Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro

[watervole]

Another book lent to me by katlinel  who thought I might like it.  She was right.  I'm gong to get more books by this writer.

After reading this book, the first thing I did was to go and look up the author to see if Asaro knew what she was talking about.

She does.

She has an MA in physics from Harvard and her publications include - "Complex speeds and

Comments

[kerravonsen]

I'd heard all these great things about Catherine Asaro, so I read her novel "Catch the Lightning", and was completely turned off because I found the romance completely unbelievable: instant lust without reason, heroine is too Mary-Sue. I loathed it. So I wrote her off as "trashy romance novelist with pretensions to SF-writing".

I'm very wary of trying again.

[watervole]

I've heard it elsewhere that the romance element gets a lot stronger in later books - the first one had the balance just right for me.

Like the icon!

[kerravonsen]

I've heard it elsewhere that the romance element gets a lot stronger in later books
I don't dislike romance per se, but I suspect I've been spoiled by Georgette Heyer, because what I like is friendship-romance, not purely-physical-attraction-romance.

Like the icon!
8-) It's by redscharlach, who has done a lot of cute cartoon Doctor Who icons.

[nwhyte]

I'd read a few things by her (notably her Nebula-winning The Quantum Rose, and a couple of other stories nominated for Hugos and Nebulas) and heartily disliked them all; and said so in various places around the Internet. She rather sweetly got in touch with me directly, and offered to send me some of her other work, including Primary Inversion. I read it and to my surprise liked it almost as much as you did.

Then I'm afraid I completely bounced off her next novel, The Radiant Seas, and Sunrise Alley is still on the shelf unread. So I will be interested to see what you think of her other work.

[watervole]

I'm trying to figure out what order to read them in, whether to go for chronological order or publication order.

[nwhyte]

My tip, for what it's worth - go by descending order of popularity among Librarything users!

(NB that Primary Inversion is at the top of the list, and the second-placed book, Irresistible Forces, is an anthology.)

[altariel]

I suspect Irresistible Forces places well because of the Bujold story it contains.

I didn't like Asaro's story in that collection much, but I recently got such a strong recommendation for Primary Inversions that I've picked it up from BookMooch. The positive reviews here are making me look forward to it even more.

[jthijsen]

Oh good, it's also available in mobipocket format, which I can read on my brand new cybook. I've downloaded it, but I'm not sure yet when I'll get around to reading it, since there were also a lot of free must-reads on manybooks and a lot of not-free but new books from authors I love on fictionwise.