Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
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."
I'm always excited to see people getting introduced to Bujold, and I think the World of the Five Gods series is a great starting point. FWIW, I regularly re-read the Vorkosigan books from Memory onward, especially Komarr, A Civil Campaign, and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, but rarely revisit the earlier parts of the series. Which I think just shows I'm more into space mystery, space comedy of manners, and space romantic romp than space opera.
I'm unusual in that I love the Sharing Knife series as much or more as anything else she's written--something about it just pushes everyone of my readerly buttons in all the right places.
I love pretty much everything Bujold has written but for me the World of the Five Gods and the Sharing Knife series reads, um, older (?), more mature (?). Not that there's sex, but the sensibility seems more grown-up for some reason. More regret about mistakes past, maybe. Anyway, not as much of a draw for teenagers.
Welp, I finished Memories Legion , so now I am well and truly done with the Expanse universe.
Now I'm listening to Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen - random find. His first published novel. SciFi time travel. I've never read him before. Wish me good story!
ETA: Ha, ha, ha! SciFi time travel... as opposed to non-fiction time travel? Memoir?
I mean, Outlander always seemed liked not SciFi but time travel. And A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. But that’s just me making pronouncements, I don’t have a rigorous taxonomy
Yeah, I was like, "Well, fantasy... but that phrasing still tickles me! I'm going to ETA that shit!"
I think it depends on the mechanism of time travel. If we invent a time machine, SFF. If it's magic or some kind of mystic portal a la the standings stones in Outlander, fantasy.
Yeah, OK, so not liking this one enough to keep going. I think I need to stay on alien worlds right now, and the writing does not appeal. Onto next!
ETA: That sounds right, Susan.
I'm cranky: I used up all my Hoopla downloads for the month, so I can't listen to the next Ile-Rien novel (The Wizard Hunters, which has some fun subtext for fans of Hercules & Iolaus).
Oh, It's a series? I guess I have a new series, then.
I've been having trouble getting all the way through books in Libby's 21 days, so I have half-plots of, like 4 books in my head right now. It's not ideal
The Ile-Rien novels are a discontiguous series.
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The Element of Fire is a quasi-Elizabethan fantasy. Then you skip forward a couple hundred years to a quasi-Steampunk/Sherlock Holmes fantasy (literally: 2 of the characters are a thinly-veiled Holmes & Watson, and the male lead is kind of Moriarty-ish). That's The Death of the Necromancer, and it's pretty spooky and thrilling. That was her first Hugo nom, I think.
Then The Wizard Hunters begins a trilogy about the Fall of Ile-Rien -- it's invaded by a sorcerous people from another universe, and the lead character is the daughter of the Moriarty guy in the previous book. She's great: super sarcastic, kind of depressed, very entertaining and competent. She has no patience for being thrown into another world full of gods and monsters (and beautiful young men).
