Hunting Party (2 of 2) [Dramatized Adaptation]

Serrano Legacy, Book 1, Part 2

By: Elizabeth Moon

Narrated by: full cast, Colleen Delany, Sunny Laskey, Andy Clemence, David Coyne, Tess Rohan, Terence Aselford, James Konicek, James Lewis, Michael John Casey, MB Van Dorn, Dylan Lynch, Thomas Penny, Ken Jackson

Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

Heris Serrano - formerly a commander in the Regular Space Service - must take whatever job she can get after her resignation under a cloud. What she can get is the captaincy of a rich old lady's space yacht...a rich old horsewoman, who has little liking for the military, and whose spoiled nephew Ronnie (and his equally spoiled friends) have been foisted on her after his folly embarrassed the family. Lady Cecelia's only apparent interest is horses - she intends to go fox hunting on the private pleasure planet of a friend of hers, Lord Thornbuckle. But events conspire to make it far more than a fox hunt.

Performed by Nanette Savard, Colleen Delany, Sunny Lasskey, Andy Clemence, David Coyne, Tess Rohan, Terence Aselford, James Konicek, James Lewis, Michael John Casey, MB Van Dorn, Dylan Lynch, Thomas Penny, Ken Jackson, Richard Rohan, Mort Shelby.

©1993 Elizabeth Moon (P)2008 Graphic Audio, LLC

background music and other noise is a negative

The background music and sound effects are highly distracting. perhaps if they were a little quieter compared to the voices they would be tolerable, but they clearly do not add anything to the story.

Delightful!

Excellent storytelling, and the voice cast were excellent...a delightful reading with great effects! On to the next story.

Men are weak caricatures of themselves to support strong female lead archetype. I'm female and it was a bit much.

Didn't age well. The 2nd half of this book really felt aged mostly as far as what I'd expect from 80s sci fi and using plot points, in my era, would now feel over used and old school.

I really loved the first half of this book and felt like it would have felt ahead of it's time coming out in 93 before strong female lead character tropes felt over used just yet. I was really enjoying the character building albeit the plot was not going anywhere quickly in the first half.

By the 2nd half, you start feeling the aging with the characters too. The strong female leads now reach to 4 big characters all female and all very strong and more competent then men. I'm a female and usually love this but men are depicted as caricatures here and the 'strong female' part just doesn't hit as good as it could when it's a bit too on the nose and what the females are compared to are so obviously overly exaggerated versions of incompetent men.

Again, i think for when this book came out it was before all these tropes set in as tired and over used. So I could definitely see this as being absolutely excellent if I have read this earlier in life and havnt experienced this exhaustion of modern books using these inspired formats so much already.

The plot also was also lazy and just 'The Most Dangerous Game' except make it focused on strong females and introduce another few strong female leads. The plot felt very highschool as books with plots like this and classic literature have already been hammered into me so once again because of exposure this just felt over used despite it likely not being over used back in the 80s and 90s yet.

I know Aliens was a big movie in the late 80s that really took off this archetype and I could feel this military strong female lead inspired still from that era in this book. In my era though we really beat that to death and now it just feels cheesy if it's not done right. This book very closely could have done it right if it had not been for the wimpy and nonsensical evil caricature men to compare them to which puts a giant neon sign on the strong female leads on just how strong and female they are.

Overall, yeah, I'm disappointed =(