Books

[stoutfellow]

Prompted by the word that L. M. Bujold's latest, The Sharing Knife: Passage, had hit the shelves, I paid a visit to Borders today. My bookbuying was not at all adventurous; I restricted myself to F/SF, to authors I was familiar with, and for the most part to books in series I've been following.

The haul: Bujold, Passage; Jane Lindskold, Wolf Hunting; Eric Flint, 1635: Cannon Law, 1634: The Ram Rebellion, and 1824: The Arkansas War; Lawrence Watt-Evans, The Spriggan Mirror; C. S. Friedman, The Wilding; Jim Butcher, Grave Peril and Academ's Fury; Steven Brust, Brokedown Palace; Harry Turtledove, The Grapple; and Gene Wolfe, Soldier of Sidon.

[N. B. to filkferengi: I still owe you that review of Furies of Calderon, and I will write it one of these days, when I have the vim.]

Comments

[xinef.livejournal.com]

Looking forward to hearing what you have to say about Eric Flint's 1635: Cannon Law and 1634: The Ram Rebellion.

I read both and quite enjoyed them.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

As a preliminary remark, before reading the two books in question: I've enjoyed the Ring of Fire books that I've read, but they seem a bit lightweight to me.

One of the important talents - not a necessary one, but a valuable one - that an SF writer can have is the ability to describe different cultures, human or alien, convincingly and sympathetically. Poul Anderson (at his best) was a master of this; Cherryh, Butler, LeGuin... There are quite a few examples. It's an especially important talent for writers of AH, in my opinion, and I'm afraid that Flint doesn't really have it. The sympathetic characters from the 1630s (Rebecca, Greta, even Gustav) tend to think like post-Enlightenment people, at least once they've been exposed to the virulently contagious ideas of Grantsville; and I don't really find that believable. Still, the stories are fun, and it may be that these two books address this problem a bit better, but this is what I'm expecting going in.

[Hmm. Firefox's spellcheck doesn't like "Rebecca". "Greta" and "Gustav" are OK, though. Weird.]

[xinef.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do follow. What I find interesting is the way that the uptimers find ways to make do with downtime technology or push downtime technology to make some equivalent (good or bad) to uptime stuff. I'm not a critical reader when it comes to the subtleties of alternative cultures, so that doesn't grate for me.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

A fair point; yes, that is one of the pleasures of the series. There's also, in the same vein, the adaptation of nonphysical technologies, like the social structures that make liberal democracy possible; the "United States of Europe" can be interpreted in that fashion. I'll have to make an effort to look through that lens.

[filkferengi]

You know, I haven't even read _1632_ yet, let alone the numerous sequelae & spin-offs. The sheer amount is rather daunting. I've heard some folks are intimidated by the extensive Miles series, but at least those are in very digestible chunks; the Flint books are both numerous & enormous. What with other books, internet, even some real life now & then, I'm not sure whether I'll ever get to them.

As for your review, if & when is fine.