No Traveller Returns Audiobook
By: Louis L’Amour, Beau L’Amour
Narrated by: Scott Brick, Beau L’Amour
Published by Random House Audio 11/20/2018
7 hrs and 43 mins
No Traveller Returns Audiobook Sample
No Traveller Returns Audiobook
4.5 Hearts
Each time I think I can’t become more enamored with Louis L’amour’s writing, I get proved wrong. No Traveller Returns was a sensational gift to fans and newcomers as it now has the distinction of being the first novel the author wrote and a change of pace from his usual writing style. Beau L’Amour did an excellent job of cleaning and refining this unpublished work for reader consumption. It is indeed a Lost Treasure and I am heartily glad Beau released it.
No Traveller Returns is in a different style. It reminded me of the classic works of Jack London or Joseph Conrad. It’s a seafaring adventure story about the men who sailed on a dangerous tanker around the time before WWII. L’Amour wrote this having years of living and working in just such a life as he depicted. This was not just one story, but several collected together and tied together because they eventually all became the crews of the SS Lichenfield. Having this many narrators to the story gave it color and depth that a single or dual point of view couldn’t give it. It could have been confusing with that many voices, but it wasn’t. Not all are likeable or necessarily good, but all chose the sea and ships. Between each chapter introducing the men are the journal entries of the second mate, John Harlan who acts as the glue tying all the others together.
In the beginning, the reader is made privy to a disgruntled, bitter man doing an important job and not doing it well just before the Lichenfield tanker puts to sea. Because of this, I had a dread suspicion of what was coming. The suspense built for me as I got to know and care about all those men working and living on that ship. There is a mystery in the end and an ending that left me not quite satisfied though it wasn’t bad. Much about this book including the various stories will stick with me for a bit, I think.
So, all in all, I am thrilled to have read this one and it will be a prize among my many favorite L’Amour books. Those who enjoy a character-based seafaring adventure set just before WWII should give this a go.
No Traveller Returns Audiobook Narration
5.0 Hearts
Though prolific in his narration work, this is the first time I’ve encountered Scott Brick‘s work. I thought he did an exceptional job with this large cast of colorful and varied characters, the old-style and international accents, the story pace and a good steady ‘storytelling’ tone. Incidentally, it was neat to have Beau L’Amour narrate the afterward.
Louis L’Amour was an American author. L’Amour’s books, primarily Western fiction, remain enormously popular, and most have gone through multiple printings. At the time of his death all 101 of his works were in print (86 novels, 14 short-story collections and one full-length work of nonfiction) and he was considered “one of the world’s most popular writers.
BEAU L’AMOUR is the son of novelist Louis L’Amour. Beau grew up among the writers, actors, beatniks, Apache Indians, FBI agents, and members of the Hollywood Ten who were the denizens of his West Hollywood neighborhood and his parents’ friends. He graduated from California Institute of the Arts. Over the years, L’Amour has written and produced a series of more than sixty audio dramas and worked in the radio and magazine business, then as a screenwriter and television producer. In the world of book publishing, he has been an art director, literary editor, and ghost writer.
Actor, screenwriter, and audiobook narrator Scott Brick definitely gives new meaning to a hyphenate career with credits in film, television, stage, and radio. Born on January 30, 1966, in Santa Barbara, Brick studied both acting and writing at UCLA, and joined the ranks of working professionals upon leaving school in 1989. He then spent 10 years with the LA-based Will and Company, a traveling Shakespearean company that performed for schools throughout California.
Brick went on to become a freelance writer and in 2000 was hired by Morgan Freeman and Revelations Entertainment to adapt Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama for the big screen. Also in 2000, Brick ventured into narrating audiobooks and quickly found himself embraced by the audio world…
To date he’s won over 30 Earphones Awards for his narrating skills, as well as the 2003 Audie Award for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. After recording some 300 titles in five years,” AudioFile” named Brick “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy” and proclaimed him a Golden Voice. But it was the “Wall Street Journal” that sealed the moniker with a front page interview piece in November 2004.
Most recently, he collaborated with famed sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card to adapt a collection of Card’s short stories for the stage, which resulted in the play Posing as People, as well as completed the production draft of Rama, set to be directed by David Fincher. Earlier this year, Brick was named Narrator of the Year by “Publishers Weekly” and is currently writing his first novel, a modern-day supernatural thriller based on an 18th-century murder in New England. No word on whether any celebrities will be asked to record the audiobook.
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