'Pass the word for Dr Maturin,' said the Captain, looking angrily at the wombat: and a moment later, 'Come now, Stephen, this is coming it pretty high: your brute is eating my hat.'

'So he is, too,' said Dr Maturin. 'But do not be so perturbed, Jack; it will do him no harm, at all. His digestive processes -,

At this point the wombat dropped the hat, shuffled rapidly across the deck and swarmed up into Dr Maturin's arms, peering at close range into his face with a look of deep affection.

No doubt a brilliant piece of science fiction in the 50s, this classic didn't really fullfill my expectations.

The stories describing the robotic troubleshooters, Donovan and Powell, I found pretty annoying. I didn't like the characters much, and I didn't like the way that the robots reacted to the inevitable conflicts of interest.

I did, however, like the last story. Benevolent and exponentially more intelligent super AIs running the planet to achieve their own abstract and inscrutable ideal for the human condition. I think mostly because it focused on the robot AIs as abstract concepts, rather than the characters interacting with them directly.

I loved so much about this book. It's beautiful, funny and fascinating characters entirely took me in. The historical setting was evocative, tragic and overwhelming, particularly it’s treatment of Mussolini and the invasion of Greece in World War Two.

I foresaw my current inarticulate attempts to do justice to this book and as a result found myself constantly wanting to write down sentences, phrases, whole chapters as the most eloquent demonstration of the books qualities.

I won’t go into why the ending to this book prevented it’s acclamation as my absolute favourite. That explanation would probably sound like a rant and certainly spoil the ending for those who haven’t read it.

Mostly as a result of my current obsession, this book took a long time to finish. Ultimately it was satisfying and I think Chad’s review eloquently sums up how I felt about the book in the end.

The end of my first voyage through the cannon is a melancholy one knowing that this wonderful series was cut short with the author's death.

In the course of mapping the books I have already started my second run through the series. The first of many I think.