I don't have much to say about this that I didn't already say in my review for the paper book and my review for the first audiobook. It was nice knowing all the things Bren didn't know this time around, and man I really wanted him to get some rest and read his post-surgery care instructions. I had forgotten how much of the beginning of the book involved Bren dragging himself from one problem to another when all he desperately wanted to do was sleep.

I continued to enjoy Daniel Thomas May's narration. As in the first audiobook, I loved him as Bren and was a bit iffier about some of his atevi voices. At any rate, I have the next four books in audio form and am looking forward to listening to them.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

"'The paidhi is very gracious,' Damiri said, and offered her hand, expecting his: he gave it, perforce, compelled to look up to a straightforwardly curious stare, a very solid handclasp. 'Scandal, scandal, scandal. I think it's a very nice, a very honest face, myself, and my aunt can swallow her salacious and doubtless entirely envious suspicions. -You're so exquisitely polite, nand' paidhi.'

'I- hope to be, daja-ma.'

'I may never get my staff back. They're quite besotted.'

'I- hope I've done nothing improper, daja-ma.'

'Bren-paidhi. They dream nightly of you doing something improper. I've heard the reports.'

'Daja-ma-'"

The thought of Bren being an accidental atevi ladies' man makes me laugh every time.

"'You said they were respectable people.'

 

'I said they were scholarly. I didn't say they were respectable, nadi-ji.'"

This made me think of a couple professors I know. One of them once had a student publicly pray for her soul. I think she was teaching a Human Sexuality course at the time?

"'It's all quite instructive, paidhi-ji. I've learned who you contact, I've learned who are your associates and who are petulant and ill-disposed. I've learned that the paidhi considers the letters of ordinary citizens to be answered seriously. -So when I voted in the Guild, I also spoke about that, nand' paidhi. I'm not supposed to tell you that, but I did. Also Algini flew back from Malguri early, so he could vote on your behalf.'"

I just had a knee-jerk "Aww, Tano's kind of sweet" reaction, which just goes to show that I would probably end up dead or get someone killed if I were in Bren's place.

The narrator's shipfolk voices are weird, particularly the one for the captain. It sounds like he's deliberately speaking more carefully and drawing each word's sounds out just a tiny bit longer than normal. I finally realized what it reminds me of: really excellent text-to-speech software.