Book: Falling Free
Nov. 27th, 2009 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Lois McMaster Bujold
Details: (c) 1988 Lois McMaster Bujold; Pub Baen Books 1991; ISBN 0-671-65398-9
Verdict: Falling Free is exciting but somewhat unpolished.
Reasons for reading it: It's written by Bujold, obviously! And I've run out of the Miles books, so something else set in the same universe seemed worthwhile.
How it came into my hands:jack lent it to me, yay.
I get the impression that Bujold was trying to prove to someone that she can write proper "hard" SF as well as space opera, but the problem is that her attempt feels like a feminist-leaning Asimov pastiche, and doesn't quite match up to the standard of her absolutely top-notch character-centered space opera. I had a lot of fun with Falling Free, and indeed got so absorbed in reading the final section that I almost forgot to go to work one morning. And indeed if it had been written by someone else I would probably have praised it quite highly; "not quite as good as The Warrior's Apprentice" is hardly a damning criticism!
There are some lovely ideas in it, with the exploration of the dawn of the reproductive and genetic technology that forms an important part of the background of the Miles books. The problem is that the characterization suffers; the people are far from one-dimensional, and they are believable and sympathetic, but they are still more types than the truly original characters that are so much the hallmark of Bujold's best work. And, well, the narrative of the geeky but honourable reluctant hero who saves the world from the clutches of the evil mega-corporation is one that has been done to death. Van Atta is too melodramatically evil as an antagonist, and the Quaddies are too carefully constructed to be models of child-like innocence and the need to be rescued.
I enjoyed the way that Leo really does think like an engineer, but the long sections of technobabble didn't make me respect the book more because it contains Actual Physics, but rather came across as boring. I didn't really care about how they made a huge titanium mirror using scrap metal and an ice mould, because the whole reason they needed this extraordinary macguffin was so that they could jump an inhabited moon through a wormhole. With that sort of totally imaginary tech, it might as well have been dilithium crystals and skip the long detailed description. The descriptions of life in freefall were quite cool, but again, something that has been done many times before.
Details: (c) 1988 Lois McMaster Bujold; Pub Baen Books 1991; ISBN 0-671-65398-9
Verdict: Falling Free is exciting but somewhat unpolished.
Reasons for reading it: It's written by Bujold, obviously! And I've run out of the Miles books, so something else set in the same universe seemed worthwhile.
How it came into my hands:
jack lent it to me, yay.I get the impression that Bujold was trying to prove to someone that she can write proper "hard" SF as well as space opera, but the problem is that her attempt feels like a feminist-leaning Asimov pastiche, and doesn't quite match up to the standard of her absolutely top-notch character-centered space opera. I had a lot of fun with Falling Free, and indeed got so absorbed in reading the final section that I almost forgot to go to work one morning. And indeed if it had been written by someone else I would probably have praised it quite highly; "not quite as good as The Warrior's Apprentice" is hardly a damning criticism!
There are some lovely ideas in it, with the exploration of the dawn of the reproductive and genetic technology that forms an important part of the background of the Miles books. The problem is that the characterization suffers; the people are far from one-dimensional, and they are believable and sympathetic, but they are still more types than the truly original characters that are so much the hallmark of Bujold's best work. And, well, the narrative of the geeky but honourable reluctant hero who saves the world from the clutches of the evil mega-corporation is one that has been done to death. Van Atta is too melodramatically evil as an antagonist, and the Quaddies are too carefully constructed to be models of child-like innocence and the need to be rescued.
I enjoyed the way that Leo really does think like an engineer, but the long sections of technobabble didn't make me respect the book more because it contains Actual Physics, but rather came across as boring. I didn't really care about how they made a huge titanium mirror using scrap metal and an ice mould, because the whole reason they needed this extraordinary macguffin was so that they could jump an inhabited moon through a wormhole. With that sort of totally imaginary tech, it might as well have been dilithium crystals and skip the long detailed description. The descriptions of life in freefall were quite cool, but again, something that has been done many times before.
