Something in me knows there's something more and it's so close I want to run.

[leahbobet]

I spent most of this evening avoiding my book tucked up in bed with my feet under the duvet, reading A Civil Campaign. This was impeccably soothing. I forgot about that clause in my contract wherein I read a certain minimum amount of fiction or I go insane. Fiction trucks are converging on the Casa and will resupply the populace in short order.

I am sort of taken aback at how Bujold's (somewhat?) reputation as a feel-good author matches with the methodical way she gives you enough to care about her characters and then dismantles them with sheerest efficiency (which is less this book than Mirror Dance, but they're sort of all one book). Part of that's the luxury of the well-written series; you can set things up in books one or two, build them through four or five more, and pay them off like a stunning blow to the head in book !whatsitnumber -- I'm thinking of Miles's letter in A Civil Campaign here, which sent me straight into tears, and wouldn't without all that raw context to work with.

(Tangentially, I haven't picked up Diplomatic Immunity yet, but I can kind of understand why the Miles books slowed/stopped/something. I can feel the downward trajectory of the structural arc there, the big structural arc. Part of it's the change in format: they go, by necessity, from military/space opera/caper books to whodunit/thriller plots to science fiction Regencies, and the other formats are harder to sustain. But the real tell? Everyone involved in those books has grown up, learned, developed their traumas, been utterly shattered by them, and picked up the pieces to the middle ground. They've found life. And that's...inevitably where the kinds of stories we tend to tell end.)

But anyways.

It makes me wonder if I'm going at this by the wrong end, in fact. If instead of carrying a big stick and writing dark little books, I should make like Sharon Shinn and Lois McMaster Bujold and write these popular books that appear light and fun on the surface, until you scratch them a few layers deep. Not just carry a big stick, but walk softly.

Because, y'know. Mirror Dance kicked just as many kinds of shit out of me as the end of Perdido Street Station. But I bet more people picked up Mirror Dance and the books before it and the books after, and kept on reading, and bared their bellies for that emotional shitkicking of their own will.

Comments

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I wonder similar things, but I don't think I have a fine enough degree of control over my footsteps or my stick, either one, yet.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I suspect the footsteps might be harder than the stick.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I worry, a lot, that the ideas I get and the stories I have to tell don't lend themselves to series.

But I also know I can't force that. So if it happens, I guess it happens.

[matt_doyle]

That letter always just floors me.

Of course, so does almost every page of Memory.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I cried all the way through it, and with books, I am a bit of a tough nut to crack that way.

(For some reason, with movies, I will bawl at the drop of a hat.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think both ways are good. And it's hard to say that Lois is underrated with as much attention as she gets--but in many ways I think she is. Or maybe underestimated is what I mean.

It is not always a bad thing to be underestimated a little.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Misconstrued, maybe?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but I think the way in which Bujold and Shinn are misconstrued tends to assume fewer dimensions than are actually there.

[blades-of-grass.livejournal.com]

I always hoped that when Miles settled into family life, Ivan would take off :) He was displaying some clues to his ability to fill Miles's shoes with a few diverting missteps of his own.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

cszego told me this afternoon that she heard somewhere that the new book would focus on Ivan, but she didn't know if that was just a thing people say or something real.

[theengineer.livejournal.com]

I remember the first time I read A Civil Campaign (it was at the Merril Collection), when I got to the start of Miles' dinner party I said to Lorna Toolis "This is going to be a disaster, isn't it?"

"Ooooh yeah" she said.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and the thing is, now that I actually stop and think about it? I could read that and wince and wince because it didn't feel like anyone, the narrative/author including, was laughing at that situation. It wasn't comedy of humiliation, it was humiliation. And everyone acknowledged it hurt.

Huh.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Anyone here ever read any of Donald Lamont Jack's Bandy books ( Three Cheers for Me, etc)? The ones I read, long ago, were like that - approached you looking like P. G. Wodehouse, then kicked you in the teeth with their actually-pretty-realistic take on the World Wars and the years between.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...oh hey. I haven't, but that could really come in handy as a resource for TEG. Thanks. :)

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Mirror Dance is absolutely my favorite Bujold book. I got to the end of it and immediately went to the beginning and reread it. The structure and thematic foreshadowing are brilliant.

malkatsheva and I were talking about this just last night. Our guess is that Bujold intends to do a book about Ivan, since he's the one member of the clan who hasn't settled into focused adulthood.