Good lord, what’s the world coming to? I actually finished a book for the first time in about 12 years.

It was Jennifer Fallon’s The Lion of Senet and it was quite good, after a bit of a slow start. It’s a relatively traditional fantasy, though its clear that the world was once populated by a more technologically sophisticated culture (possibly it was an earth colony at one time?). Anyway, there are twin suns so its normally never dark, but relatively recently there was an “Age of Shadows” when it not only got dark, but the planet went through a lot of stress (earthquakes and the like). Because of this, there was a big shift in political power, as well as a new religon forming. I don’t want to go into too many details because learning about all this is part of the fun of the book.

Anyway, thus far there’re no magic spells or dragons or anything. Its more a story about politics and people. Fallon has a nice way of introducing characters such that you have no idea if they’re ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’ for a long time, and often once you get it all figured out, things shift. If you liked Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire series (aka “Game of Thrones” series) then you’ll probably enjoy this book. It’s not as grandiose or as complex as Ice & Fire, but the struggles and obstacles are similar.

One word of warning, though. This is the first book in a trilogy and it kind of just stops with not much in the way of an ending. If you find yourself liking it, best to be read with volume II, Eye of the Labyrinth.

I wanted to promote a company I’m really liking…

The Teaching Company is a firm that takes college professors and records their lectures, then sells them in a variety of formats. So far all my experience is in the audio CD formats.

The base price is kind of a lot (about $200 for the audio CD version) but they rotate courses through sale prices when they come down to around $50. This is for 12 CDs, generally. 24 lectures.

So far I’ve finished:

King Arthur and Chivalry
Medieval Heroines in History and Legend

King Arthur and Chivalry was pretty good, especially the earlier lectures. When she (the professor is Bonnie Wheeler, who you may have seen in some A&E or Discovery Channel Arthurian shows) gets to de Troyes and Mallory it was more or less review since I was fairly familiar with those works. But early she talked about The Song of Roland and Silence and a few others that I’d never even heard of.

Medieval Heroines (same prof) was excellent. It looked at 4 women’s lives: Hildegard, Heloise (and her lover Abelard), Eleanor of Aquitaine and Joan of Arc. Aside from the latter, I knew -nothing- about any of these women, and I was riveted by the course. Really good stuff.

and I just started

Europe and the Wars of Religion (1500–1700)

I’m only in the first lecture of this one, but so far I think I’m going to like it a lot.

I have these on order:

Famous Romans
The History of the English Language
The Terror of History: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition

Anyway, if like me you spend a lot of time commuting, these are a nice change from audio books. Disk for disk, I think they’re cheaper than a typical audio book, too.

And if you’re a stay-at-home type, you can get the courses on DVD with visual aids and so forth, too.