Vorkosigan Saga
Sep. 5th, 2014 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkAbout two weeks ago frith_in_thorns recommended I read the Vorkosigan Saga books, and then I did little else for a week or so and enjoyed myself immensely.
What I love about them:
- I love the worldbuilding so much. The wormholes, the Time of Isolation, the roles of the different planets; how it all has a history and everything has reasons and develops and there's so much politics and economics and pure chance involved, tech develops and society develops and different planets have different cultures but they all influence each other, but in different ways - it's extremely well done.
--Spaceships! Spacepirates mercenaries, -battles, -politics!
- All of the books have great plots, things develop from point A to point B and C in ways you can follow but not predict, there are always multiple things going on and you always know as much as you need to; some of the books reminded me of the best kind of detective stories the way it all fit together.
- Politics are important and messy and influence everything, when you have a fleet you need to think about accounting and political ramifications, it's always there in the back- or foreground and it's beautifully done.
- Everything that happens has consequences, good or bad, there's no reset button but it doesn't just stay there, things develop further.
- The duty and loyalty themes, yum, I love it.
- Character development, character relationship development and building, characters growing up and into and out of roles, drifting together or apart, being changed by what happens and changing what happens, characters generally being alive.
- The Crowning Moments of Awesome are often great.
I started with Miles' books and have now read all of them except Dreamweavers's Dilemma, the framing story of Borders of Infinity, and I still haven't finished Barrayar because I know how many unpleasant things are going to happen and I'm not in the mood.
Some of my favorite books:
Vor Game is fantastic because it has a great action/detective plot, and also because of Gregor, the suicidal runaway Emperor-by-duty. He needs so many hugs. Which he won't get, except maybe from Cordelia and not enough, because he's the Emperor. Forced to grow up fast, especially after the events of Warrior's Apprentice, and now trying his best but still very aware of his shortcomings. I have a lot of feelings about Gregor.
Memory is great because Miles has to grow up, Miles has to decide which life to lead, and also poor Illyan :( The detective/politics plot is great.
Civil Campaign is a very good romance/politics story. Come to think of it I think most of the books have aspects of different genres that they combine extremely well. Dono is a great example of thinking about what kind of consequences technology X could have, Ekaterin and Miles' proposal is pretty much perfect, and Nikki and Gregor are great together (when Nikki calls Gregor at the end I might have fist-pumped with glee.)
I also liked The Warrior's Apprentice, Mountains of Mourning, Mirror Dance, and Diplomatic Immunity a lot.
Shards of Honor is very obviously an early work and the author got better later. I was a bit disappointed by the two most recent books, though I still enjoyed them: I thought the plots of Cryoburn and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance were notably weaker and less "elegant" than in other novels.
Favorite characters:
Gregor, as already mentioned; so glad he finds Laisa!
Mark, because he's rebuilding himself even though it's hard, and Mark and Kareen as genius businesspeople in the background are a lot of fun.
Miles, because he tries so damn hard and does his best
Cordelia, because she willingly stays on a planet that she thinks is hopelessly backwards because of the man and people she loves and then has to watch that planet hurt them all the time but she stays strong
Ivan, because the position he's in with his family and his family of choice and politics and Miles and what that demands of him/makes him is so interesting and he tries his best (I'm not sure why so many people seem to think his marriage to Tej was stupid, at that point it was an elegant solution, and hey it worked out.)
Alys, because she's the power behind the throne and she does it so well
Ekaterin, because she survived and she's strong and I want a lot more of her
Aral, ever since Warrior's Apprentice
and several others I'm forgetting right now.
Of course the first thing I did after reading the books was look for fic. Good news: there are a lot of very good stories! (And it's still Yuletide-eligible this year. This year I'll finally sign up for Yuletide, I swear.) Not a lot of complete AUs (unsurprisingly), not a lot of porn (also doesn't surprise me very much), very good tie-in and background fic. I have a list of stories I want to rec, but not today otherwise I'll never finish this.
(Originally I thought I'd wait to post this until I finished Barrayar, but I don't know when that'll be and I'm procrastinating on finances.)
In conclusion: great series, will definitely recommend it :)
frith_in_thorns recommended I read the Vorkosigan Saga books, and then I did little else for a week or so and enjoyed myself immensely.What I love about them:
- I love the worldbuilding so much. The wormholes, the Time of Isolation, the roles of the different planets; how it all has a history and everything has reasons and develops and there's so much politics and economics and pure chance involved, tech develops and society develops and different planets have different cultures but they all influence each other, but in different ways - it's extremely well done.
--Spaceships! Space
- All of the books have great plots, things develop from point A to point B and C in ways you can follow but not predict, there are always multiple things going on and you always know as much as you need to; some of the books reminded me of the best kind of detective stories the way it all fit together.
- Politics are important and messy and influence everything, when you have a fleet you need to think about accounting and political ramifications, it's always there in the back- or foreground and it's beautifully done.
- Everything that happens has consequences, good or bad, there's no reset button but it doesn't just stay there, things develop further.
- The duty and loyalty themes, yum, I love it.
- Character development, character relationship development and building, characters growing up and into and out of roles, drifting together or apart, being changed by what happens and changing what happens, characters generally being alive.
- The Crowning Moments of Awesome are often great.
I started with Miles' books and have now read all of them except Dreamweavers's Dilemma, the framing story of Borders of Infinity, and I still haven't finished Barrayar because I know how many unpleasant things are going to happen and I'm not in the mood.
Some of my favorite books:
Vor Game is fantastic because it has a great action/detective plot, and also because of Gregor, the suicidal runaway Emperor-by-duty. He needs so many hugs. Which he won't get, except maybe from Cordelia and not enough, because he's the Emperor. Forced to grow up fast, especially after the events of Warrior's Apprentice, and now trying his best but still very aware of his shortcomings. I have a lot of feelings about Gregor.
Memory is great because Miles has to grow up, Miles has to decide which life to lead, and also poor Illyan :( The detective/politics plot is great.
Civil Campaign is a very good romance/politics story. Come to think of it I think most of the books have aspects of different genres that they combine extremely well. Dono is a great example of thinking about what kind of consequences technology X could have, Ekaterin and Miles' proposal is pretty much perfect, and Nikki and Gregor are great together (when Nikki calls Gregor at the end I might have fist-pumped with glee.)
I also liked The Warrior's Apprentice, Mountains of Mourning, Mirror Dance, and Diplomatic Immunity a lot.
Shards of Honor is very obviously an early work and the author got better later. I was a bit disappointed by the two most recent books, though I still enjoyed them: I thought the plots of Cryoburn and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance were notably weaker and less "elegant" than in other novels.
Favorite characters:
Gregor, as already mentioned; so glad he finds Laisa!
Mark, because he's rebuilding himself even though it's hard, and Mark and Kareen as genius businesspeople in the background are a lot of fun.
Miles, because he tries so damn hard and does his best
Cordelia, because she willingly stays on a planet that she thinks is hopelessly backwards because of the man and people she loves and then has to watch that planet hurt them all the time but she stays strong
Ivan, because the position he's in with his family and his family of choice and politics and Miles and what that demands of him/makes him is so interesting and he tries his best (I'm not sure why so many people seem to think his marriage to Tej was stupid, at that point it was an elegant solution, and hey it worked out.)
Alys, because she's the power behind the throne and she does it so well
Ekaterin, because she survived and she's strong and I want a lot more of her
Aral, ever since Warrior's Apprentice
and several others I'm forgetting right now.
Of course the first thing I did after reading the books was look for fic. Good news: there are a lot of very good stories! (And it's still Yuletide-eligible this year. This year I'll finally sign up for Yuletide, I swear.) Not a lot of complete AUs (unsurprisingly), not a lot of porn (also doesn't surprise me very much), very good tie-in and background fic. I have a list of stories I want to rec, but not today otherwise I'll never finish this.
(Originally I thought I'd wait to post this until I finished Barrayar, but I don't know when that'll be and I'm procrastinating on finances.)
In conclusion: great series, will definitely recommend it :)
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no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 08:03 pm (UTC)Ich fand einige Stories, die mir wirklich gefallen haben, ist aber schon ewig her. Wäre daher über frische Empfehlungen sehr dankbar. In diesem Universum lese ich auch gerne Gen und Het.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 08:11 pm (UTC)Ich hab nur auf AO3 geschaut, wär also interessiert an Geschichten auf anderen Seiten. Die meisten Fic auf meiner Liste sind gen.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-06 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-06 09:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 09:09 pm (UTC)I read somewhere that Shards of Honor started out life as a Star Trek fic. Which...actually makes a lot of sense. Not necessarily the Star Trek bit- it's obviously not a 'file off the serial numbers' job, but in....IDK. Fic is great practice for plotting and character voices and such, but the transition into original fic tends to leave people less practiced with filling in the details that fandom already knows. Like, I think Shards of Honor might be a great book to read last, because then you already know the characters and can fill in the details like you would reading fic.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-05 09:40 pm (UTC)