You read Swordspoint for the people and the milieu. It's like reading Wilde or the early Lord Peter Wimsey novels: it's the trip that matters, not the destination.

For really excellent plotting in a fantasy thriller, I highly recommend Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series. First book is Ill Wind, second is Heat Stroke. Damn, but she can hook you; by ten pages in I had to find out what happened next. At the ending of the first book, I couldn't see how she could possibly write a sequel having fallen into (I thought) an LKH trap. ( The heroine winds up with superpowers. ) Boy, was I wrong; the second book has more at stake than the first.

The basic conceit is that there's yet another secret society of wizards, and they're working full-time to keep natural disasters from killing us. The heroine is a weather wizard.

And the reason I'm mentioning these in this context is that the author is really Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, of fanfic fame.

I also liked many aspects of Swordpoint, and not so much the sequel. I liked Kushner's framing device for the first novel, her prose style, and the world she built. The characters . . . well, I only wanted to slap one of them regularly. I liked Richard, and most of the secondary characters a lot. And I could see why Alec was the way he was. But boy howdy, I still wanted to slap Alec.

I liked Swordspoint quite a lot, too.

Finding the LMB discussion interesting because I never really paid much attention to the romance aspect of the Vor books, except when she forced me to be aware of the pillow-fluffing or matchmaking aspects for political reasons. The whole Bothari thing is important on many levels. It's odd, it seems like LMB compartmentalizes people into their raving luney, broken, psychotic, violent aspects and their everyone needs a perfect match aspects. Maybe that's my damage, or maybe it is another representation of Vor society. Irretrievably savage and unbelievably mannered.

I liked Swordspoint. I also liked the sequel, but not as much as the original book.

I have never read any Bujold. What one should I start with?

I think that there was entirely too much time in between Swordspoint and it's sequel.

I like Shards of Honor, which is the first chronologically. Barrayar, the sequel, was written out of sequence and is Bujold at the height of her skills.

They've been releasing chronological (in the verse timeline) compendiums (is that what I mean? Multiple books in one volume), so you can get Shards of Honor and Barrayar together as Cordelia's Honor. These re-releases have a timeline in the back, too.

I have never read any Bujold. What one should I start with?

The early ones have been republished a few times in various configurations -- I think the current "first" Vorkosigan book is Cordelia's Honor. (Though Miles himself doesn't appear until Young Miles.)

There's a complete list on Baen's website here.

t cough Julie Fortune t cough

I think she's also RLC, isn't she?