Paul Darrow (1941–2019)

Darrow’s autobiography, including a lot of stories from his years on Blakes 7. This is one of the rare cases where I wish I were listening to an audiobook rather than reading a dead tree book. The book is reasonably interesting, and there’s a lot of great anecdotes, but especially in the beginning, it’s a somewhat choppy read. If I were listening to it (preferably read by Darrow himself, of course!), I’d have enjoyed it much more.

And dear $DEITY, the font. This book was designed by someone desperate to cut down the number of signatures to save money; the font is tiny and hard for me to read, let alone someone who might have actually seen B7 in its original run.

Still, the one benefit of the bumpy structure is that it’s easy to read a couple pages, put the book down, and come back to it later — perfect bathroom reading. And some of the stories are fabulous, particularly some episodes in Darrow’s childhood that made me think of Miles Vorkosigan.… (mehr)