'Shindig'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Although I keep hearing about that Miles Vorkosigan fellow. He is in a lot of books.
He is! He is a hyperactive military genius who is 4'10", with bones that tend to snap easily, and a bit of a Daddy Complex, since his father is an admiral and planetary hero. So naturally he becomes, at 17, an admiral in charge of a mercenary space fleet.
There are many characters in the Vorkosigan novels, but Miles is rather the center point about whom they all revolve.
I might like the Chalion books better than the Vorkosigan, but, really, both are out in that zone of Really Good where I don't need to fine tune exactly how good they are beyond Really Good and comparisons become kind of meaningless.
I love the Chalion books the best. Not that I don't love Miles, but I find something more each time I reread the first two Chalion books. The third one, not so much.
The third one, not so much.
I liked the third one well enough, but I wanted more connections with the first two.
a bit of a Daddy Complex
Consuela, mistress of understatement.
One of the things I enjoy about Bujold's books is that mixed in with the serious or dramatic scenes, you get humor. And in the lightest one - A Civil Campaign (quite late in the series) - there's lots of it. Along with the characters, the plots, the world building ....
Although I got fed up with the Sharing Knife series - read the first two and then gave up on it.
Read Bujold!
I read one and did not care for it. I don't even think I finished it. But my book tastes don't run very geeky.
I read one and did not care for it.
Not everything is for everyone, and to be fair, she has a few clunkers (Diplomatic Immunity, Cryoburn, Ethan of Athos imo; and possibly the Sharing Knife novels). But the Vorkosigan novels, at least most of them, are on my "re-read for comfort" shelf. And they translate well to audio--I've listened to The Curse of Chalion on audiobook twice.
Right now, I'm on a (belated) Robin McKinley kick. I read Sunshine over the holidays and enjoyed it quite a bit, although it feels a bit too much like the first book in a series, what with potentially interesting but sketchy world-building.
The next was Beauty, her first take on B&B story back in the 70's. That one was a bit "eh". It was a quick read, but a bit too simple and hewed too close to the original story to make it special. I do have Rose Daughter in my possession -- not sure if it'd be worthwhile reading yet another take on the story from the same author, but the paperback is small enough to pack when I go on a vacation next week, I guess.
She's got another series, right? Sword and the Crown? Wait, Hero and the Crown, I think, is the first book. I have it somewhere at home. Is that one good?
I finished The City and The City last night. Easily my favorite Mieville so far.
She's got another series, right? Sword and the Crown? Wait, Hero and the Crown, I think, is the first book. I have it somewhere at home. Is that one good?
There's two - The Blue Sword, which she wrote first, and The Hero and the Crown, which is about the mythology in The Blue Sword and is set centuries before it.
They're my favourite of all her books, so I say read them!