Bujold is a good read

[pameladlloyd]

My brother, Don, recently suggested that I join Goodreads, where he was already a member. So, I've posted a few books and reviews there. I posted one today for Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor (although, actually, I'm reading the repackaged version in Cordelia's Honor). Below are links to Goodreads:

Shards of Honour by Lois McMaster Bujold

Click here to read my review (you have to join, but it's free), or view all my reviews.

I am in awe of the way Bujold can use dialog to define characters and the societies that shape them while at the same time addressing moral and ethical issues, without bogging the story down in long-drawn-out diversions from the story. Take for instance Cordelia's response to Aral Vorkosigan's complement that she has "the competence one would look for in a mother of warriors:"

Cordelia wondered if Vorkosigan was pulling her leg. He did seem to have a dry sense of humor. "Save me from that! To pour your life into sons for eighteen or twenty years, and then have the government take them away and waste them cleaning up after some failure of politics—no thanks."

The description of war as a "failure of politics" is delightfully apt, but it is given humanity by the deft way in which Bujold shows just how differently Cordelia and Aral think and feel about issues of war and the military.

Okay, I've tried to rewrite that last paragraph about a dozen times and am feeling entirely unable to state clearly just how wonderful and amazing Bujold's writing is. I'm going to go away now and read some more of the book. Or, maybe I'll kick Karl out of the kitchen and cook for once. ;>

Comments

[larryhammer]

I reread that book every so often -- it holds up well. Not quite as well as the sequel, though that has a wonderful scene that deftly explodes both Cordelia's and Braryar's attitudes to homosexuality.

BTW, if you haven't found her yet, I suspect you'd find asakiyume's journal interesting to friend.

---L.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I tend to reread the entire series, once I get started. There is absolutely no other author I've done that for more than once, and then it was probably because I was trying to avoid spending money on more books. But, Bujold's writing enthralls me, no matter how many times I read her. Very few other authors have made me laugh and cry at the same time, but I've done so multiple times while reading (and, yes, rereading) Bujold's work.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Oh, and thanks for suggesting Asakiyume mita (http://asakiyume.livejournal.com/)'s journal.