Caught myself awake at 0300 the other night - old habits die hard after decades of odd deployment schedules. Ranger was snoring on his bed, Linda was out cold, and I figured I'd knock out the last hour of this one rather than stare at the ceiling thinking about client deliverables.
Let me cut to the chase: David and the Phoenix is a 1957 children's adventure that holds up surprisingly well, and Greg Weeks delivers it with the kind of grandfatherly warmth that makes you wish someone had read this to you when you were eight.
A Phoenix Who'd Make a Decent Instructor
The setup is simple. Kid climbs mountain. Kid finds enormous bird reading a book. Bird decides kid's education is severely lacking - can't identify a true Unicorn from a false one, doesn't know proper Griffin etiquette - and takes it upon himself to fix this problem through "practical education."
Here's what got me: the Phoenix talks like every senior officer I've ever respected. Pompous? Absolutely. But competent. There's this running bit where the bird is constantly exasperated by David's lack of preparation for Life (always capitalized, because the Phoenix is that kind of creature), and it reminded me of chewing out lieutenants who showed up to briefings without their terrain maps. The Phoenix would've made a decent battalion commander, honestly. Bit theatrical, but he gets results.
The author served in WWII before writing this, and I wonder if that's where he picked up the dynamic. The mentorship between David and the Phoenix isn't soft. It's demanding. The bird expects excellence and settles for nothing less. But there's genuine affection underneath the formality.
Weeks Knows What He's Doing
Greg Weeks has this LibriVox recording dialed in. His Phoenix voice carries an aristocratic stuffiness that's somehow endearing rather than annoying - think British colonel crossed with a particularly dignified peacock. When the Scientist shows up (the villain, such as he is, bent on capturing the Phoenix for study), Weeks shifts into something more clipped and obsessive. Not a dramatic transformation, but enough that my brain tracked who was speaking without effort.
The pacing works for a three-hour listen. Short chapters, quick scenes, each adventure self-contained enough that you can pause between them without losing the thread. I actually appreciated this - knocked out a chapter during a client call that went to hold, another while waiting for my truck's oil change.
No sound effects, no music, no full cast. Just Weeks and the text. For a public domain recording, the audio quality is clean. No weird pops or room echo that plague some LibriVox productions.
Who Should Queue This Up (And Who Should Pass)
Here's where I need to be honest: this is a children's book from 1957, and it reads like one. The stakes are low. The Scientist is more bumbling than threatening. The adventures - encountering a sea serpent, visiting a banshee, evading capture - are whimsical rather than intense.
If you're looking for something to share with kids or grandkids, this is excellent material. Weeks' delivery has that read-aloud quality the original dust jacket promised. I could see this working for family road trips or bedtime listening.
For adult listeners? It's a nostalgia piece. If you grew up on this kind of classic fantasy - E.B. White, Edward Eager, that whole mid-century children's lit tradition - you'll appreciate what Ormondroyd was doing here. Book of Dragons sits in that same tradition - another slice of old-school fantasy that doesn't apologize for what it is. If you're expecting modern pacing or complexity, recalibrate your expectations. Skip this one if you need high stakes or gritty realism - you'll be disappointed.
I found myself enjoying it more than I expected. There's something about the Phoenix's absolute certainty in his own magnificence that's genuinely funny. And the ending - won't spoil it, but there's a bittersweet quality that surprised me. Not heavy-handed. Just... earned.
Mission Complete
Worth your time? Depends on the mission parameters. For introducing kids to classic adventure fantasy, this is solid gold. For adults looking for a short, pleasant listen that doesn't demand much, it delivers. The narration is warm and competent, the story moves efficiently, and at three hours, it doesn't overstay its welcome.
Ranger slept through the whole thing, but he's not the target audience. Linda caught me smiling at the Phoenix's indignation over David's ignorance of proper Unicorn identification protocols. She asked what was so funny.
"Bird with standards," I told her. She went back to sleep.
That pretty much covers it.
