David Smith

I'm going to go off on a limb here.

Rory Brandybuck.

I like that.

He's very astute.

Kind of laid back, he was running Buckland and let his son go off, gallivanting about with no certain return.

Because I suspect that Mary had cleared it with his dad before he took off.

He just went.

And he also has a fondness for fine wine.

You know, I think I would have to be Patrick O'Brien.

Patrick O'Brien wrote a series of novels about the Napoleonic Wars with a pair of, well, one is a captain in the British Navy.

The other one is a surgeon and spy.

He started these in the 70s.

He was kind of like originally thinking of three novel series, did it as sort of the anti-hornblower,

But O'Brien was really influenced by Jane Austen.

And so his stories really, they're not so much the, you know, washbuckling type that you normally get with the Napoleonic literature, but much more novels of manners, like Jane Austen, where the action oftentimes takes place off screen.

And the real story is the growing and dynamic relationship between the two main characters.

I think John Howe.

His are, you know, they're sort of darker than the Alan Lee ones.

True.

Hi, Joe.