![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Finished reading ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kestrell the new Bujold t'other day. Fun book, and a good one to read aloud. There were many requests for "Read that sentence again!" Kes and I have long wanted to see Ivan get the romantic comedy he deserved, and this did not disappoint.
Very glad to see that Lois seems to be past her Reichenbach Phase[1]. I saw her at Boskone a bit before _Cryoburn_ came out, and she mentioned that she had set that one on a previously-unmentioned planet, so that she didn't have to worry about accidentally contradicting her past continuity; that's always a bad sign in a long-term-series writer. Perhaps she realized this herself; judging from the vast (but not unreasonable) number of callbacks that CVA has to previous books, she has to have reread her own canon before writing it.
Not the best of her books, but well above the worst. I'd say it was her best since _A Civil Campaign_.
[1] This seems to affect all authors of popular series characters. Eventually, they grow sick of them, and want to do something else. They bring the series to what seems like a definitive conclusion, sometimes going so far as to kill the protagonist. This rarely works[2], and the series ends up continuing. Sometimes it even gets better, after the initial resentment fades; sometimes not.
[2] Douglas Adams is a notable case, wiping out every parallel universe version of Arthur Dent in _Mostly Harmless_. And he was under contract for two more Hitchhiker books at the time! Only by dying young himself did he escape having to bring Arthur back somehow.
kestrell the new Bujold t'other day. Fun book, and a good one to read aloud. There were many requests for "Read that sentence again!" Kes and I have long wanted to see Ivan get the romantic comedy he deserved, and this did not disappoint.Very glad to see that Lois seems to be past her Reichenbach Phase[1]. I saw her at Boskone a bit before _Cryoburn_ came out, and she mentioned that she had set that one on a previously-unmentioned planet, so that she didn't have to worry about accidentally contradicting her past continuity; that's always a bad sign in a long-term-series writer. Perhaps she realized this herself; judging from the vast (but not unreasonable) number of callbacks that CVA has to previous books, she has to have reread her own canon before writing it.
Not the best of her books, but well above the worst. I'd say it was her best since _A Civil Campaign_.
[1] This seems to affect all authors of popular series characters. Eventually, they grow sick of them, and want to do something else. They bring the series to what seems like a definitive conclusion, sometimes going so far as to kill the protagonist. This rarely works[2], and the series ends up continuing. Sometimes it even gets better, after the initial resentment fades; sometimes not.
[2] Douglas Adams is a notable case, wiping out every parallel universe version of Arthur Dent in _Mostly Harmless_. And he was under contract for two more Hitchhiker books at the time! Only by dying young himself did he escape having to bring Arthur back somehow.