Audible Knife of Dreams

So I'm currently driving around the US doing a favor for someone, and with that much driving I wanted an audiobook to play in the car. I grabbed the one for Knife of Dreams, since I couldn't make myself finish Crossroads of Twilight. Wanting to see the end of the series has me locked in, but if I had my choice I wouldn't be reading many of the connecting books.

Anyhow, the book is better than expected. Mr. Rigney must have a second job as an Instruction Manual writer somewhere, given his attention to detail and words wasted on meaningless (in the context of high fantasy) descriptions. I think he gets paid by the word too. The last 4 books could have been compressed into a half hour cartoon, and fell many a tree to be put into print.

There are more "good moments" than in the other recent books, and that's what I read for. A few powerful scenes amongst thousands of mundane and muddled ones is enough to keep me happy. Their utter absence from the last 4 books was what had my interest waning.

Halfway through the audio book, I find that I have been saying every single name incorrectly in my head when I read them. Not every one, but about 65% or so. There are a lot of characters, and a lot of names, and it seems that I "went the wrong way" every time. Taim is "Tah-eem" and not "Tame," but Bain == "Bane" and not "Bah-een." I guessed incorrectly on both accounts. Despite having an inconsistent interpretation of my own, I managed to be 0% correct instead of the expected 50.

I'm shocked at how different the characters seem with different names. I told my dad and he had a story of his own. When he was 7 he read some book where a prominent character was named Sebbasteen. He later learned that the name was actually Sebastian (that's how he read those letters at 7, apparently), and that changed the entire story for him.

Anyhow, that's that, and I'm going to sleep here in Bloomington, IL. It's 40 degrees out according to Google, and that is cold to me.