This book is from 2009, but I bought it the other month because my Emacs book package told me I’d missed it.
And indeed, I’ve read all of Bujold’s other books, but after starting this one, I’m wondering whether I skipped this book on purpose.
I really like Bujold’s books in general, and especially her Vorkosigan series. This one, though, is the fourth book in her Sharing Knife fantasy series, and reading this volume, I sorta remembered that I wasn’t really thrilled about the first three novels.
It’s not that it’s badly written or anything — it’s Bujold, so of course it’s pretty good. I’m reading this and I’m thinking “hey, this is very enjoyable, this is very cozy… AND I”M BORED OUT OF MY SKULL hey, did I have any outstanding Github issues I could tinker with? anything is better than continuing to read this OOPS what am I saying? I’m enjoying this” and so on.
Goodreads calls this a fantasy/romance, and I guess I can see why — it’s a pretty romantic fantasy. But it’s not a romance novel at all. The book is sort of exploring how a couple people try to change how their world functions — by exploring the magic system, and persuading people. So it’s a slightly science fictioney take on fantasy, if anything.
It’s just that it’s so boring.
(But it does pick up in the last quarter of the book.)
Predictably enough, it’s the highest-rated book in the series on Goodreads — all series tend to have higher scores after the first couple of books. People who didn’t like earlier books in a series will naturally stop buying that series. The only exceptions are when a series takes a gruesome downturn, but that’s not the case here.
But there’s some higher-rated reviews that have the same frustrations that I have.
Horizon (2009) by Lois McMaster Bujold (buy new, buy used, 4.06 on Goodreads)