The Vor Game<\/a> off the shelf as a bathtub book. Or perhaps I was in a bad mood (YHB is generally a cheerful easygoing sort of fellow, but I do get into moods, now and then) and wanted that comfort book. Or I was just out of reading matter and wanted to fall back on something I knew I would enjoy. Anyway, I did pick it up.\nThis is the one with two very distinct parts, one on Camp Permafrost and one out in space. I hadn’t known (until looking it up on Wikipedia) that the first bit was published as a separate novella, but it isn’t really a surprise. On the other hand, the return of a major character from the first part is handled extremely well (imao), being a preposterous coincidence and shock to Miles and to us. And yet, there is a lovely inevitability to it.\n
As well, this is the one where Gregor has something of a personality beyond being An Extremely Good Emperor; the demands of the world set-up and the plots generally demand that readers are not allowed to think even for one moment about the possibility that somebody else would be a better Emperor. Which is fine—I like the plots and the set-up, so I accept that Gregor is who he is, but it’s nice for one bit of one book to think that he could have seriously fucked up. Yes, I know we are told in The Warrior’s Apprentice<\/i> that Gregor is on the verge of a serious error, but it is told from behind, in such a way that precludes his actually making that error. This one is real.\n
The good part, though, was that it turns out that I can re-read them comfortably, now, without thinking that I will have to write something that Ms. Bujold may well read. I mean, she might, of course. But I wasn’t worried about it. Which is good, because then I read three more.\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Which Your Humble Blogger gets comfy, although what I really could use is one of those trays that goes across the tub, you know? that you can rest your tea mug on, and a book, and maybe a little bud vase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19110,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13084\/revisions\/19110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}