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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
For a collection of novellas, I enjoyed this quite a bit
I actually love Lord John. More than most Outlander characters. Gabaldon writes really great history but the epic romance can be a chore (bore!). A touch of mystery though... I really can't get enough
I <3 Lord John. I'm so excited to read The Scottish Prisoner!
This book is actually a collection of three Lord John novellas. Annoyingly, one of which - Lord John and the Hellfire Club - I had already purchased separately on Audible when I got this collection to listen to the other two stories contained within.
Lord John and the Hellfire Club
I listened to this last year - looking at my Goodreads it says it only took me two days, and I gave it a star rating of 2/5 and left no review. In looking at the synopsis to remind me of the story I can honestly say I can barely recall it, but I do remember being very unimpressed, both given how much I loved the Outlander series, and specifically the character of Lord John. I also recall that at the time I'd already bought another of the Lord John novellas, and wasn't greatly looking forward to reading it because of how I felt on listening to this one. And in fact, I didn't read the next in the series until February this year, and even then only gave that one 3/5, so I still wasn't greatly impressed then either.
I do find the Lord John series is very hit and miss. Some of the stories I find really well characterised and with gripping plots (Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade has been my favourite so far), and others I find very dull and find it very hard to connect the characters to those from the other books. Jamie in particular I always feel is hard to reconcile with the Jamie in the Outlander books, he always feels very different in the Lord John novels.
I'm not going to massively go into the plot of this (or the other two novellas in this book) but I will say I definitely enjoyed this one the least of the three. It centres on a murder and a secret club that John investigates, and I believe it was originally published simply as "Hellfire" in Past Poisons: An Ellis Peters Memorial Anthology of Historical Crime.
Diana was asked to write a piece for this Anthology of Historical Crime, and thinking that none of the main characters of Outlander would especially lend themselves to this kind of story, she opted to use the character of Lord John, as being that he's a military man, she could at least see him being embroiled in something of this nature - and being in a position to investigate said crimes too. She never intended for there to be a series of Lord John books at that time either, so maybe we can forgive her if the first story wasn't as good as the books she was actually intending to write?
I suspect one of the main reasons I think I didn't get on with this story was that I'd just come from listening to the Outlander books, read by the FANTASTIC Davina Porter, and while I'm not knocking Jeff Woodman (the narrator of the Lord John series), he's just a very different narrator, and his voice/narration style is rather an acquired taste. He does attempt different voices but these are variations on a theme, and his Lord John/Narrator voice is very clipped, old fashioned English, and while Davina also has quite a clipped English accent, there are certain words he says which grate on me a bit.
I can't really go into more detail than that, being that I don't really recall much about the story. If, like me, you have to start at the beginning with a series, just know, it does get better.
Lord John and the Succubus
I actually listened to this one in a day, and finished it back in April, but as I hadn't listened to the last story in the collection I waited to write my review until the whole book was finished. Probably unwise as I also can't remember much about this one, other than again I wasn't overly impressed with it.
This is another murder mystery for John to solve, this time in Prussia during the Seven Years War where John is serving as a liaison officer to an English regiment there. I only read it a month ago but already the details are far from fresh in my mind.
Again I think this is partially a dislike due to my not loving the narrator of these books, and partially that there is a lot of in-depth military descriptions, and in all honesty, as much as I love the Outlander series, when those books moved into the revolutionary war I often found myself zoning out. I'm just not big on war stuff - either in film/tv or books. It just doesn't interest me really.
After this I read Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade which is a full novel, and was my favourite so far of the Lord John series, so if you're reading them in order, you don't have long to wait for a decent story featuring Lord John, but I just feel that either the novella format doesn't work well for the character, or that maybe Diana struggles to write shorter format stories. She is after all famed for her Outlander novels which are quite the doorstops themselves.
Lord John and the Haunted Soldier
It was this story in the three that made me award this series of novellas 3/5 rather than 2/5. I liked this last tale, which follows on nicely from Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, which sees John injured at the end from an exploding canon on the battlefield. This story carries on from that, showing us Lord John's recovery from the surgery he had to remove shrapnel from his chest, the investigation into what happened with the canon and third thread whereby Lord John is asked to look for a missing woman and her child.
The plot held my attention much better than the other two stories did, and because it directly carried on from Brotherhood of the Blade it felt a lot less disjointed than the two stand-alone stories did.
I'm going to persevere with this series, but so far I'm two for two on the liked/disliked front, which isn't great odds!
Lord John and the Hellfire Club
I listened to this last year - looking at my Goodreads it says it only took me two days, and I gave it a star rating of 2/5 and left no review. In looking at the synopsis to remind me of the story I can honestly say I can barely recall it, but I do remember being very unimpressed, both given how much I loved the Outlander series, and specifically the character of Lord John. I also recall that at the time I'd already bought another of the Lord John novellas, and wasn't greatly looking forward to reading it because of how I felt on listening to this one. And in fact, I didn't read the next in the series until February this year, and even then only gave that one 3/5, so I still wasn't greatly impressed then either.
I do find the Lord John series is very hit and miss. Some of the stories I find really well characterised and with gripping plots (Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade has been my favourite so far), and others I find very dull and find it very hard to connect the characters to those from the other books. Jamie in particular I always feel is hard to reconcile with the Jamie in the Outlander books, he always feels very different in the Lord John novels.
I'm not going to massively go into the plot of this (or the other two novellas in this book) but I will say I definitely enjoyed this one the least of the three. It centres on a murder and a secret club that John investigates, and I believe it was originally published simply as "Hellfire" in Past Poisons: An Ellis Peters Memorial Anthology of Historical Crime.
Diana was asked to write a piece for this Anthology of Historical Crime, and thinking that none of the main characters of Outlander would especially lend themselves to this kind of story, she opted to use the character of Lord John, as being that he's a military man, she could at least see him being embroiled in something of this nature - and being in a position to investigate said crimes too. She never intended for there to be a series of Lord John books at that time either, so maybe we can forgive her if the first story wasn't as good as the books she was actually intending to write?
I suspect one of the main reasons I think I didn't get on with this story was that I'd just come from listening to the Outlander books, read by the FANTASTIC Davina Porter, and while I'm not knocking Jeff Woodman (the narrator of the Lord John series), he's just a very different narrator, and his voice/narration style is rather an acquired taste. He does attempt different voices but these are variations on a theme, and his Lord John/Narrator voice is very clipped, old fashioned English, and while Davina also has quite a clipped English accent, there are certain words he says which grate on me a bit.
I can't really go into more detail than that, being that I don't really recall much about the story. If, like me, you have to start at the beginning with a series, just know, it does get better.
Lord John and the Succubus
I actually listened to this one in a day, and finished it back in April, but as I hadn't listened to the last story in the collection I waited to write my review until the whole book was finished. Probably unwise as I also can't remember much about this one, other than again I wasn't overly impressed with it.
This is another murder mystery for John to solve, this time in Prussia during the Seven Years War where John is serving as a liaison officer to an English regiment there. I only read it a month ago but already the details are far from fresh in my mind.
Again I think this is partially a dislike due to my not loving the narrator of these books, and partially that there is a lot of in-depth military descriptions, and in all honesty, as much as I love the Outlander series, when those books moved into the revolutionary war I often found myself zoning out. I'm just not big on war stuff - either in film/tv or books. It just doesn't interest me really.
After this I read Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade which is a full novel, and was my favourite so far of the Lord John series, so if you're reading them in order, you don't have long to wait for a decent story featuring Lord John, but I just feel that either the novella format doesn't work well for the character, or that maybe Diana struggles to write shorter format stories. She is after all famed for her Outlander novels which are quite the doorstops themselves.
Lord John and the Haunted Soldier
It was this story in the three that made me award this series of novellas 3/5 rather than 2/5. I liked this last tale, which follows on nicely from Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, which sees John injured at the end from an exploding canon on the battlefield. This story carries on from that, showing us Lord John's recovery from the surgery he had to remove shrapnel from his chest, the investigation into what happened with the canon and third thread whereby Lord John is asked to look for a missing woman and her child.
The plot held my attention much better than the other two stories did, and because it directly carried on from Brotherhood of the Blade it felt a lot less disjointed than the two stand-alone stories did.
I'm going to persevere with this series, but so far I'm two for two on the liked/disliked front, which isn't great odds!
adventurous
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Another great short story giving us some background on Lord John.
I love it when a team comes together. I've been very much a fan of Diana Gabaldon for some time, and I like Lord John Grey very much. And as it turns out I utterly love Jeff Woodman's narration. He's wonderful. He has excellent timing, a marvelous gift for character, and, clearly, a sense of humor that suits Grey down to the ground. He reminds me a great deal of Simon Vance, actually, to the point that I double checked to make sure it wasn't he under a pseudonym. It wasn't. The only issue I have with the narration is a handful of repeated lines, where apparently an editor failed to delete out–takes. Odd.
I have to say, it had been a while since I met up with Lord John, and I had forgotten much of it. Honestly, it is a bit thick that bloody well everyone falls in love with Jamie Fraser.
Then again, he is Jamie Fraser, so...
I plan on using the word "absquatulating" as soon as conveniently possible. Possibly in conversation. Why have a reputation for weird without capitalizing on it?
- "Lord John and the Hellfire Club" felt familiar – oh, that's why. It's not a spectacular story – though part of that might have been me thinking "isn't this an awful lot like that other story, and what is going to happen to make this different?" When in fact (perils of the audiobook) it was the story I was thinking of, which I did not realize for some reason was part of this collection, and so of course nothing happened to make it different from, er, itself. I'm not even going to try to unravel that sentence.
- "Lord John and the Succubus" – That was different. Lord John was not in what I've felt to be his natural element here. The setting and the path of the story are unlike the other stories, but it's fun, and unpredictable.
- "Lord John and the Haunted Soldier" – Such beautiful story–telling. It was entirely natural, no chunks of information floating by, tension maintained throughout. Eerie, with the underlying certainty that there had to be some rational explanation … unless there wasn't… The emotions are honest, and the story leaves a mark. Excellent.
This right here is one of the hazards of becoming addicted to audiobooks. I think I could get the books and stories cheaper in ebook form, or even by trolling used bookstores or what–have–you. And I'm all about the cheaper. (I have no money.) But Audible offered this collection (in a sale), and I knew that Jeff Woodman was going to be one of those narrators in regards to whom money is (almost) no object. I want everything he's ever read. Oh dear.
I have to say, it had been a while since I met up with Lord John, and I had forgotten much of it. Honestly, it is a bit thick that bloody well everyone falls in love with Jamie Fraser.
Then again, he is Jamie Fraser, so...
I plan on using the word "absquatulating" as soon as conveniently possible. Possibly in conversation. Why have a reputation for weird without capitalizing on it?
- "Lord John and the Hellfire Club" felt familiar – oh, that's why. It's not a spectacular story – though part of that might have been me thinking "isn't this an awful lot like that other story, and what is going to happen to make this different?" When in fact (perils of the audiobook) it was the story I was thinking of, which I did not realize for some reason was part of this collection, and so of course nothing happened to make it different from, er, itself. I'm not even going to try to unravel that sentence.
- "Lord John and the Succubus" – That was different. Lord John was not in what I've felt to be his natural element here. The setting and the path of the story are unlike the other stories, but it's fun, and unpredictable.
- "Lord John and the Haunted Soldier" – Such beautiful story–telling. It was entirely natural, no chunks of information floating by, tension maintained throughout. Eerie, with the underlying certainty that there had to be some rational explanation … unless there wasn't… The emotions are honest, and the story leaves a mark. Excellent.
This right here is one of the hazards of becoming addicted to audiobooks. I think I could get the books and stories cheaper in ebook form, or even by trolling used bookstores or what–have–you. And I'm all about the cheaper. (I have no money.) But Audible offered this collection (in a sale), and I knew that Jeff Woodman was going to be one of those narrators in regards to whom money is (almost) no object. I want everything he's ever read. Oh dear.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot