The Fourteenth Book!

Today's post will be a geek-out post. An utter and amazing and ridiculous geek-out post.

You know when you get really obsessed with a series? The characters are endearing, funny, riveting, and so flawlessly drawn out that you're left flabbergasted by the utter audacity of the author being so good. It's just...just...not fair!

The plot is stunning, twisting, un-guessable, makes-you-jump-out-of-your-chair/bed/beanbag-and-scream or read so quickly you can barely process the words because you want to know what happens so badly. And yet at the same time you dread reading the last chapter because that will mean it's over.

You can't stand to put the book down, but you can't stand to read a moment longer because the sheer awesomeness makes you shiver. Every word feels like water to someone in the desert, or the most succulent food to someone who is starving. Cheesecake, honey, tea with milk, strawberries...whatever it is, it's incredible, and you can't get enough of it.

That is what the Miles series by Lois McMaster Bujold is like for me. You've heard me speak of her before. If you have never read these books before, you  need to. You have to. And I know, they're science fiction, and not everyone likes science fiction. Well let me tell you this-- this is not hard science fiction in that you can't understand half of what they're saying because it involves theoretical and practical physics that may or may not yet exist. That's Asimov's job, and takes a different mindset altogether to read. That's more like drinking a dark, dry wine, or eating a 75% dark chocolate torte. With raspberry puree. Yet Bujold's writing isn't soft science fiction either-- no timey wimey wibbly wobbly here. And let's admit it-- Dr. Who is fantastic and no one will ever be able to come up with a time-travel television series that tops it. But it's not physically practical, which ousts it from the hard science fiction genre. Keep apples and apples together, and oranges and oranges together (or would Dr. Who be better classified as a banana? Hmmm...)

Bujold falls somewhere in the middle. All of her science fiction sounds plausible, at least to me (but I'm no physicist), and yet it doesn't take a highly scientific mind to get it. Nor does it bend the edges of reality. No, she is delightfully detail-oriented, character-driven, and hysterically profound in every sentence she writes. I love her vocabulary and character development.

She has several anthologies in the Miles series, as well as several books that stand alone. The anthologies that I own, in order (and I have them all to date) are "Young Miles", "Cordelia's Honor", "Miels, Mystery, and Mayhem", "Miles Errant", "Miles In Love", "Miles, Mutants, and Microbes", "Memory", and "Cryoburn". Cryoburn ends off with what could have been a cliffhanger (an utterly agonizing and incomprehensible one!!!), leaving lovers of the Miles series gnawing their fingertips wondering if Bujold would have another for us...

...and word is out.

She does.

The next (the last?) in the series, "Captain Vorpatril's Alliance" (found here on Amazon.com) is coming out November 6th of this year. Focusing more on the illusive Ivan Vorpatril, cousin to main character Miles Vorkosigan, this novel promises to give new depth and understanding to the teasing, keep-out-of-trouble Ivan. I'm really looking forward to seeing what Bujold gives us regarding this engimatic young Captain. And yet I also wonder...if this next, newest novel of Bujold's, the fourteenth in the highly popular series, is focused mostly on Ivan rather than Miles, will she end there? Will she pen another that more or less concludes Miles' own story?

Will the fans let her do otherwise?

I know, personally, that I would love for her to keep writing until every possible tale has been told. I want more and more all the time. I'm absolutely in love with the characters-- Miles, Ekaterin, Gregor, and all the rest. With the conclusion of the last book (no spoilers) I can't imagine her not continuing.

So. November shall be a momentus month. And I'll hole myself up for about two days straight reading.