Adventures in Space (Or, Why I Really Love Lois McMaster Bujold)

Yes, another entry.  Try not to faint.

I was planning on reviewing a new (to me) book this time.  It began in the aftermath of some catastrophic mage war, which I thought was a really interesting place to start a story.  I got about 70 pages into it before realizing that it was actually the first book in the sequel series to something else, which explained why the author seemed to be nudging me in the side every so often going, "See this character here?  Remember her?  *wink wink*"  I would have realized this before I'd even started the book if I'd bothered to flip it over.  So that one gets put on hold pending me reading the first series.

All of which got me thinking about the order in which we read things, and the extent to which it matters.  Some series are definitely meant to be read in a certain order (Harry Potter), while others you can pick up wherever you want (Discworld).  Some authors have multiple series set in the same universe, and while the books in each individual series need to be read in order, the series don't necessarily need to be read chronologically.  I read Tamora Pierce's Tortall books all in chronological order, but I also know people who started with the Protector of the Small series or the Aly books.  And while you might know roughly who dies and who succeeds and who marries whom, if done right, it doesn't lessen the enjoyment of the books.  (There is a certain appeal in the prequel effect.)

Lois McMaster Bujold seems to thrive on this sort of thing.  I've only read her Vorkosigan Saga books, not her fantasy series, but she does a fantastic job at having self-contained stories that also function in a larger universe.  It's a single series, but the order you read it in is flexible.  I started with Brothers in Arms--because my friend insisted I absolutely had to read this series and it was what she had on hand at the time--which is the seventh novel chronology-wise (but the fifth novel published).  I went on to the next book in the chronology, Mirror Dance, and skipped Memory and Komarr entirely in my eagerness to get to A Civil Campaign.  Then I went all the way back to the beginning and started over, although I still haven't read the prequel-ish book that takes place some three hundred years before the rest of the series.  I'm normally fairly averse to reading things out of order, but Bujold didn't make it FEEL like it was out of order.  She has enough explanations and to make sense to a first-time reader, without drowning everyone in a backstory cesspit of doom.  (AND THEN I HAD SOME ADVENTURES WITH MY UNCLE LET ME TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THEM EVEN THOUGHT IT'S NOT TOO RELEVANT....)  All with slipping in enough details and in-jokes for someone who was familiar with the universe to have squee-moments of "I recognize him!" or "I remember when that happened!"  I like those squee-moments.  It makes me feel like an intelligent human being with a functioning memory.

But the flexible chronology isn't the only reason I am madly in love with the Vorkosigan saga.  Partially it's the snappy dialogue and sense of humor.  Partially it's the hijinks and DID THAT REALLY JUST HAPPEN element.  Mainly it's Miles.

Miles Naismith Vorkosigan is the main character of most of the books in the series (the first two follow his parents).  The series is set in a far-future, space opera universe. 

(None of the following could strictly be considered spoilers, due to the flexible chronology mentioned above--you'd have to start at the very very beginning to not know any of it.  But if you do want to start at the very very beginning, you might want to avert your eyes now and come back at the next bold spot.)


Miles comes from the planet Barrayar, which is very culturally averse to any sort of genetic mutation.  Due to an attack on his parents when his mother was pregnant, his height is permanently stunted, which tends to attract a great deal of attention/disdain.  Does this stop Miles?  Let's see.  In the first book in which he appears, he gains control of a mercenary fleet by accident, convinces everyone he's an admiral, wins a war, solves a plot against his father, gets his mercenary fleet included on the Imperial Security payroll, and is admitted to the Barrayaran Imperial Academy.  Oh, and he's seventeen years old.

(As you were.)

I've always had a fondness for rogue heroes, and while Miles isn't a rogue per say, he does have that roguishly flexible attitude toward rules and regulations.  (In an emergency, there's always the refuge of the Barrayaran Fire Drill.  And I do mean always.)

Of course, one character can't carry a story all on his own.  We have Miles's mother and father--parental badasses if there ever were some--prim Aunt Alys, a latter-day Catherine de Bourgh with a heart; his cousin Ivan, who has the most fantastic case of Obfuscating Stupidity that I've ever seen; deceptively quiet Emperor Gregor; Mark; Ekaterin---no, I won't spoil those particular plots, but that's where I came in on the story, so.  Suffice it to say that I love them all, especially the female characters for making my feminist heart happy.

While I love them all--so far; I haven't read Cryoburn yet--A Civil Campaign has to be my favorite.  It's a straightforward romance, if most romances involved political intrigue, insects, fugitives, garden trauma....

Here's how the description begins on the back: "It's spring in Vorbarr Sultana, and a young person's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love...money....bio-genetics...love...lack of money...incompatible planetary sexual mores...love...District succession scandals...the Emperor's wedding...and, of course, love..."  It's like Jane Austen decided to try her hand at political science fiction and found out that she was great at it.

A Civil Campaign also has one of my favorite exchanges in absolutely anything:

"Is that how you see marriage?  As the end and abolition of yourself?"

"It is for some people.  Why else do all the stories end when the Count's daughter gets married?  Hasn't that ever struck you as a bit sinister?  I mean, have you ever read a folk tale where the Princess's mother gets to do anything but die young?  I've never been able to figure out if that's supposed to be a warning, or an instruction."

"You grow in different ways, afterward.  Not like a fairy tale.  Happily ever after doesn't cover it."

THIS.  YES.

Happily ever after doesn't cover it in the Vorkosigan books, either, which is probably why I love them so much.  Each plotline draws to an conclusion at the end of its book, but there's always space for something new.  (Aha.  Space.  Accidental pun.  Ba-dum-tish.)

So if you like sci-fi, interesting character studies, snappy comebacks, plasma rifles, genetic engineering, or mercenaries....read them.  In whatever order you damn well please, the way the universe's God intended.

An Introduction/The Wise Man's Fear

This is a blog of books.

It's a blog of reviews and thoughts on books I've just read, whether recently released or not.  It's a blog about old favorites that I think everyone in the universe should know and love.  It's a blog about reading and writing, things I think are glorious and things that make me wince.  There may even at some point be a manatee.

See?  You didn't even have to be all that patient.

There's no specific genre focus; I like to read many different kinds of books, although it will probably skew mainly toward fantasy/SF.  Sometimes the posts will be more review-like in nature; other times they may consist entirely of me flailing about how much I love a particular series or author.  Sometimes they'll focus on the book as a whole, or focus on one specific aspect.  Contents will be subject to my whim.   I'm always open to suggestions, but my reading list grows every time I get within fifty feet of a Barnes and Noble, so it may be awhile before I get to them.

Welcome to the Stacks.

The Wise Man's Fear is, for those who don't know, the second book in Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles; the first being The Name of the Wind.  It centers around a man named Kvothe--something of a living legend--as he tells the story of his life to a scribe.  Most of the series is in flashback mode, with occasional interspersed chapters dealing with the present (which has a plot of its own going on).  The series as a whole has gotten glowing recommendations and praise from quite a few people, and it sounded interesting, so I looked into it.

I had a complicated relationship with The Name of the Wind.  On one hand, I loved the book.  Rothfuss's writing is great, and the story as a whole was well-paced and interesting.  But there was one glaring flaw that smacked me in the face practically every time I turned the page, and that is that Kvothe is something of a Mary Sue.  ("The term "MarySue" is generally slapped on a character who is important in the story, possesses unusual physical traits, and has an irrelevantly over-skilled or over-idealized nature.")  Tragic backstory?  Check.  Unusual physical appearance--in this case red hair--mentioned multiple times?  Check.  But the main issue I had with the story is that Kvothe is instantly good at absolutely everything he tries.  When the child (and then teenage) protagonist is better (within a matter of days) than adults who have been studying for years, it does make you wonder.  I ended up torn, because one minute I was thinking, "THIS STORY IS THE BEST THING EVER," and then next I'd be thinking, "OH GOD KVOTHE, AGAIN, SERIOUSLY?"

So I took up The Wise Man's Fear with some trepidation.  I knew I'd enjoy the book enough to not chuck it across the room, but whether or not it could rise above Name of the Wind's tendency to idealize Kvothe was another matter.

At first it seemed like a vast improvement.  Kvothe, while still better at most things than the average person, is actually shown struggling to learn certain things--and taking time to learn them, rather than having the equivalent of a three-minute training montage.  I was perhaps unbecomingly pleased to see him actually lose a magical scuffle with my favorite character, but the high point for me came when he decided to learn a certain fighting style and got his behind handed to him by a ten-year-old girl.

Rothfuss's writing is just as lovely as in Name of the Wind, with my favorite part being a description of the library.

"Then there were the bad neighborhoods.  Sections of the Archives that were forgotten, or neglected, or simply too troublesome to deal with at the moment.  These were places where books were organized under old catalogs or under no catalog at all.
There were walls of shelves like mouths with missing teeth, where long-gone scrivs had cannibalized an old catalog to bring books into whatever system was fashionable at the time..."

And Kvothe, who at this point in the story is in his late teens, has developed the occasional snarky edge to his narration, which oddly enough made him more likeable for me.  (Maybe I appreciate snark too much.)

However, the story still smacked me in the face with WHAT at certain points, namely having to do with Kvothe's romantic relationships.  My main trouble here is this: EVERY FEMALE CHARACTER OF ANY IMPORTANCE WHO ISN'T UNDER FIFTEEN OR OVER FORTY HAS A THING FOR KVOTHE.

Let's have a tally, shall we?
There's Denna, Kvothe's main love interest/quasi-obsession.  Which doesn't stop him from sleeping with a lot of other women, but all right, fair enough; they don't have anything agreed upon and she's hardly waiting around for him.  This one, I'll give him.

Another student at the university, who thankfully chooses another partner midway through the book.

Then he's propositioned out of the blue by his moneylender/friend (at this point I started rolling my eyes), followed by the immortal faerie who destroys men, and several women from the tribe he goes to train in fighting with.  And to that I have to say, "REALLY?"  Really?  ALL the women?  And none of them, conveniently enough, seem to have a problem with the others/want anything more than a quick fling.  I understand that Kvothe is supposed to be more awesome than bacon, but does everyone in this universe have a thing for redheads?

This is one case in which I definitely preferred kid-Kvothe to teenage Kvothe.  Kid-Kvothe might have learned the whole of arcana with no more effort than batting his eyelashes, but at least he didn't cause fevers in everything female that moved.

There is one thing that occurred to me, and that's that the frame dictates that the past is in first person.  Kvothe is telling his own story here, and may be inclined to embroider the tale to make himself look more impressive.  He is, after all, telling by what all accounts is a legendary past.  The other thing that makes me inclined to withhold judgment is that Kvothe is headed for disaster--that's not a spoiler; it's apparent by the end of the first page of the first book that he's had some sort of catastrophic fall--and maybe that will knock some humility into him.  Certainly present-Kvothe isn't anywhere near as confident as past-Kvothe.

So, did I like The Wise Man's Fear?  Yes.  Will I read the next one when it comes out?  Definitely.  Will I start it, like I did this one, with some trepidation?  A bit.  Hopefully it won't be enough to overshadow everything else.  It hasn't been yet, but there were points in the book where it came close.

In the next volume, I hope for less god-mod-ladies'-man-Kvothe and more things like this:

"No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles.  If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name.  Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass.  A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection."