![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What Am I Reading Wednesday
Feb. 25th, 2015 02:32 pmWhat I am reading: Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman. It’s a bit of a slow-go, but not because I don’t like it, but because it’s on my Kindle. And I read on my Kindle when I commute to work and the past week I have been home with the flu.
Brother’s In Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold.
What I have finished reading: Labyrinth by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is her best novella, IMO. The setting this time is Jackson’s Whole, the planet where money can buy you anything and ethics can’t be found in the dictionary. The planet is ruled by “houses”, each with their own speciality like banking, weapons or genetics that are illegal anywhere else. And worst of all, House Ryoval who makes sex slaves, genetically engineered to fit the most perverted tastes. Miles is there as Admiral Naismith with his mercenaries for something that ought to have been simple, but rapidly evolve into something much more dramatic. As Bujold put it herself: “Trapped in Ryoval’s basement with a sex-starved teenage werewolf.”
The werewolf is actually Taura, a genetically engineered super-soldier and one of my absolute favourite minor characters in the whole series. Labyrinth is really a fairy tale where Miles is the knight set out to slay a dragon but instead find himself saving an enchanted princess from the evil wizard. Of course, being Miles he manages to save two enchanted princesses.
Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold. Another novella and this one is more space opera. Miles goes undercover in a Cetagandans POW camp, literally without a stitch on his body. It’s not a bad story at all, just not exactly to my taste. Both this one and Labyrinth as well as Mountains of Mourning are collected in Borders of Infinity which also have a frame story with Miles on hospital. The novellas all take place before Brothers In Arms, but the frame story takes place after.
Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold. An SF novel that fits into the Vorkosiverse, even though Miles is only mentioned. Athos is a planet where only men lives, the only contact with the rest of the universe is a cargo ship that comes once a year. A couple of hundred years earlier they have settled there for religious reasons, fearing and abhorring women. They reproduce through replicators, mechanical wombs and ovarian tissues that they brought with them when they first arrived. Now those issues are dying and for various reasons Ethan, Chief of Biology is sent from the planet to buy new ones. At the space station Kline Station he finds himself involved in a mysterious plot concerning some rather unpleasant Cetagandans, one of Miles mercenaries called Elli Quinn and a young man, Terrence Cee that the Cetagandans want very, very badly.
Bujold does her usual excellent world-building and Ethan is a charming hero, even if he isn’t Miles. He is absolutely terrified to be confronted with women, fully expecting them to be some kind of monsters. His initial reaction to Elli is dislike, but over times he comes to appreciate her, but not, thankfully, to the point that he finds her sexually attractive.
Ice Cold and Under the Pyramids, short stories by H. P. Lovecraft. I forgot Ice Cold last week, so I add it now. None of these are my favourites,
What I will be reading next: Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold.
The Horror at Red Hook by H. P. Lovecraft.
Brother’s In Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold.
What I have finished reading: Labyrinth by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is her best novella, IMO. The setting this time is Jackson’s Whole, the planet where money can buy you anything and ethics can’t be found in the dictionary. The planet is ruled by “houses”, each with their own speciality like banking, weapons or genetics that are illegal anywhere else. And worst of all, House Ryoval who makes sex slaves, genetically engineered to fit the most perverted tastes. Miles is there as Admiral Naismith with his mercenaries for something that ought to have been simple, but rapidly evolve into something much more dramatic. As Bujold put it herself: “Trapped in Ryoval’s basement with a sex-starved teenage werewolf.”
The werewolf is actually Taura, a genetically engineered super-soldier and one of my absolute favourite minor characters in the whole series. Labyrinth is really a fairy tale where Miles is the knight set out to slay a dragon but instead find himself saving an enchanted princess from the evil wizard. Of course, being Miles he manages to save two enchanted princesses.
Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold. Another novella and this one is more space opera. Miles goes undercover in a Cetagandans POW camp, literally without a stitch on his body. It’s not a bad story at all, just not exactly to my taste. Both this one and Labyrinth as well as Mountains of Mourning are collected in Borders of Infinity which also have a frame story with Miles on hospital. The novellas all take place before Brothers In Arms, but the frame story takes place after.
Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold. An SF novel that fits into the Vorkosiverse, even though Miles is only mentioned. Athos is a planet where only men lives, the only contact with the rest of the universe is a cargo ship that comes once a year. A couple of hundred years earlier they have settled there for religious reasons, fearing and abhorring women. They reproduce through replicators, mechanical wombs and ovarian tissues that they brought with them when they first arrived. Now those issues are dying and for various reasons Ethan, Chief of Biology is sent from the planet to buy new ones. At the space station Kline Station he finds himself involved in a mysterious plot concerning some rather unpleasant Cetagandans, one of Miles mercenaries called Elli Quinn and a young man, Terrence Cee that the Cetagandans want very, very badly.
Bujold does her usual excellent world-building and Ethan is a charming hero, even if he isn’t Miles. He is absolutely terrified to be confronted with women, fully expecting them to be some kind of monsters. His initial reaction to Elli is dislike, but over times he comes to appreciate her, but not, thankfully, to the point that he finds her sexually attractive.
Ice Cold and Under the Pyramids, short stories by H. P. Lovecraft. I forgot Ice Cold last week, so I add it now. None of these are my favourites,
What I will be reading next: Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold.
The Horror at Red Hook by H. P. Lovecraft.
