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World of Warcraft: Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War
World of Warcraft: Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War
World of Warcraft: Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War
Audiobook12 hours

World of Warcraft: Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War

Written by Christie Golden

Narrated by Justine Eyre

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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About this audiobook

The New York Times bestselling author of The Shattering and Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects delivers a sensational tie-in to the newest World of Warcraft game expansion.

The ashes of the Cataclysm have settled across Azeroth’s disparate kingdoms. As the broken world recovers from the disaster, the renowned sorceress Lady Jaina Proudmoore continues her long struggle to mend relations between the Horde and the Alliance. Yet of late, escalating tensions have pushed the two factions closer to open war, threatening to destroy what little stability remains in the . . . Dark news arrives in Jaina’s beloved city, Theramore. One of the blue dragonflight’s most powerful artifacts—the Focusing Iris—has been stolen. To unravel the item’s mysterious whereabouts, Jaina works with the former blue Dragon Aspect Kalecgos. The two brilliant heroes forge an unlikely bond during their investigation, but another disastrous turn of events looms on the horizon. . . . Garrosh Hellscream is mustering the Horde’s armies for an all-out invasion of Theramore. Despite mounting dissent within his faction, the brazen warchief aims to usher in a new era of Horde domination. His thirst for conquest leads him to take brutal measures against anyone who dares question his leadership. Alliance forces converge on Theramore to repel the Horde onslaught, but the brave defenders are unprepared for the true scope of Garrosh’s cunning and deceptive strategy. His attack will irrevocably transform Jaina, engulfing the ardent peacekeeper in the chaotic and all-consuming . . .
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 28, 2012
ISBN9781442355422
Author

Christie Golden

New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Christie Golden has written more than forty novels and several short stories in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Among her many projects are over a dozen Star Trek novels and several original fantasy novels. An avid player of World of Warcraft, she has written two manga short stories and several novels in that world. Golden lives in Tennessee. She welcomes visitors to her website: ChristieGolden.com.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A Jamesian novel about Henry James - what could be better? Toibin does an excellent job recreating the tragic past and tightly controlled feelings of the author. He opens in 1895, with James' youthful successes behind him and his more challenging later novels ahead. Having read many of his books, I recognized the influences that Toibin subtly or overtly mentioned, but a knowledge of James is not necessary to enjoy the author's masterful prose and characterizations. At the time, James was working on his play, Guy Domville, which turned out to be a spectacular failure. Throughout the novel, Henry is always haunted by memories - of his dead parents and sister, a lost opportunity with his friend Paul. Eventually, the recollection of his humiliation on stage joined those as something that had to be controlled and kept away.Toibin writes about James' sister Alice. Fiercely intelligent and individualistic, she also had a bevy of illnesses and problems, finally dying young. She was always a little different. She found a close friend in Miss Loring and they develop a relationship similar to the one depicted in James' novel The Bostonians. Alice also served as inspiration for Henry's novel The Princess Casamassima.The Wilde trial captivated James, as it did everyone else. His fears over homosexuality lead him to remember a night in the same bed with Oliver Wendell Holmes, which in turn brings back memories of when the pair spent much time with James' cousin Minny Temple. Minny had provided material for some of Henry's writings and her death hit him hard - more so when Holmes later accused him of contributing to her death. She'd wanted Henry to take her to Italy, but he remained oblivious to her hints. The obvious inspiration for Milly Theale, the heroine of The Wings of the Dove, when she'd turned to the wall upon learning he had abandoned her.His emotional avoidance is shown even in his younger years, when he remained only an observer as his brothers went off to fight in the Civil War. In the present, he has to repress the discomfort he feels around his servants, the Smiths, whose shoddy service becomes increasingly worse. James' parallel memories are of the discomfort he feels in his relationship with his friend, Constance Fenimore Woolson. He couldn't tolerate the idea of his family believing there was a romantic relationship there or her being too close. His desertion this time wasn't youthful carelessness, as in Minny's case, but his deep-seated neuroticism and emotional avoidance. He can't easily disperse the oblique accusations and his own guilt towards her.Almost all of James' relationships lead to nothing, intentionally so. Toibin creates a realistic portrait of an artist who reluctantly accepts his painful, solitary life because he can never stay in society for long either. He feels every sting - from a sly insult at his Irish background to multiple deaths - acutely, so he diligently works to avoid the situations. One scene had Henry's niece reading Portrait of a Lady and upset at the ending - she got to ask him why he wrote what he did. That would be sweet!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a masterful book about a masterful subject ? Henry James and his writing. The book opens with an imagined nighttime awakening from which James thinks about his day and how it might go. In a few paragraphs, he condenses the tone and content that he then fills out and details in the rest of the book. Though the book is called The Master, the title could almost be ironic. As portrayed by T?ib?n, James is uncertain, often uncomprehending, self-doubting and self-deceiving. He misreads his support in London after his first and only play opens and fails on its first night, then flees to Ireland rather than face his friends. He allows a domineering acquaintance to push him into furnishing his home with items he doesn?t really want. He allows his servants to appear drunk and slovenly in front of guests rather than confront them. Most disastrously, he allows his closest friend, a woman, to fall in love with him, but rather than talk about it, he avoids her, leading or contributing to her recent suicide. (Following which, he manages to have himself appointed her literary executor, and secretly burns any compromising correspondence with her.) He has strong homoerotic feelings without even acknowledging them for what they are (understandable in the context of the times, when Oscar Wilde, whom James thinks shallow and clumsy, faces his own disgrace and imprisonment). Far from being a master, this view of James has him as a diffident, ineffectual stumbler.Yet he observes and interprets what he sees around him as the basis for a lifetime of deeply sensitive, insightful literature. In spite of the frequent misunderstanding of his readers, his family and friends, he stays fixed to his conception of his writing. He thinks about style, themes, content for a variety of stories in the course of the novel (and it?s fascinating to see where well known stories like The Turn of the Screw come from ? curious also to find out how much ghosts, both spectral and metaphorical, fit into his life and his writing). He pulls themes from his own complex relationships with his family and friends, and from what he understands, or is willing to admit, about them. Underlying much of the characterization of James is his repression of his homosexuality, which leads to his need to control and hide so much of his life from others and from himself. And yet, while struggling to repress, or at least control, his life, he somehow has enough awareness to use his observations as fodder for his stories. He is, in fact, a master in his writing. It is fitting that the book ends with James explaining to a friend that ?the moral ? is that life is a mystery and that only sentences are beautiful.? After which, he sends his friends home and returns to his writing.T?ib?n himself writes with a control and insight that seem equal to James?. As a skilled writer himself, and author of a previous book on James, I can see his fascination with the details of James? life and writing process. He uses James?s own style, complex and internal, on James himself, a kind of homage to a literary master. He traces the development of James? thinking, his development of story ideas, his resentment of other people?s misinformed views of his writing and his appreciation of the few who do understand him. In James? interior monologues, T?ib?n traces the shifting relationships and sense of control, just as James would do in his own writing. I wonder how much of this is T?ib?n?s imagining of the literary process taken from his own insight as a masterful writer, and how much comes from his research into James? thinking from James? letters and other personal writing. I think it must be at least as much the former as the latter, for this is a work of imagination, not simply a knitting together of various stories from James. And, as always in fictions about real people, the stories are about the author?s characters, not the people they are modeled on.In the end, the book gives me an insight, not only into James? life, but also into his stories. It makes me want to read more James. But it also introduces me to T?ib?n as a skilled novelist that I want to read more.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In contemporary 21st c. writing, it is a High Crime not to acknowledge that the historical, such as an actual subject, the novelist Henry James of PORTRAIT OF A LADY, is separated from fiction, such as THE MASTER by COLM TOIBIN, for "never the twain meets." Now we know from Toibin that the art of writing, as a matter of survival, in the truth-telling business of every day life, like that of high science, must follow other rules, which change, for the survival of the species involved. The realization of each and both -- literature and biographical/auto-biographical history -- together consists of tissue thin sensitivities of the physical and the nonphysical (non-material to our five senses but not to the sixth). Nevertheless, independantly and together, the knowable through scientfic observations, testings, and theories,that have independently been come together is a rather fresh if not new kind of literary and historical fact of life in Toibin?s hands. THE MASTER, as Colm Toibin crafts the novel, is a literary testament to Sir Cyril Burt?s late 19th and early 20th c. understanding of the unseen forces of physics and psychology (conceived then as science and meta-physics (suggesting a kind of factual voodooism?) such as "the Ghost in the Machine" (as Arthur Koestler reported it in his modern scientific physics, chemistry theory and experimental historyical account, THE ROOTS OF COINCIDENCE (1972.). Actuality, by common sense perception of the world as subject, like the human reflections upon the nature of Nature, of which is Henry James? studied perception of the people around him is merely one instance of the case -- is more lie than truth, but far from worthless. When literary characters are presented in their psychological forms -- Henry James in a cocoon of stolid, formidable disciplined New England characteristic reserve and his family memories in his and Alice?s and othes? lettered memories, and through the intervention of author Toibin?s researched information long after, we onlookers have very little to say for we are captives of the traced memories that weave in, out, through, over and everywhere of the footnoted histories and our impressions of the subject and his world. So we are left to register responses rather than review Toibin?s Book. it is experienced phenomena on multiple levels, spaces, and times more than as categorical literary fare, like a straightforward narrative. We are given a fiction that is also non-fiction, true or false and both. What falls between and around their connections is also tenable, yet firmly not dismissable because unclassified with certainty. It is not phantasy, not dream, not art, not science but a groping for what is there, if clear as well as confusing in parts. Because the subject, Henry James, known to the author Toibin in his own special relationship to James, is unknown to us except as some other person, independently, we think, of what Toibin brings to us as his experience of Henry James, Fact And Fiction.Everything Toibin says is Possible as meaningful idea and experience. The verified facts, like those of his birth and non-marriage, are trite. But the verified facts of his time, like the end of the 19th c. and first part of the 20th, are not. The context of Henry James? social life, from sheer repetition of other lives like his having been Possibly gay and suffering, is temptingly verifiable; yet we cannot actually affirm that categorically. Toibin combines the Possible with the verified trite to the suspected Implied or the understandably Inferred --in a way that makes us hold our opinion or judgement because they are of no consequence. Delectably, they are real. The surprise gives pleasure because honest, among other things that might be said about it -- half truth, seductively, merely, but enough not to be a abandoned. There are few enough pleasures in life, proferred by art, literary being only one, and not second to biographical and auto-biographical, one is tempted to dismiss criticisms that warn because what is at the end of the rainbow is the dreamed pot of gold. Possibly.So we are seductively led to infer (that is. short of believing? but not quite) that Henry James was closer to the women in his life than to the men. For he, too, like the women of the time, suffered the personal outrages that the assumption of male superiority clamped down upon them -- his sister Alice, for example, repressed from being the unseen person in the family of four boys; his cousin Minny, because, like Alice, she is presumed to be "inferior" to all males, regardless of her demonstrated greater intelligence than theirs; the noble born woman friend whose husband, a British military officer of somewhat high rank, has in her employ a soldier-manservant named Hammond, perfect to the sensibilities of the famous writer Henry James himself, one and contentiously the same in life and in fiction, a male/female/male -- the only true gender, as the biological African EVE of modern anthropology proposes . . . .Toibin masterfully binds one to his artful telling so that there is little resistance to the marriage of fiction and history but rather a willingly acquiescense to both as not only inseparable but the only true Possible, in his depiction of Henry James, the preserver of virtues the chiefest of which is his integrity of person, i.e. his body, mind, and spirit, which was/is gay. Possibly. All fiction owes its truth-telling to the reality that is supposedly non-fiction. But the body is not merely skin, bones, organs, in movement in time, we do know, but how do we account for what we are not sure we know or do not know of half-knowing states and conditions? Henry James is less of an enigma than before Toibin begins his artful exposition of the inside realizations of the man as he encounters different persons (Toibin?s Possibles) -- it is a kind of make-believe truth-like telling biography, helped by autobiographical elements like James? letters to and from relatives and friends. We are led to encounter forms of a famous writer at his sparest moments of responding to persons intent on insulting him (like Mr. Webster, the high government official that he is introduced to at a British military officer?s party in Ireland who reveals he knows the James? Irish origins as so humble, they migrated) or connecting with him without a single word uttered (Hammond, the soldier-manservant) or his brother William, who, with him, the last of the surviving James Senior family gives advice that younger brother Henry finally rejects for advice of his own devising. In that, he is a free person, finally, coldly rational and (at last) resentful -- in self-defense. In writing. Which is a kind of silence, unspoken but plainly indicative of the person Henry James? displeasure, manifest, for certain, for once.An LT viewer named V.V.Harding thought the fictionalized Henry "tame" considering his A London Life. I have not read a London Life. I would say Henry James is never tame, not even by comparison with other writings, and Toibin never mistakes James? long suffering withholding of committed responses for meaning nothing at all. He shows James at his most deeply troubled -- a descendant of the Puritans, famous for their formidable coldness in society, developed out of bitter, long winters, originally in (as they conceived) hostile Indian territory, and a life build out of a wilderness, far beyond anything that their former civilized life had ever allowed as Possible . . .which fact did not, notwithstanding, prevent them from converting the Indians even if they did not, as the pilgrims, amicably befriend them. James? sense of person was carried by an indomitable Will, and formidable Harvard education, at the time represented by Ralph Waldo Emerson, his outer ego Henry Thoreau?s show casing the simple life in less than simple Walden Pond, not far from bustling Concord, Oliver Wendell Holmes . . .for which background there had already risen in a kind of simple majestic purity of voice a Nathaniel Hawthorne and sensitive Longfellow . . . . Henry James was gifted, rightly by culture, also through the impenetrable self-righteousness of the tight-lipped migrated religious Englishman who loved freedom to worship so much his love turned to a passion for political justice that settled an indomitable will known to the world since as American Puritan. Toibin, who is Irish, as James, both of whom knew suffering subjections by demand of Powers greater than they, understands the temperament: its signature is Silence with a Will to Freedom to life as their need demanded, despite ridiculed, as by the official Webster, or charmed and encouraged, as by calm, focussed, friendly soldier-manservant Hammond.Toibin introduces a new genre: the combination of fiction, biography, autobiography, and history, often enough inseparable in the narrative of Henry James, Person who is Writer. He does so more openly than the Russian Bulgakov of THE MASTER AND MARGARITA. But James is very much an American at his best, as Toibin proves is Possible to understand, as Bulgakov, infinitely more repressed and utterly oppressed as well also shows of a later succeeding generation from two very different national and personal histories about which we gain an inside viewing late, but grateful.THE MASTER was short-listed title for the Booker Prize. In my mind, it is a Booker Prize winner,excellences being always, to me, incomparable. Only the unreality of practicality presumes that art that is excellent is comparable -- which no one believes, as I, emphatically, do not.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Playing the game this storyline was so well written that i had to read the book too.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This fictionalized biography of Henry James was disappointing & dull. It dealt too much with really depressing facets of his internal life.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Enjoyed reading this, although as a newcomer to Henry James and his life, I had to approach this as a work concerning a fictional character to avoid feeling left behind. The tone and style of Toibin's writing is impressive and understated.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Deliciously detailed and slow this is almost more biography than novel. As baroque and subtle as James but perhaps more honest.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A complex man is portrayed in a complex narrative. Toibin takes us inside the mind of Henry James. Through flashbacks, we grow to understand how Henry James's childhood in America, his experiences during the Civil War, and his family relationships shaped his life and led him to live in England and write some of the most influential novels of the era. Some of my favorite passages were the ones that shed light on James's writing process and helped us understand the multiple influences on a novelist. This is incredibly well-written. I wish I had read it at a calmer time. I felt like it deserved even more attention.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A wonderful book, especially for people who are as fascinated with Henry James the man as much as they are his stories. A touching novel about this complex, lonely and brilliant man.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A fictionalized biography of Henry James, written I think in the HJ style. It's like James' life made into one of his novels. Lovely calm ruminative soothing writing; made me want to reread Portrait of a Lady.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I just read all my Henry James books this year so this was a natural follow-up. Many, many scenes from the novels and stories are echoed in this book and it was fun to try to identify them. However, while I found the book well-written as far as style goes, in my opinion it suffers from the fact that the lives of real people don?t typically follow a narrative arc that translates well to a novel. But overall, a nice alternative to a traditional biography.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a beautifully written book - the sentences roll over you as you are reading them. And it's a sensitive examination of the way that James' life was echoed in his work, and the way his desire to observe, and write, led to a certain disengagement from the world - and made him let down the people who loved him. However, it seemed a little repetitive - the same events recur, with different protagonists. Perhaps this is meant to be cyclical - but James' approach doesn't really change, despite his guilt or shame about the events that have gone before. I agree with the comments of one of the reviewers below, that it ended up reading like an exercise in style rather than anything with real feeling.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautifully written fictional account of the life of Henry James. One of the best books I've read in the past few years.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This well-researched but still speculative contemplation of the life and writings of Henry James was fascinating to me. Toibin meticulously painted a portrait of a reflective man who relished his undisturbed life. The author integrated the influences of life on art showing how James incorporated his astute observations in his creative process. The Master was an excellent character study utilizing flashbacks and bittersweet vignettes to reveal the inner life of a conflicted author.This is a book to be real slowly and savored. Highly recommended to lovers of literature.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautiful novel written in a magnificent style, highly recommended even if you haven't read anything of Henry James (neither have I).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was impressed by this fictional bio of Henry James. Very subtle, very quiet, and well-executed. I really liked how we wove in various people and incidents that inspired James' work.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I'm a fan of Toibin but I fear this is not his best work. It seems an idiosyncratic of specialization that only the author and few people are interested in. There is nothing new or inventive about the novel, just a suturing of parts.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am not a Henry James fan and little happens in this novel. And yet I found it wonderful and hard to put down. Toibin creates a distinctive voice, and a powerful and very relatable sense of melancholy. This novel made me think a lot about loneliness, and family bonds, and selfishness, and fear, and how all of this seeming contradictory stuff, actually blends together. You don't need to have read James or admire him to appreciate this distinctive piece of fiction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It did not fulfill my expectations when I read it, but I am warming up to it as the time goes along. This is a creative biography of Henry James. It is as much about Henry James as about Toibin himself, I feel, and about the creative writing process. The book shows Henry James as an acute, albeit passive, observer of life. He doesn?t express opinions or take active part in any aspect of life from politics to sexuality. His life is full of avoiding life. It seems that he solely expressed himself in writing. He is shown thriving on stories and happenings of others which he reworks into his own literary creations. Some other famous personalities of the time are dwelt on briefly in the book, among whom Oscar Wilde serves as an anti-thesis of James, and at this backdrop Toibin ventures to examine Henry James? thoughts on writing and success.On the whole the book did not meet my expectations, and it was its biggest fault, perhaps. Since Henry James came from a family of thinkers, I expected more philosophical discussions, witty remarks and arguments in the book, some of which could be found by the end. James himself is known for awfully convoluted speech and pompous behaviour, and there is none of it in the book. If I treat it as a novel, I am much more at peace with it, and able to appreciate its merits.The book?s strength is its style with subtle and elegant language.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Mr. Toibin brings Henry James to life!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Fijne, mooi uitgebalanceerde roman over de late carri?re van de Amerikaanse schrijver Henri James. James wordt geportretteerd als een getormenteerd man die in toenemende moeite heeft met de omgang met anderen, maar pas in zijn kunst tot een echte dialoog met het leven komt. Vakmanschap, al vermoed ik dat het vooral de liefhebbers van James zal aanspreken.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a slightly fictionalized account of the later years of novelist Henry James? solitary life. He struggles to balances his social life and his desire for solitude. He represses his sexuality, never allowing anyone to become too close. He lives in the sea of regrets and guilt, blaming himself for the unhappiness of so many others. He?s never happy with all the choices he has made or the number of successes and failures he?s had. He grieves the loss of friends and family members. He avoids conflict at any cost, often sacrifices his own comfort in life to avoid confrontation. The end result is a man that?s difficult to connect to. It?s a very cold book. It reminded me a little bit of The Remains of the Day, in which an English butler reminisces about the past. But unlike that book, The Master lacked the beautiful language that made Remains so captivating. It?s a poignant reminder that refusing to live an honest life can make a person very lonely. BOTTOM LINE: The book may be an accurate representation of how Henry James lived his life, but it?s hard for a reader to be drawn into the world of someone who keeps themselves completely separate. ** I think that having read a lot of James? work would add to your appreciation of the book. ?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found The Master, T?ib?n's biographical novel about Henry James both fascinating and occasionally tedious. T?ib?n uses a selective omniscient narrator to get into James's head to seemingly reveal how his reactions, musings and reminiscences informed the crafting of his novels. In actuality, however, what T?ib?n has done is used the novels (and undoubtedly biographies and critical studies) to craft his own portrait of James in this novel. T?ib?n creates a psychological portrait of James that resembles the kind of psychological portrait of characters created by Henry James himself. If that sounds circular, it is, but it is intriguing.The action of the novel takes place from 1895-1899 when James was in his fifties. However we learn much about James earlier in his life as he remembers incidents and people from his younger days. The major people with whom James interacts are his siblings, William and Alice; his cousin, Minnie Temple; his friend, the novelist, Constance Fenimore Woolson; and the Scandinavian-American sculptor, Hendrik Christian Andersen. But James seems unable to form deeply intimate ties with anyone -- he needs his own space and solitude. T?ib?n does not judge the Master -- he seeks to understand him.As there are many allusions to the more famous of James's novel in this book, it helps to be somewhat familar with his work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    If you're going to write a fictionalized biography, why not make the subject Henry James rather than that Frey fellow?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A wonderful imagining of the inner life and social life of Henry James
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Fijne, mooi uitgebalanceerde roman over de late carri?re van de Amerikaanse schrijver Henri James. James wordt geportretteerd als een getormenteerd man die in toenemende moeite heeft met de omgang met anderen, maar pas in zijn kunst tot een echte dialoog met het leven komt. Vakmanschap, al vermoed ik dat het vooral de liefhebbers van James zal aanspreken.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Even for those readers for whom Henry James is definitely not The Master, the insights into his personality, passive behavior, and precise, calculating expression of emotionsilluminate the often solitary life of a writer. The pace of the book veers into belabored, considering, as James does in his books, almost every possible angle of considerationof many boring rich people's concerns.Death pervades much of the mood and readers will likely wish that he had stayed with the beloved dying cousin who loved him above all others rather than taking off on a pleasuretrip to Rome, consoling her with tales of all the fun he was having. As well, it would have been welcome if the very well off James family had not made this young girl feel "penniless"and without prospects, hastening her illness.I sloughed through because this was the book I had chosen to fulfill the Irish Author Challenge and was near catatonic until William James came to Rye and spoke his mind!Henry James wrote some great travelogue descriptions, but his novels can be wrenching, stilted with repression of feelings and actions.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The Master is the fictionalized biography of author Henry James. James was born of a wealthy Boston family, but lived much of his life in Europe. Throughout this book, James struggles in his relationships with both family and friends. He never completely loses his aloof standoffish behavior as well as the book hints of a struggle accepting or exploring his sexuality.

    I have to say that I really struggled with this book. As I read over other people's reviews and I kept thinking - Is that the same book? Maybe it is because I've only read 1 short story by Henry James - The Turn of the Screw. As the novel covered how James came up with his ideas for the characters and plot of this ghost story, I did find that interesting. But I kept on hoping for a breakthrough in his own personal life. Either by developing a long lasting friendship, or at least acceptance/contentment with his life. Maybe my dissatisfaction was due to the audio production - the narrator, Ralph Cosham was flat and morose (which seemed to match James' life...). Not a great listen for me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A superb book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This 2004 novel by Irish author Colm T?ib?n is a fictionalized biography of Henry James. The time period is the late 1800?s and it reads like a who?s who in literature. Henry James, the author of The Turn of the Screw, The Wings of the Dove and many others was an American who lived his life in Paris, Rome, London and other less known places. Henry James spent some time in Ireland. He didn?t like it even though the James family was from Ireland before they immigrated to the U.S. After the failure of his play, Guy Domville Henry James goes to Ireland to get away from the public. He spent time there with English people who were policing Ireland for the King. Ireland is described as squalor and threatening, those of mendicant class and those with money and manners. Henry James never married and this book present James as sexually inhibited, frustrated man who never married. There is allusions to his being a secret homosexual but this is only speculation based on letters her wrote to the a young Norwegian Hendrik Andersen. Hendrik Andersen was a sculptor who wanted to start a art political system called the World City which would be a Utopia of artist creating a better world. There was a large age difference and the affection expressed could have been fatherly and European in nature and never meant to be sexual. Henry had many sexually suppressed relations with females including Constance Fenimore Woolson. Henry never really wanted to give up his solitude and share his life beyond short periods and he never married.
    I enjoyed this book and now look forward to finishing The Wings of the Dove which has sat on my shelf half read for way too long. The author also describes Henry James way of writing his stories which are really about his observations and his family and himself. In The Turn of the Screw the girl and boy are Henry and his sister Alice. Many of the females in his books are his cousin Minny Temple. This was a very enjoyable read.