Bonus Author Recommendation: Lois McMaster Bujold

So after my comic roundup I figured that I’d also tack on an author or two that I’ve picked up in my time here at Microsoft that I was not familiar with before. I guess I’ve had too much computer time with Liz zonked out with the flu :-P.

First off is Lois McMaster Bujold. It seems crazy that I’d never heard of her, given the number of Hugo (4) and Nebula (3) awards that she’s won. Perhaps my missing out on her has something to do with the covers of most of her novels. Uniformly ugly and encompassing all of the worst traits of Sci-Fi novel covers it’s enough to want to put them in a brown bag before you take them on the bus. But don’t let that deter you from the novels contained within those hideous covers she has written both an excellent Sci-Fi series and an even better fantasy series.

First off is Bujold’s “The Vorkosigan Saga.” This is her Sci-Fi series that she is most famous for. This is a great series, but due to some small issues it requires an investment to get started in. The first issue is that this series contains a large number of fairly short books, which can be read in either order of chronology or in order of publishing. Also (since the stories were so short) there have been several omnibus editions that combine earlier entries in the series which basically follow chronological order. I personally read them in chronological order (starting with the omnibus editions), but you do have to be aware that the first book in the series (Shards of Honor) was written quite earlier and is very much subpar for the series and really does not reflect on the tone or characters of the other novels. So my recommendation is to read chronologically but be aware that the books pick up quite quickly after the first and just keep improving from there. This would mean starting with the following omnibus editions (Cordelia’s Honor, Young Miles, Miles Mystery and Mayhem, Miles Errant) then move on to single books after that.

So I’ve now told you how to start reading her Sci-Fi series, but I have not told you why to start reading it. Basically Bujold just takes every aspect of a space opera series and does it perfectly. It’s not breaking new ground like China Meiville or Neal Stephenson; it is just does what everyone else has done, better than anyone else does. At no point did I ever say “wow, this is the best Sci-Fi I’ve ever read” but I ripped though the series in about a month and totally loved it. Her best quality is how she avoids the whole “endless series” vibe that both bad (Robert Jordan) and good (George R.R. Martin) series writers seem to get. She avoids this with a couple of neat tricks. First she always keeps the focus on just one or two characters and doesn’t let the series get muddied up with tons of minor characters (Jordan). Second, she keeps the books short and focused and keeps each book as a self contained story (R.R. Martin), think like the Horatio Hornblower books in that aspect. Also, she keeps things fresh by changing the tone of the series as she moves along. The first books are swashbuckling space operas, then as the main character ages they move more into detective novel in space territory and finally the most recent book was basically a historical romantic comedy mashed up with Star Wars (A Civil Campaign: A Comedy of Biology and Errors).

Now after all that, I have to say that I like her Fantasy series better than her Sci-Fi stuff. It is more recent, shorter and unlike the Sci-Fi series it doesn’t have as slow a start as she is already a much more polished writer from the beginning. The novels in this are The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls and The Hallowed Hunt. All of them are exceptional (Guy Guvarial Kay springs to mind as a comparison) but Paladin of Souls really stands out in particular as a fantastic novel (which picked up both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 2003). But they are fairly different in tone from her Sci-Fi series (much more serious and romantic) so I would say start with whatever series strikes your current fancy.

~Ian