Rosemary Kirstein update

[alexxkay]

I have now read books three and four of the Steerswoman series. And I am impatiently awaiting the next. Rumor (and googling) has it that it is in progress, and that the series as a whole will go seven books, plus a prequel. Write faster!

There's little I can say about these two books without spoilers, but I will say that little. I said in my earlier review of the first two that these books are "exactly as long as they need to be". That seems even more true to me now. Many things in the first two books that seemed at the time to be incidental color, turn out to be establishing important things about the background. She clearly knows where she's going with this story, and has from the start.

While the "trade secrets vs open source" conflict remains important, there are other, and significantly thornier ethical problems looming.

The books include the traditional frontispiece map. But one of the nice touches is that each new book's map is just a little bit larger in scope, including the discoveries from the previous volume. It underlines the way that the protagonist is both a cartographer and a more general seeker-after-knowledge.

Comments

[siderea]

I mean to write a review about the first two when I get the chance. I quite enjoyed them. But I got them in the omnibus edition which has only one map, the one (quite obviously) from the first book. I had to track everything in the second book in my head.

How... appropriate. :D

Seven books! How marvelous!

Am thinking I need my own mobius-strip silver ring. ;)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Well, in the first book, she doesn't actually travel off of the known map, so I expect the second book's map *was* the same as the first. Similarly, the action in Book 4 stays within known spaces (at least physically), so Book 5's map may not be different than 4.

[siderea]

Er, in the second book I read, Outskirter's Secret, she travels substantially off the map in the book, as I recall it, indeed, spends most of the book there.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the map is at the *beginning* of the book, and represents her knowledge as of that time. The map at the start of Book 4 would constitute major spoilers for Book 3, if one hadn't read it :)

[siderea]

Right, but they could have, oh, I dunno, stuck the map originally in the front of the second book in where the second book starts in the omnibus. Yes?

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

You miss my point. I think the map which was originally in the front of the second book was the *same* as the one at the start of the first book, since in the first book she never went "off the map". The map at the beginning of book 3 includes her previous findings from traveling during book 2, but not the ones she was *about to* find in book 3.

[siderea]

Ahhhhh! Yes, I lost you there. I thought they provided as much map for 2 as they did for 1.

[londo.livejournal.com]

http://www.ka-gold-jewelry.com/p-products/mobius-ring-silver.php
http://www.goood.co.il/Product.asp?Pid=Mobius_ring_S&Cat2Cat1ID=59&Cat2ID=149
http://www.etsy.com/listing/20782343/mobius-ring-in-your-size

[siderea]

Is there some reason Kirstein's name has been mentioned three times in the last 24 hrs in my presence? Has she emitted another book?

[londo.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm aware of, no. I blame The Gestalt, or failing that the fact that this post is in the first page of Google results for her.