![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienI took a sick day yesterday; today I'm feeling better, I think. It's hard to be sure sometimes; I have a combination of a well-tuned immune system and an overactive imagination that tends (not invariably, but often) to mean that when people around me are going down like flies I get a couple of days of feeling vaguely off-colour and not being sure whether I'm imagining it or really fighting off some attenuated version of the prevailing lurgy.
Anyway, I ended up finishing the Mageworlds trilogy (Price of the Stars/Starpilot's Grave/By Honor Betrayed), reading the last volume in one afternoon; I'd read the first volume a few weeks ago, and the second mostly over the weekend.
It may be unfair to compare these to the Liaden series, but the combination of spacefaring aristocrats and magic/psi powers makes the comparison hard to resist, and to my mind they don't come out of it all that well, being considerably rougher around the edges, both less elegant and less emotionally engaging. Still, there are plenty of exploding spaceships, and a nicely twisty, fast-moving plot playing out across the dozen or so planets making up the 'Civilized Galaxy', using familiar props and backdrops that don't require a lot of infodumping background to make sense.
On the other hand, I'm about a third of the way into Robin Hobb's Shaman's Crossing, and about eighty percent of it so far has been infodump under a monomolecular layer of disguise. The setting is interesting, but I'd have thought an author of Hobbs' experience and standing could do a less clumsy job of introducing it. I do remember that it took me at least half a book to get caught up in the Liveship series, so I'm not giving up on it yet.
Anyway, I ended up finishing the Mageworlds trilogy (Price of the Stars/Starpilot's Grave/By Honor Betrayed), reading the last volume in one afternoon; I'd read the first volume a few weeks ago, and the second mostly over the weekend.
It may be unfair to compare these to the Liaden series, but the combination of spacefaring aristocrats and magic/psi powers makes the comparison hard to resist, and to my mind they don't come out of it all that well, being considerably rougher around the edges, both less elegant and less emotionally engaging. Still, there are plenty of exploding spaceships, and a nicely twisty, fast-moving plot playing out across the dozen or so planets making up the 'Civilized Galaxy', using familiar props and backdrops that don't require a lot of infodumping background to make sense.
On the other hand, I'm about a third of the way into Robin Hobb's Shaman's Crossing, and about eighty percent of it so far has been infodump under a monomolecular layer of disguise. The setting is interesting, but I'd have thought an author of Hobbs' experience and standing could do a less clumsy job of introducing it. I do remember that it took me at least half a book to get caught up in the Liveship series, so I'm not giving up on it yet.
