Stefan's comments (member since Mar 27, 2009)

Stefan's comments from the Beyond Reality group.

Kerry, all the threads about the Vorkosigan books are still up, so you can jump into the discussion about the past books at any time. (Please do!)

I'm hoping Ron has Taltos, which would be a much better starting point. (I still recommend reading them in order of publication, at least until he finishes the whole series.)

No, in January - I'm reading an ARC.

I finished reading Nightchild by James Barclay (the review was just posted at FanLit), then re-read Ethan of Athos for the discussion here, as well as the novella Labyrinth. Started reading Iorich by Steven Brust last night and already almost finished it (hard to put down!). I'm also about to start reading Under in the Mere, a new novella by Catherynne M. Valente.

Not exactly distressed, although as the moderator of this group, I vaguely feel as if I should try to drag everyone on-topic again.

Then again, the author of the book under discussion is participating, so how can it really be off-topic, right?

So, um - carry on :)

Topic for discussion of the novella "Labyrinth", found at the end of the Miles, Mystery and Mayhem omnibus, and in the collection Borders of Infinity.

So - did anyone read it? What did you think?

PS In a few days, I'll set up a topic for the Borders of Infinity novella too, which starts off the next omnibus (and is included in the collection of the same name). Both of these take place between Cetaganda and the next novel in the series, Brothers in Arms.

I've added both The Snow Queen and World's End to the list (the first one nominated by Peregrine, the second one by Kerry).

I've added The Gates of Rome, although to me it looks more like historical fiction than fantasy, or at least I couldn't find any fantasy elements in the description... so take a look before voting, once we set up the polls.

Thursday is the last day to make nominations, and we'll set up the first round of polls on Friday - so if anyone else wants to add to the list, make sure to do so before then!

I finished re-reading the novel today, and I can't believe how much I forgot about it since the first time! Actually, all I really remembered was the fact that Miles wasn't in it, and some details about the planet of Athos.

First of all, it's so short! I think this might be the shortest novel in the series. I tore through it in just a few hours.

I loved the way the early mystery about what happened to the first shipment to Athos was resolved. I completely forgot about Horrible Helda, liked how she ended up being a running gag in the novel, and thought it was perfect that she ended up being responsible for the shipment going astray. I thought that part of the plot was hilarious and sad at the same time.

I also noticed now how closely this novel is related to Cetaganda - in terms of genetic engineering on the planet level, and sociological engineering (if that's a term). It's interesting that the 2 novels were written about 10 years apart.

I liked Ethan as a character, although I thought he lost his naivete a bit too quickly to be realistic. Elli Quinn acted more or less like a female and cute version of Miles, so in that sense the novel had the same feel as some of the other books.

My final verdict: it's clear that Ethan of Athos is an early novel by Bujold, and she really improved her skills since then. Still, I enjoyed the novel more the second time around.

PS For people who want to refresh their memory without having to re-read the novel, there's an exhaustive article about it on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_of_At...

I'm going to read the novella Labyrinth tonight, which is next in the internal chronology according to the time line in the back of the books. It's included in the Miles, Mystery and Mayhem omnibus, and in the collection Borders of Infinity. I'll create a discussion thread for it tomorrow.

Well, I finished re-reading it today. It was an even faster read than some of the other books in the series. All in all, I'd say it was better than I remembered from my first reading, but still not as good as most of the other books in the series.

Wow, we went from To Ride Hell's Chasm to the Large Hadron Collider. That must be a record for the most spectacularly off-topic discussion we've had since moving to GoodReads. :)

I started re-reading the novel last night and ended up reading half of it (and staying up way too late). Amazing how entertaining Bujold's novels always are, even one of her weaker ones like this one. I'll post some more topics when I'm done with it.

Kathi, you can click on "change your vote" in any poll you've voted in as long as it's still running. That way you can change from "currently reading" to whatever score you want to give it.

Unless anyone has significant objections (please post them here or PM me), we'll make the polls un-anonymous from now on. (I just realized I accidentally made the poll for the current Vorkosigan book un-anonymous, so I guess it's not a big deal...)

I would definitely like that! I'm thinking that, sine our current series is SF, we should make the next one fantasy... although we could take nominations for both again, and then let the votes decide. The Miles Vorkosigan books are scheduled until June 2010, so we still have a way to go with that one... unless we want to start a second (fantasy) series to run concurrently.

Sisimka - good idea. Although I don't know if that should be an anonymous vote or... Ow, my head.

Well, the general rule is that book 2 can only be nominated if we've read book 1, book 2 can only be nominated if we've read books 1 and 2, and so on. So in that sense, we'd have to go with World's End.

(We read The Snow Queen so long ago that I barely remember anything about it though. Don't know about anyone else... )

I'm going to throw in a couple of nominations myself this time:

For Fantasy: Sasha by Joel Shepherd. You can read my review here.

For SF: The Quiet War by Paul J. McAuley. Haven't read it yet, but it's on my TBR pile and looks really good.

Since it's already popped up in the no spoiler topic, I thought I'd start a separate topic where people can discuss the planet Athos and how realistic it is. Have at it!

Jo Walton's next re-reading project on tor.com appears to be the Dragaeran books! The introductory post just went up:

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_...

If anyone's curious about the series, that post sums up its strengths pretty effectively without major spoilers.

I really don't have the time to re-read these books AGAIN but I so want to right now!

That's something I never thought of - looking for Fan Art of books we're reading. Might have to create a topic for that, for some of our next group reads. I agree that Vlad's portrait is pretty good.

I have an ARC of the forthcoming next book in the series, Iorich, and was saving it for a bit closer to the publication date, but after reading your posts I'm all excited to get to it sooner :)

We could stop making the polls anonymous, if no one has any objections. The polls were anonymous in the Yahoo group too - well, the moderators could see the names of who votes, and at GR we can't so it's truly anonymous here. I mainly did this because I wanted everyone to be comfortable voting when we had authors in the group.

Yes, it was nice being able to vote for more than one choice, but that's about the only advantage Yahoo had, I think. Aside from that, the format at GR works much better for book discussion.