Reading Deutsch

The German copies of Acacia: The War with the Mein just arrived in the mail! I'm very pleased, and a bit aghast at how big the thing is in German. It's like Moby Dick sized... I hadn't quite expected that sort of heft. But it's lovely. The cover image works wonderfully, and it has nice inside flaps, even though it's a trade paperback. Even has the map of the Known World inside. That's quite cool because, of course, everything has been translated in to German. The League Platforms become Schwimmende Plattformen Der Gilde. The Gray Slopes are Die Grauen Hauge. Palishdock is Weisshafen, and Methalian Rim is Methalischer Rand. I like this. Makes it feel like the book has grown up, left home to travel and returned with a foreign fiancee. One wonders where the children will call home?...

My son, Sage, snatched the book up and promptly began reading. He's big into reading now, especially since he's begun Harry Potter. (Word by word, baby. It's no picnic, but he's getting it done.) He took a break from that and really seemed to get into Acacia Macht und Verrat. We reminded him that it was in German, but he didn't seem put off by that. He's homeschooled, you know, and not easily daunted by things like language barriers...

Having said that, much later in his reading, he did admit: "Man, this is hard to read."