Reading roundup: Extreme Dragaera edition

[hamsterwoman]

I was going to wait until I finished Athyra, Orca, and Jhereg reread, but it so happened that this has already maxed out the length of a single LJ post, so it's a good thing I didn't wait.

10. Steven Brust, Five Hundred Years After -- OK, I'm so glad I decided not to skip it but actually made them get off their butts and look for my hold, because

Comments

[etrangere]

wow. I really admire your ability to write in depth, in detail and in quantity about books o_o I wish I'd retain enough memory of the books to have real conversation with you on that.

I think the line you quoted makes me want to ship Morrolan/Vlad too XD

Have you read Martha Wells' Element of Fire? Your comment about a weakness for queen/courtier made me think of it; though in this case the courtier is a former lover of the queen ^^

[hamsterwoman]

Aww, thank you! Although this is rather long even for me... I've never maxed out LJ post length in a reading roundup post before, and usually I'm writing about more books than this!

I wish you remembered them well enough to talk about them too... but actually part of the reason I wrote so much is that I know otherwise I will just remember nothing at all three months from now, so I'm not surprised you don't. Like, seriously, this was at least my third and maybe fourth time reading Taltos, and the only detail I actually remembered was Vlad being pleasantly surprised that Sethra and Morrolan would eat in the same room with Loiosh. Everything else was pretty much a blur. XD

I think the line you quoted makes me want to ship Morrolan/Vlad too XDMwahaha! But, yeah, the slashiness of a couple of those lines is rather difficult to overlook. It's kind of funny, apparently every time I reread Taltos my Vlad/Morrolan shipping goes into high gear, and then I try to remember why I ship it so hard, but don't actually recall until the next time I

[lyssa027]

I finally read Dead in the Family , I liked it a lot ;-)

[hamsterwoman]

Oh cool! I quite liked it also, with the focus on all the different kinds of families especially. Do you feel like Jason is a bit less useless now, btw? I did start liking him more after this installment.

[lyssa027]

I liked Jason more after this book, and I also really found myself liking Claude

[hamsterwoman]

I started liking Claude more, too. He was quite adorable with Hunter! (And I thought it was rather amusing that Hunter thought both Claude and Eric had hair "like a lady" XP

[cowsruletheworl]

Oh, maybe I should pick up 500YA again (I DNF'd it bc it was just too long plus not enough Adron and Aliera for my liking) As for the numerous digressions about Aliera's breathtaking beauty, I believe there's a simple in-universe explanation about it: Paarfi's survival instinct. His books seem to be best-sellers in Dragaera so are likely to reach Castle Black. Morrolan is portrayed in TVA as a future great man already having done some glorious deeds, but also young, vain and clueless; he's a flawed character both in Vlad's "reality" and in fiction and we love him for that. However, Morrolan has a sense of humor and is self-aware enough to let it slide. Aliera, on the other hand... is exactly the type of person to hunt the author for sport a soul-sucking Great Weapon in hand if she happens to be displeased with her portrayal in his book. There is also coincidentally no mention of her height in 500YA (as far as I remember).

"Molric e'Drien, Adron's loyal chainman, lay bleeding from several wounds pinned beneath his fallen horse, proud

[hamsterwoman]

I ended up liking 500YA a lot, to the point that I'd list it among my top Dragaera favorites. I wouldn't have said no to more Adron and Aliera, of course, but I did really love what we got of Adron there. And I think it's just a well-written book, because it kept my attention even though I knew what it was all leading up to, and pretty much what would happen to everyone we were spending time with -- but I felt like it managed to maintain narrative tension anyway.

Aliera, on the other hand... is exactly the type of person to hunt the author for sport a soul-sucking Great Weapon in hand if she happens to be displeased with her portrayal in his book. There is also coincidentally no mention of her height in 500YA (as far as I remember).I think you're right about the height! Which I'd not noticed before, but that's delightful XD I like your explanation for why Paarfi keeps talking up Aliera's beauty, and the difference you point out between how Aliera and Morrolan are likely to take criticism in a historical romance :) (though I do

oh right, LJ character limit...

[hamsterwoman]

How does Adron's right hand man Baritt react to his best friend's nephew and heir being raised by the Eastenders he dispises? (Spoiler: poorly, as we may see in Taltos.)

I hadn't thought about Baritt in that context, but ooh! There is clearly something weird going on between those two, and maybe that's part of it.

Is his extremely rigid honor code due not only to him being honorable as every e'Kieron but also to, unlike any other e'Kieron, having his sense of honor being questioned on a regular basis (bc how could he be honorable when he was raised by the filthy Eastenders who have no sense of honor whatsoever?Nod -- to me, too, Morrolan's extra-super-rigid sense of honor, which seems to baffle even other Dragonlords, seems like a kind of assimilation thing: he doesn't have the instinctive cultural sense of how much honor is appropriate (I mean, he probably does a bit, because dragon DNA or whatever, but certainly a lot of it is Nurture), and so in true Morrolan "anything worth doing is worth overdoing" fashion decides the way to