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elizas's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.75
At this point, the lecture series is pretty dated, since it was published in 2008. It seems to have quite a lot of interesting material on 19th century up through and including Tolkien. However, there was a weird spin in the second to last lecture regarding the period when Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon changed Arthurian novels. He says the late 80s, but the book was an almost immediate success in 1983. This made me retrospectively distrustful of all his information.
libra17's review
3.0
If you're looking for a lecture about the influences on and influences of J. R. R. Tolkien, this is the lecture series for you. Fully half this lecture series - seven out of fourteen lectures - are explicitly about Tolkien and the other seven others all reference or are built around the axis of Tolkien, so they sound like either prequels or afterthoughts. It was interesting, don't get me wrong, but far from the more extensive exploration of fantasy literature implied by the title.
EDIT, because I originally forgot to add this: This is read by the author, not a professional narrator, and it shows. It's actually really annoying to listen the author swallow and catch his breath every couple of sentences.
EDIT, because I originally forgot to add this: This is read by the author, not a professional narrator, and it shows. It's actually really annoying to listen the author swallow and catch his breath every couple of sentences.
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