Anyone for a read-along?
Last Friday, katyscarlett76 and I got to talking about Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy series The Sharing Knife -- and we thought it might be fun to read this summer. Anyone else interested? We could have check-in posts for squeeing (or complaining?) from time to time!
It's a four-book series; the first book is called Beguilement. Reviews I've read suggest that the story really doesn't feel complete until you've read all four books, so this might be something to keep me busy for a while. ;)
Why TSK? For me, it's because I've read and enjoyed both of Bujold's other series very much; I like her prose style, and her world-building, and the political machinations she includes in her societies, be they a socially conservative planet in the far future or not-quite Renaissance Spain. I'm also intrigued knowing that this is a Tolkienesque fantasy world set in a place that's based on North America, rather than, you know, Shropshire. ;)
I asked philomytha what she thought about TSK some time ago. She's given me permission to link to her description of the series, which is informative but non-spoilery. Something that intrigued me a lot was this particular paragraph of hers: I love how it's very much domestic fantasy. LMB pays a lot of attention to the amount of backbreaking labour involved in keeping the Ranger-types working, and the fact that someone has to grow and make their food and sew their trousers and knit their socks. Fawn is a farmwife, and in an awful lot of places it's her farmwifely skills of making use of what she's got, getting on with people and sheer persistent effort that save the day. And since the never-ending war against the malices is a lot more like washing dishes and doing chores than anything else (you have to deal with them today, and you know there's going to be another batch along tomorrow, and so you have to plan and prepare and just keep going over and over again), this all holds together really well on a thematic level.
I find the idea of a fantasy series that focuses on the everydayness of things very appealing -- it's one of the things I liked the most about Ursula K. Le Guin's Tehanu, for example.
philomytha warns that there's a romance plot involving a large age-gap, but since a large proportion of my f-list are people I met in the Remus/Tonks fandom, with a side of Cazaril/Betriz, I suspect that's not necessarily much of a sticking point around here. ;) (She also warns for "an entire subplot involving a miscarriage that happens onscreen," so, that may not be appealing for some.)
She linked me to another review, as well, which has a few more specific details and might be considered slightly spoilery if you have a low threshold, but which I found interesting.
Now my main dilemma is whether to start reading Beguilement right now, when it's a mere week and a half before another conference trip, and I have a talk to finish writing! I'm not the best at self-discipline once I've started an interesting book. Or, series. (Which is one reason why I read less now than I did when I was younger -- I don't trust myself to be able to stop in the middle of a book when I need to...)
Anyone else on board for this? :)
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It's a four-book series; the first book is called Beguilement. Reviews I've read suggest that the story really doesn't feel complete until you've read all four books, so this might be something to keep me busy for a while. ;)
Why TSK? For me, it's because I've read and enjoyed both of Bujold's other series very much; I like her prose style, and her world-building, and the political machinations she includes in her societies, be they a socially conservative planet in the far future or not-quite Renaissance Spain. I'm also intrigued knowing that this is a Tolkienesque fantasy world set in a place that's based on North America, rather than, you know, Shropshire. ;)
I asked philomytha what she thought about TSK some time ago. She's given me permission to link to her description of the series, which is informative but non-spoilery. Something that intrigued me a lot was this particular paragraph of hers: I love how it's very much domestic fantasy. LMB pays a lot of attention to the amount of backbreaking labour involved in keeping the Ranger-types working, and the fact that someone has to grow and make their food and sew their trousers and knit their socks. Fawn is a farmwife, and in an awful lot of places it's her farmwifely skills of making use of what she's got, getting on with people and sheer persistent effort that save the day. And since the never-ending war against the malices is a lot more like washing dishes and doing chores than anything else (you have to deal with them today, and you know there's going to be another batch along tomorrow, and so you have to plan and prepare and just keep going over and over again), this all holds together really well on a thematic level.
I find the idea of a fantasy series that focuses on the everydayness of things very appealing -- it's one of the things I liked the most about Ursula K. Le Guin's Tehanu, for example.
philomytha warns that there's a romance plot involving a large age-gap, but since a large proportion of my f-list are people I met in the Remus/Tonks fandom, with a side of Cazaril/Betriz, I suspect that's not necessarily much of a sticking point around here. ;) (She also warns for "an entire subplot involving a miscarriage that happens onscreen," so, that may not be appealing for some.)
She linked me to another review, as well, which has a few more specific details and might be considered slightly spoilery if you have a low threshold, but which I found interesting.
Now my main dilemma is whether to start reading Beguilement right now, when it's a mere week and a half before another conference trip, and I have a talk to finish writing! I'm not the best at self-discipline once I've started an interesting book. Or, series. (Which is one reason why I read less now than I did when I was younger -- I don't trust myself to be able to stop in the middle of a book when I need to...)
Anyone else on board for this? :)
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