William's comments (member since Apr 16, 2009)

William's comments from the Beyond Reality group.

As fun as Naismith & the Mercenaries are, I prefer Miles as Miles and that's why I liked this book so much.
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I agree, I don't think Bujold could have written such a long, interesting series just focusing on Admiral Naismith. He is an entertaining persona, and his fleet does have some good plotlines, but the series has most depth when Miles is being Miles Vorkosigan. There's also not really as much opportunity for character development when focusing on Naismith, since he isn't a real character and Miles has to keep up a certain facade at all times when he is the admiral.

Peregrine wrote: "Thanks, Ron. Much as the violence in CP grossed me out, it's the ideas and thoughts in the story that stay with me, and I find myself looking forward to reading another Culture novel at some point."

There's a fair bit of violence in some of the other Culture books as well, but plenty of interesting ideas as well (I'd say that Use of Weapons and Player of Games in particular are much better than Consider Phlebas).

I believe the main population of Barrayar is meant to be Russian-descended.

If I was ranking them I'd probably rank The Vor Game a bit lower and Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos a bit higher. I'm curious why Ethan of Athos is so much lower than the rest, maybe some people don't like the premise?

I agree as well, I thought the plotting was a bit too implausible and contrived at times. Miles just happening to bump into Gregor in a place neither of them should be seemed particularly contrived and the way the two halves of the story are joined together by Miles' former antagonist showing up again in a completely wasn't any more convincing. It may not be the only really contrived moment in the Vorkoskigan Saga (see bits of Mirror Dance, for example) but I thought it suffered from contrivance more than any of the other books. It did also feel like two unrelated stories joined together and called a novel.

For those reasons I think The Vor Game is possibly the weakest Vorkoskigan novel due to the weak plotting and structure, although it is still an entertaining read.

"Now that he has a 'place' in the scheme of things, I expect the novels will be more like Warrior's Apprentice? (I hope so!)"

I wouldn't say that most of the later novels were actually much like either Warrior's Apprentice or The Vor Game, the two of them probably have more Dendarii Fleet space battles than the rest of the series combined .

There are definitely similarities between Breach and the supposed Orciny, in that they both occupy the gaps in between the cities with their inhabitants going between Beszel and Ul Qoma at will.

I don't know that there's really any evidence from the novel that Orciny actually exists - there is obviously a story and a mystery behind the artefacts but they come from before the two cities existed so Orciny as a concept wouldn't exist then (since the whole point of Orciny is that it is hidden between the other two cities). Of course, the myths could also have some basis in fact, perhaps the original undivided city was called Orciny?

Sandi wrote: "Frankly, I found the characters pretty forgettable and kind of cliched."

I liked the characters, but can't deny they were a bit clichéd in some ways. It is similar in a way to The Yiddish Policeman's Union (which I read a few months ago) which combines an unusual alternate-history setting and an unusual society with a fairly traditional detective-novel structure and fairly traditional detective-novel characters.

I'd probably rank Warrior's Apprentice above Shards of Honor but slightly below Barrayar and some of the later Miles novels. It is a good book and very entertaining, but I'd say Bujold improved as an author in her later books (later in terms of writing, not necessarily chronology).

I was reading a discussion about the book on another forum a few weeks ago, and one poster from Jerusalem said that she thought Mielville did a good job of conveying how people in a divided city can do a very thorough job of ignoring the people on the other side of the division.

One thing I couldn't quite decide when reading the book was whether the division had some reality to it, or if it was purely because the inhabitants of the two cities were raised from birth to believe in it. The fact that outsiders have to be trained to pretend to unsee implies the former but the mysterious artefacts being dug up do seem to imply that Beszel/Ul Qoma isn't just a typical East-European city with a few eccentricities.

I thought Mountains of Mourning was one of Bujold's best stories, and it does make a nice contrast to the space warfare of Warrior's Apprentice or The Vor Game to have a more low-key story where the stakes aren't as high and it only affects the lives of a few people rather than whole planets.

Stefan wrote: "Jon named the one thing I really didn't like --- the oh so convenient coincidence that Elena's mother was on the blockaded planet. Clumsy plotting like that would usually annoy me so much that I'd abandon the book, but I'm very forgiving with Bujold."

Bujold does overuse convenient coincidences in her plotting in my opinion - I wasn't particularly bothered by Elena's mother showing up, but in some of the later books the coincidences got a bit unbelievable - The Vor Game had some particularly bad examples (but more of that later).

Nick wrote: "I'm not particularly bothered by this, though, as I see it as a reflection of his trying to give meaning to his life and, ultimately, that of his race."

IIRC he isn't the last of his race - although we are told in the epilogue that the Changer civillisation is ultimately wiped out in the later stages of the Idiran-Culture War at the time of Horza's death the Changers' homeworld is still intact.

It was about 6 or 7 years ago that I read it, but I also remember it being very hard to stop reading, even when it was late at night and I had to get up to go to University in the morning.

Nick wrote: "But I think Banks was keeping a lot of aspects of the Culture mysterious on purpose -- because obviously Horza had only a limited view of the Culture -- and because in a huge, multivolume exploration of the Culture universe, the reader is only going to find things out little by little anyway. I'm anticipating a good time reading more Culture novels."

I think Banks has commented in the past that it is difficult to write novels set in a utopia such as The Culture since when all it citizens can pretty much have anything they want it cuts down on the dramatic possibilities a bit. I assume that is part of the reason that his Culture novels all focus to a greater or lesser extent on The Culture's interactions with other civilisations rather than being purely set in the Culture.

Kathi wrote: "What was it with Fal and the mountain climbing obsession anyway?"

Being obsessed with some hobby or other is a common trait among the Culture citizens in Banks' various books. I think the idea is that since they live in a utopia where they are not likely to encounter any personal challenges or hardships in day-to-day life, a lot of the Culture's citizens decide to set their own challenges to themselves to ward off boredom.

Jane wrote: "The death by sewage at the start and the torture and murder on the island near the start of the book were both scenes that the author had dreamed up to turn the readers stomaches. They didn't seem to add to the story or have any impact on the characters involved."

The bit on the island is certainly extremely violent and possibly gratuitously so, but it does have some thematic purpose as well. One of the main themes of the novel is the excesses of faith and fanaticism and the cult on the island is fanaticism taken to the extreme. Other examples of fanaticism would be the Idiran's motivations for war or the way that it becomes increasingly clear through the novel that Horza's vendetta against the Culture is based more on an irrational hatred of A.I.s than any other motivation.

I think Banks does also like to use violence to shock, he seems to include such a scene in most of his books.

Stefan wrote: "William, I definitely recommend Matter. IMO, it's the third best book in the series "

I do have it on my to-be-read pile (and the non-Culture SF novel Against A Dark Background), will probably read it sometime in the next few months.

State of the Art is a collection of short stories. I believe only the title novella is a Culture story.

IIRC there was at least one other Culture story, called A Gift from the Culture

I've read most of the Culture books (except for Matter).

Use of Weapons is one of the best Science Fiction novels I've read. The quality of the writing is very high and the unusual structure of the flashback chapters is done very well. There's a very effective sense of foreboding, you just know something terrible is going to happen at the end of the novel, but I still wasn't expecting the ending. It is very fast-paced with a lot of great scenes. Zakalwe is a very memorable protagonist.

The Player of Games is probably the second-best book in the series, an entertaining and intelligent novel with an unusual focus on the psychology of playing games.

Excession was also good, although marred a bit by an uninteresting sub-plot. It's probably the best novel for really exploring the full potential of the Science Fiction setting.

Inversions was fairly good, although only loosely connected to the Culture. In many ways, it feels more like an Epic Fantasy novel than an SF novel. Another very intelligent novel, although maybe not quite as entertaining as the best Culture novels.

Look to Windward was also intelligent, but maybe slightly dull at times although it did have its good moments.

I wasn't too keen on The State of the Art, I didn't think there was much of interest beyond the novelty of the Culture encountering 1970s Earth.

I'm currently reading The Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold. It started off a bit slowly but I'm about half way through now and it has become quite an interesting and entertaining novel.

With all the discussion of her Vorkoskigan series recently, I'm noticing a few similarities in her fantasy works as well in the characterisation and some of the themes (such as people being forced to hide the truth about past deeds).

I read it about a year ago. Having read most of Banks' Culture books, I thought this was one of the weaker efforts although it did have its moments. It is a good introduction to the Culture (I might have liked it more if I hadn't read some of the later Culture books beforehand) and the scenes in the GSV and at the end in the Command System were entertaining and fast-paced. There are also some subtleties in the plotting and characterisation that give things a bit more depth.

I thought the first half was a bit weak, the plot meanders a lot as Horza goes through various adventures which have nothing really to do with his overall quest and aren't intrinsically very interesting. I also didn't think it worked very well to suddenly introduce about 20 or 30 characters with short biographies of them, many of whom soon get killed off without ever getting proper characterisation - the large number of characters is a bit confusing at this stage. As the number of crew members diminishes the survivors do get more characterisation.

Overall, it was reasonably entertaining but it feels like Banks fell short of showing his full talent, some of the other Culture books are much better written, particularly Use of Weapons which I reckon is one of the best Science Fiction novels ever written.