books? Books!

[mimesere]

I got lots of books for the holidays, yay!

I just finished The Engine's Child which I bought because the cover is really really pretty. Luckily, the book itself turned out to be entertaining! and it didn't make me want to stab people in the face!

I also read some Mercedes Lackey books. Specifically the one that is Swan Lake. Because it's Swan Lake. and because, uh, apparently Mercedes Lackey books are the equivalent of a security blanket. Or it would be if I'd had a security blanket as a child.

I also read Steal the Dragon by Patricia Briggs, which was not my favorite book of hers. I dunno why. Boy, these are some awesome reviews, aren't they?

I also got Merchanter's Luck and 40000 in Gehenna by CJ Cherryh as well as The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds by Doug Westerfeld, who you may recognize from such books as Peeps and Uglies! and other things. I am very excited. I'm halfway through Merchanter's Luck and enjoying myself immensely even though people are being shady.

Comments

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

I too am reading the Swan Lake book.

Boy, it's Lackey by the numbers, and well, that is comforting.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Mercedes Lackey is, for me, like reading my preferred genres of romance novels. I don't read them for plot twists or...much of anything really except the warm fuzzy feeling of comfort reading.

So yeah, Black Swan was pretty much right there.

[azziria.livejournal.com]

Merchanter's Luck was the first of Cherryh's books that I read and I still really love it :-)

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

:D I finished it this morning and was all :D :D :D at it.

[xgenesisx.livejournal.com]

Specifically the one that is Swan Lake.

THE BLACK SWAN. I LOVED this book...it was my first Mercedes Lackey book ever. I'm gonna have to find it and read it again sometime...

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Hee hee. My first Lackey book was Arrows of the Queen and...well. She's been pretty consistent since then. It's very comforting.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

People are always shady in Cherryh! Have you read her before or do I get to inundate you with recs?

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I have not read Cherryh before :) Inundate me!

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Yay! So Merchanter's Luck and 40,000 in Gehenna are both part of this vast sf universe called the Union-Alliance universe, which spans centuries and I think two dozen books, most of which aren't connected except by setting and don't need to be read in any particular order. They can vary pretty widely in focus, so liking one isn't exactly a guarantee of liking another. I will be curious to see if you like 40,000 in Gehenna actually -- it's this complicated planet-colonization-and-the-planet-colonizes-humans-back multigeneration saga that I didn't like at all the first time I read it, but which I have grown increasingly to respect and find fascinating.

My favorite Cherryh and one of my favorite books ever is Cyteen, which is related to 40,000 in complicated ways, and is set in the scientific center of the Union, who are the bad guys in most of the Union-Alliance books. It involves attempts to recreate a psychological copy of a genetics genius in her biological clone and has lots of fascinating things to say about genetics, history, and nature vs. nurture. A lot of people hate it because practically everyone in it is monstrous. I like it partly because it has the only explicit gay couple in her books, Justin and Grant, who are all desperate and desperately devoted to each other and awesome. I think you would like them, but I am not sure you would like them enough to stand the rest of the book.

The book that is most related to Merchanter's Luck by plot is Downbelow Station, but it's not very like in subject, since it's a big multi-POV world-changing kind of book. The books that I think are most like Merchanter's Luck are probably Heavy Time and Hellburner, a duology also published as Devil in the Belt, which are I think the only novels set in the Solar System, and the earliest in her future history. They're about ... desperate people trying to make good. This actually summarizes about 95% of Cherryh's novels.

The Faded Sun trilogy (reprinted as in an omnibus as The Faded Sun) were among the first Cherryh books I ever read, and I'm still hugely fond of them. Humanity stumbles into a war between two alien races, and a human soldier gets lost among the enemy aliens and learns their traditions, and things get weird. Cherryh does really neat aliens.

The Chanur books are the favorite of a lot of people I know, although not me: they're about a female-dominated feline species of aliens who live in a Compact of uneasily allied alien groups. I think there are, like, four or five different species of alien, all of which are really different from each other.

You might also like Cuckoo's Egg, which is about an alien martial arts master raising a human baby for mysterious reasons.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

YAY BOOKS!

I like 40000 in Gehenna so far, but no one's done anything really shady, so it is still up in the air. Um. Thus far, I like the biologist guy and Jin *string of numbers I don't have handy* the best. But it is early going yet. I loved Allison in Merchanter's Luck.

um. That's all I got so far. I think I tried to read the Chanur books several years ago and failed massively and just never tried Cherryh again. I am willing to give it a try though, so I am excited about recs.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

For me, the first Chanur book massively failed on first reading and then again on me going back later, but reading from #2 on I really liked the series.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I will keep that in mind! I am always up for new authors.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I wanted you to know because the first Chanur book was the first Cherryh I read, and since I disliked it I didn't give anything else of hers a try until years later. It turns out that she became a favorite writer of mine! I just had the misfortune to pick the wrong first book.

My favorites of hers are Merchanter's Luck, Cyteen, Heavy Time, Rimrunners, the Morgaine series, and the Rusalka series.