We met for lunch before heading over on Friday, August 27th at around 3 pm.  We thought this would be an easy task, as doors had opened for Deluxe attendees like ourselves an hour earlier, but alas, the line stretched around the entire north and east sides of the building when we arrived, and before long it was wrapping around the south side of the building as well.

Two hours later we finally got in and presented our tickets, at which time we were rewarded with wristbands, and that was it.  No swag bag or anything.  I think I’ve been spoiled by my experiences with Ad Astra and Worldcon.  I put the wristband on, not realizing that it was the sort designed not to come of without being cut, and so I was less than impressed at having to wear the damn thing when I went to the bathroom, showered, and ran errands outside of the convention centre.  Jenn had been clever enough to leave hers loose so she could slip it off.

We started on the exhibition floor, which was insanely crowded.  This was wear tons of booths were set up selling all the things I ever wanted.  GI Joe toys, classic Transformers, endless shelves of DVDs, and comics, and Star Wars everything.  And I had no money to spare.  Alack!  Alas!  But probably for the best.

We wandered over to the celebrity signing area, and were sort of appalled at the cost of autographs.  I mean, I appreciate the need for these people to make attendance worthwhile, and since the lines were quite large I guess they didn’t need to worry about demand, but still… I would have liked an Adam West autograph, or James Marsters, or Tahmoh Penikett, or Michael Dorn, but I could barely afford one, much less all of them.

I did spring for a Guild photo signed by Felicia Day and Amy Okuda, since I enjoy their work and—like many people of the male nerd persuasion—I have a somewhat mild desire to groom Felicia, albeit in a totally non-creepy way.  Really.  And Jenn and I split a photo opportunity with Summer Glau, scheduled for Saturday at 6 pm.  After that we went and got some of Jenn’s books signed by Kelley Armstrong.

At this point, we’d been on our feet for quite a while, so we wandered the floor some more before leaving a bit early.  We were rather frustrated by the poor organization for getting us in, and for controlling the flow of people.

Saturday, we arrived a bit after 11 to find a line wrapped around the building once again.  Thankfully, that line was not ours, but for people looking to buy a single day pass.  We were able to walk past them and in to the reentry doors with no problem.  There was nothing scheduled that early that interested us, so we went straight to line up for the Tron Legacy presentation to ensure we got seats.  This was, admittedly, more my interest than Jenn’s, on account of Bruce Boxleitner—Tron himself, though I better know him as Captain Sheridan from Babylon 5—being a part of the presentation.

They started letting us in early, after security confiscated all our phones and cameras, and we got some decent seats.  The presentation itself was kind of exciting.  It was hosted by Ajay Fry and Teddy Wilson from the Space channel, and first there was one of the tie-in game developers to show off the game.  Then, they brought out Tron Bruce and talked a bit before showing us the trailer and 7 minutes of footage from the movie itself—in 3D!  I don’t actually care for 3D that much, but I appreciated the effort to make the presentation seem special.  There was a Q&A thereafter, and then we were free!

To line up to get our stuff back, which Jenn did while I went to the can.  So, line up to get in, line up to get out, all sort of poorly organized.  By the time we were sorted out, it was already 1:20, so we decided to take in Tahmoh Penikett’s spotlight panel though it had already started.  Apparently it had started late though, because it didn’t seem like we had missed much.  He gave a pretty interesting talk about his work on Battlestar and Dollhouse, and seemed like a nice guy.

After that, I left Jenn to watch Felicia Day while I headed back up to the exhibition floor to try and get a free autograph from Boxleitner, as Babylon 5 is one of my favourite things ever.  I had to line up to take the escalator, because they were controlling how many people were allowed on the exhibition floor.  Rumors were circulating that even people with the 3-day pass weren’t being let in to the building because it was so crowded.

After visiting the Pure Pwnage booth to say hi to the guys (who have a Gemini nomination, by the way), I got to the Tron booth a bit after 2 pm.  He was scheduled to be there at 2:30, and I thought I was in luck—there was hardly anyone there!  Then I asked, as was told the line was around the back of the booth.  And across the aisle.  And around the back of the Marvel comics booth, and along one side.

On the upside, from my spot in the line, I had a good view of the Hasbro booth, which had some pretty sweet Star Wars displays, and I could watch the Marvel preview videos.  Eventually, Jenn showed up and joined me, flitting in and out to keep me and herself entertained.  As we neared the front of the line, she decided she was in the line, too, and so we both got free Tron Legacy posters signed by Bruce Boxleitner.  Sadly, he didn’t have time to personalize them, but I’m not complaining about free.

We figured the James Marsters session would be full, so we sought out food instead.  (We later found out we could have gotten in—oh well.)  Food turned out to be another lengthy lineup.  And then we went to line up for the Summer Glau discussion session.  She seemed quite shy, but had a few good stories to tell from being on set for her various science fictional shows and movies.

Guess what?  After that we went to line up AGAIN for our photo op.  The line went all the way down one hallway and across another, and continued to grow behind us.  But our line was dwarfed by the Stan Lee line, which I don’t think was pre-paid like ours.  And once the line started moving, they were able to process us quite quickly.  Our photo op was at 6 pm, and we were done by 6:30.  I look forward to seeing the resulting photo.

And that was the end of that.

Sunday morning we met at 11 (after I had a Cinnabon for breakfast).  This time there was a significant line of people with armbands waiting to get in, so Jenn and I took a spot in the shade and waited for the end of the line to reach us.  (It is possible that we may have filled in a large gap instead, but I fell no guilt about that.

We decided to stay away from the exhibition floor, and went on the spur of the moment to a Space panel with Ajay Fry, Teddy Wilson, and Natasha Eloi, along with two surprise guests: David Blue from Stargate Universe and Ryan Robbins from Sanctuary.  They were quite funny playing off each other, had incredibly hard questions for their giveaways, and ended the event with David Blue signing Ryan Robbins’ ass.  It was an unexpectedly fun time.

From there, we went to see William Shatner speak, and not in just as he was starting.  He was in the largest panel room, so we were able to get seats, albeit far from the front.  Shatner was… funny.  Really funny.  He had tons of funny and interesting stories to tell, poked fun at his cohosts and the audience, and worked the crowd well.  This was also an unexpected delight.  However, I was not crazy enough to try for an autograph after the fact.

From there we switched rooms to see Sendil Ramamurthy of Heroes fame/infamy.  He played Mohinder on that show, one of my favouite characters of the first season, who the writers made progressively more ridiculous as the series wore on.  He had a lot of interesting observations about his time on the show, and working as an Indian actor in general.

After his show, we were pushed out of the room to line up to come back in for the Michael Dorn panel.  I went to this mostly out of curiosity, to see just how geeky a Star Trek panel could be.  It was pretty geeky, but Dorn worked the crowd well, was happy to play to his Star Trek fans and discuss Worf in detail, and had funny stories to tell from the set and the things he’s managed to do as a result of his fame—specifically, riding in a lot of military aircraft.

By this point is was 4 pm, and our day was winding down.  Jenn left at this point to do some other shopping, and I wandered the exhibition floor one last time before heading home.

Overall, it was a fun experience wrapped in boredom and frustration.  It had an extremely commercial vibe about it, unlike Ad Astra or Worldcon or other book-oriented events, and all our 3-day pass guaranteed was getting to the exhibition floor—everything else we had to pay extra for or line up for.  As a result, there were a number of panels that we missed because we were lining up for something we wanted more.  I’m not sure I’d go back again, unless one of the following comes to pass: a) they have a guest that was a must-see for me, b) they seriously improve their crowd control and access issues so I don’t spend half my time in lines, or c) I have a ton of money to blow on the exhibitors.  If I can optimize the fun stuff though, then maybe….

The Last Airbender

I really wanted this movie to be awesome.  I mean, I want all the movies I see to be awesome, but for this one I had  especially high hopes.  This is because it was a live-action adaptation of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is one of the best things ever.

Now, I will admit to some trepidation when I heard that M. Night Shiyamalan was the driving force behind this film.  But, by all accounts, he was so excited by the cartoon that he fought to be able to make the movie, and at least the story was already coming from somewhere else, so there’d be no lame twist ending.  In fact, the first season of the show had one of the best endings to anything I’ve ever seen, so there’s no way he could screw that up, right?  And the trailers were looking pretty sweet, too.

But alas, all my hopes and dreams were dashed.  The Last Airbender had Lucas-esque dialogue, narrated montages that skipped over so much and explained character interactions rather than showing them, and just felt rough and unfinished.  It was also short.  I will grant they had a tough job, cutting 10 hours worth of TV down to a single movie, but they could have at least gone for a 2.5 to 3 hour movie rather than the abrupt 90 minutes we were given.

The ending also changed somewhat from the show, cutting out details making it just a little bit less awesome and a lot wussier.  Way to go, M. Night!  You could have filmed the last 3 episodes of the season shot-for-shot and had one of the best things ever on film, and you still managed to cock it up.

(It is my fondest hope that Shiyamalan was working busily away on a 3-hour awesome epic version of this movie when the studio told him it had to be released in a month, and so he whipped this version together in the little time he had, and that the DVD will have a super-cool Director’s Cut.)

The movie was not without *some* redeeming features: it did showcase a lot of cool ideas from the show, and the bending looked pretty good (though not quite right compared to the original).  Some of the actors were okay, but they weren’t given much to work with.

I wish I could recommend this movie wholeheartedly, but it was so rough, and so disappointing, I can’t.  About the best I can say is that if you do see it, the cool ideas that made it into the movie might inspire you to watch the original show, which is—as I have stated above—one of the best things ever.  (Also, if you do see the movie, see it in 2D—the 3D is the converted kind, not the filmed kind, and apparently sucks and makes the movie incredibly dim and an even worse experience.)

Despicable Me

This was a cute and funny CGI movie.  I saw this in 3D, but apart from a few token “wow” scenes nothing would have been lost seeing it in 2D.  It centers on Gru, a supervillain who gets scooped when a new villain steals the pyramids.  As part of his plan to regain his status as the most dastardly of supervillains, he adopts 3 orphan sisters.  Wackiness ensues.

From the setup, you can probably figure out the emotional arc of the plot, but it is still handled with charm and humour.  It doesn’t approach Pixar-quality, but it has plenty of laughs, some clever ideas, and some “Awwwwwww” moments.  A satisfying and entertaining summer movie.

Inception

This is the latest movie from Christopher Nolan, whose last movie (The Dark Knight) was all kinds of awesome.  As such, there was a lot riding on this to be a success, and a lot of hope from audiences that it would be different and good.  Thankfully, I think it succeeded on all fronts.

Inception is a sort of reverse heist movie.  Leonardo DiCaprio plays an expert at going into others’ dreams to steal ideas and knowledge who gets hired to *plant* an idea instead.  He has to assemble a team, make a plan, and then execute it (which inevitably goes wrong).  Wackiness ensues.

Now, the plot is more complicated than that.  A *lot* more complicated.  That may be the greatest problem in the movie.  They have to devote a lot of exposition to it in the first hour of the film, and then when the action kicks in it is somewhat-to-very confusing to follow what is really going on when the plan goes awry.  The overlapping action scenes are beautifully-constructed, though, and once you’ve given it a bit of thought, only the ending is left as ambiguous.

So, this is an excellent movie that is beautifully shot.  I saw it in IMAX, which was pretty sweet (except for sitting in the 3rd row like I did).  It’s not a simple action movie, it’s not quite a drama, but it is really good.  I recommend this one.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

I know, I know.  Disney movie, starring Nic Cage.  Why give it the time of day?  Well, we gave it the time of day because nothing was out that we hadn’t already seen that we might possibly find amusing.  But you know what?  It wasn’t bad.  In fact, I might even go so far as to say it was pretty good.

Nic Cage seems to have found his most natural role ever in playing a creepy, crazy old guy, and Jay Baruchel nailed his lovable nerd loser role (as he is wont to do).  The plot was a bit predictable, but it moved quickly, *mostly* made sense, and was pretty fun.  The visuals were good, and in some places genuinely clever.

So this movie was like the inverse of The Last Airbender: the trailers made it look awful, but it turned out to be surprisingly good.  It’s not the best movie of the year or anything, and it doesn’t really need a sequel, but it was a fun way to spend a couple of hours on a Friday night, and that is more than most movies can say these days.

For the novels, I will do individual posts to talk about them.  For the shorter categories, I may lump them together in summary posts.  For the non-fiction categories, I may also just have one humongous summative post.

The Aurora Awards (the Canada-only Hugo equivalent) are also open to voting now, but the period is open a few weeks longer and so I’ll see to that reading when the Hugo task is over and done with.

So, the coming month of posts may be literature-heavy, but I still have a bunch of posts about movies and concerts in the works, so I’ll try to push those through as fast as I can.  I hope I can make some headway in this.

But a man can’t live on happy feelings alone, and so after I got back to the dive I call a home, I got some food, and a shower, and waited out the heavier rain.  I had a case on the books, and today I had to do something about it.

See, a Mr. Interweb had been coming by the office more and more often, of late, lamenting that science fiction magazines are dying—maybe even all of science fiction.  Worse, he was afraid it might be his fault, but he couldn’t stop what he was doing, now.  He was too far along, and too heavily invested in being what he was.

This was all well and good, but until someone is actually dead, there’s not much for a private dick to do.  That’s when Mr. Interweb pulled out the show-stopper.

“I know where the bodies are buried,” he said, sinking into the wobbly chair across from my desk with a dejected sigh.  “I… I didn’t kill them.  Not all of them.  Some were killed by cheap books, some by radio, some by television and video games and movies, and some from simple neglect.  Some of them just couldn’t compete.”  He looked me in the eyes, then, and I shivered at the empty loneliness that hung behind his glassy stare.  “But I know where the bodies are.”

And so it was that, after the rain stopped, I found myself trudging toward Toronto’s Lillian H. Smith Library, where the annual Pulp Show and Sale was being held.  I had been to this place a couple of times before, for a panel and a book launch—it maintained its science fiction connection through ownership of The Merril Collection.  I had already missed most of the scheduled activities, but the dealer’s room in the basement was still going strong.

The stench of old paper filled the room like the stink of death.  Bodies were everywhere, some wrapped in plastic, others just crammed into boxes, creases in their covers, rips and tears revealing the yellowing pages within.  There was a bustling trade in these antiquities—issues of The Shadow were priced at several hundred dollars—and there were knock-offs available for considerably less.

What struck me was how many there were—Mr. Interweb hadn’t been kidding.  There were a lot of bodies, many of them from before his time.  Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Startling Stories were among the many science fiction and fantasy pulps, plus countless others in different genres.  Makes a man envision a time with newstands full of entertainment and fiction, not celebrity gossip and exercise tips.  Makes a man think he’s too old for this game.

A kind dealer pointed me toward his discount bin, where I picked up a copy of Planet Stories from Summer 1955 (featuring stories by Poul Anderson and Leigh Brackett) and an issue of Startling Stories from April 1952 (featuring another Brackett and one by L. Sprague de Camp).  (Must remember to bill Mr. Interweb for expenses.)  What struck me most as I skimmed through them was how little today’s “Big Three”—Analog, Asimov’s, and Fantasy and Science Fiction—have changed from the style of 50 years past.

Sure, these old magazines were a bit larger, and so the text was in two columns instead of one, but they were still printed on that same newsprint-style paper, with the glossy colour covers and a few black-and-white illustrations inside.  But apart from that, you’d almost think they were published at the same time.  Makes a man wonder if Mr. Interweb is the only problem they face if they’re to survive—I mean, there are not a lot of other magazines looking like that on the shelves today, and the ones you do see are even worse off.

And so I left the show, feeling somewhat pensive.  As Mr. Interweb suggested, there were indeed bodies.  But I was left with more questions than answers.  We knew—or at least suspected—what killed these old pulps, but it was little help in keeping the surviving magazines from suffering the same fate.  The case wasn’t closed, not by a long shot.  But the library soon would be, and so I called it a day.

Now, strictly speaking, my secondary title up above (“My First Con”) is not entirely accurate — some twelve years ago, as I dimly recall, there was a new con started up in St. John’s, NL, and I attended the first one.  It was a modest affair, with no panels that I can recall, although I do remember a filk singalong.  I’m not sure if there was more than one, and I am given to understand it bears no relation to the current Sci-Fi on the Rock convention.  Anyway, I don’t really count that as a proper first, since it was missing a few crucial elements (panels, guests of honour, more than one room, etc.) and generally felt a bit awkward.

So, back to Ad Astra.  I actually had a fairly busy weekend apart from the con, what with some friends visiting from out of town, and other things in my life, so I missed many of the typically high-profile con events like the Masquerade and various parties — basically, anything in the evening was right out.  Instead, I focussed on the panels (with a few quick book-signing escapades thrown in for good measure).

On Saturday, I got there in the afternoon, and managed to take in the panels “How to Edit Yourself”, “Different Kinds of Fantasy”, “What is Real Evil?”, and “Too Many Characters”.  Sunday saw panels on “Working with a Smaller Press”, “Fields of Plenty for Writers”, “Minions”, and “First Contact”.  (Clearly, I split my interests between the writing track and more general programming.)

I think my favourite panels were actually two of the writing ones, on self-editing and “fields of plenty”.  The panelists had great chemistry; they played off each other, took up leads that others dropped, and shared the stage well.  They just flowed very well.

The panel on evil was also quite interesting, with Peter Watts at one extreme almost apologetically suggesting there is no evil except as a way to label others, and the other panelists running the gamut all the way to religious concepts of evil.  There was some good and interesting discussion.

The rest of the panels were also quite enjoyable, although some felt like the panel topic didn’t give the panelists quite enough to keep going for the whole hour, and by late Sunday afternoon some of the panelists were looking a little run down.

So, I chalk up my first con experience as a positive one.  I’m looking forward to Worldcon even more, now.

As an attending member, I get to nominate and vote for the Hugo Awards.  Every year, I’m always interested to see the winners, and often check out the winners or finalists after they’ve been announced.  This year, however, I get to come at things from the other direction.

This is a problem because, if you’ve been following my reading summaries, you’ll note that I’ve been looking at a lot of older works.  I can only nominate stuff from 2008.  And while I have a number of books published in 2008, I haven’t read any of them yet.

This brings me to my plan: to read as many of the 2008 science fiction and fantasy books, novellas, short stories, and whatnot that I can in the next five weeks, so as to make informed Hugo nominations.  Once the finalists are announced, I’ll try to read all of them, as well, before final voting.

Don’t be surprised if you get a flurry of reading summaries in the coming weeks.  And if any of you readers have read standout science fiction or fantasy books (or short stories, novelettes, novellas, etc.) published in 2008, let me know about them in the comments, so that I can check them out, too.

But I have found I’m buying books far faster than I read them, and realized I had to do something.  This year’s experiment has been successful in carving out chunks of reading time every month or so in which I devour a few novels.  I’m hoping to increase this in the coming year.

Anyway, enough about my reading habits… on to the reviews!

The Court of the Air, by Stephen Hunt

I picked up this book without having read any reviews or heard any buzz, solely on the basis of the prettiness of the hardcover edition available in Canada and the UK.  I just wanted to… to caress it.

Ahem.

The book — like many of the ones I own — sat on my shelf for a while, unread, until I saw an equally pretty sequel, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, tempting me from the store shelves.  One book I will buy on impulse, but I will not commit to a whole series in hardcover when I haven’t read anything by the author before.  This prompted me to drag The Court of the Air off my shelf and into my reading rotation, and I was quite pleased with the result.

The Court of the Air is a steampunk fantasy novel, by my estimation — though it is not strictly set in some alternate Victorian England, the Kingdom of Jackals retains strong echoes of such a setting, with orphans and workhouses and a criminal underground.  Of course, the Kingdom of Jackals also has steammen (sentient steam-powered automata) and a sort of crab-people among its citizens, is subject to float quakes (where chunks of the earth float away up into the air), and is terrified of the changes wrought on people caught in the fey mists.

The story follows the lives of two orphans.  Molly Templar was abandoned as a baby, and now keeps getting returned to the workhouse.  She soon finds herself the target of assassins, because of a secret carried in her blood.  Oliver Brooks, tainted by the mists as a boy and seemingly unharmed, is still an object of suspicion to his neighbours.  When his uncle is murdered, he has to run for his life.  Both are destined to become key players in the events about to shape the world.

Hunt has created a delightfully rich backdrop — even if some elements seem a bit over-the-top — and takes our two protagonists on independent, meandering journeys to show it off.  This helps develop the depth of the world, and the context of the conflict in which the characters eventually find themselves embroiled.  This tour of wonders is also helpful in priming the reader to accept as reasonable some of the deus ex machina moments that crop up later in the book without any explicit setup — having seen all the peculiar things that go on in the world, these new things suddenly thrown in don’t seem impossible or even improbable.

Somewhat refreshingly, Hunt doesn’t have his protagonists meet up until toward the end of the book, and even then, they don’t stay together long — they are two players in the game, and on the same side, to be sure, but they each have their own story.  The fun comes not in their interactions with each other, so much as their interaction with the quirky and intriguing cast of supporting characters.

The pacing of the novel threw me off somewhat, at first.  As I’m sure I’ve pointed out several times in these review posts, my preferences tend to lie in the “show me your big idea so I’ll care” end of the literary spectrum, so I tend to be a little slow getting into books that do a lot of setup and groundwork.  The Court of the Air didn’t fall prey to this quite so much, though — while the scope wasn’t revealed until later on, the early chapters themselves were quite satisfying due to the revelation of Hunt’s world.  The one caveat to this was, while each early chapter was interesting, it didn’t compel me to keep going.  I mean, I looked forward to seeing what came next, but I felt I could wait until the next night.  In comparison, I stayed up until 6 AM reading the last third of the book in one fell swoop, because by that point I had a sense of scope and arc of the novel, and I needed to see how it turned out.

From that, you might gather I enjoyed this novel, and you’d be right.  While it isn’t perfect — the prose is a bit rough in places, and the pacing kind of off — it has a lot of interesting ideas, a delightful setting, and a lot of fun action and intrigue.  It was entertaining of its own accord, and hopefully indicitive of great things to come from Hunt.

Dauntless and Fearless, by Jack Campbell

Dauntless and Fearless are the first two books in Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet series.  (Campbell is the pseudonym for John G. Hemry.)  These are straight up military science fiction, and though I’m not deeply read in the sub-genre, they seem quite excellent.  I discovered them via a post by John Scalzi, and after reading the first chapter online, I knew I wanted more.  Thankfully, there was a 4-for-3 sale on at the time, and so I got all the volumes in the series thus far in one go.

The premise is that John Geary died a hundred years ago, in a last stand born of desperation that made him into the legendary Captain “Black Jack” Geary.  Except that he didn’t die — he managed to escape his ship in a stasis pod, and it kept him alive in suspended animation as a century passed, until he was found once again.  Through some very unfortunate circumstances, he finds himself in command of the remains of the Alliance’s fleet, trapped in enemy space, in a military very different from the one he knew.  His only mission is to get them home.

As you might expect, that is not an easy task.  It will apparently take a full six books (of which there are four currently out).

Dauntless, the first book, has Geary working to overcome his own doubts, and whip the fleet into shape under his command as they try to escape the overwhelming enemy force.  Fearless directly follows this, concentrating on the next big endeavour on their journey home.

I found the pacing slightly odd in these, but I believe that is simply reflective of my inexperience with military SF — I’d read parts of David Weber’s On Basilisk Station in the Baen Free Library and it was paced similarly.  They tend to focus on a few big events or military situations, and cover them in great detail, which — as I said — feels a bit odd to me.  When I do a tally at the end of the book, the list of stuff that happened is typically short, but it was told in such a level of interesting detail that it kept me turning pages nonetheless.

That is, in fact, why there are two books included in this entry, rather than one — I finished the first, and felt the need to plow right into the second.  The plot is compelling, and Campbell is dropping in tantalizing hints of larger mysteries and conspiracies as well as some decent character development, all of which makes me a happy camper.  While my tastes in general do not run to military SF, when it’s this good, I’m happy to include it in my reading pile.

Young Miles, by Lois McMaster Bujold

This omnibus should need no introduction to a seasoned SF reader — it collects the first of Lois McMaster Bujold’s award-winning Miles Vorkosigan novels.  (Note to nit-pickers: I am aware that there are earlier books chronologically in the series, but I’m using “first” in reference to Miles himself, not the whole series.)  I had been hearing about this series for years, but ever time I looked at one of the books, something about them evoked a bit of a “meh”, and so I never read them.  It took years of praise and a four-for-three paperback sale before I actually bought Young Miles, but I am ever so glad that I did.

These books are excellent.  Well, at least, everything I’ve read so far.  Young Miles consists of The Warrior’s Apprentice, the shorter story “Mountains of Mourning”, and The Vor Game.  They follow the title character — Miles Vorkosigan, a crippled genius living the in shadow of his legendary father and grandfather — from the beginning of his career, as he gets himself into and out of trouble through sheer wit and brilliance.  Even these early books, we begin to see that he will become a legend in his own right — so long as he doesn’t get too far in over his head.

Bujold has crafted an incredibly compelling and likeable character in Miles, and that is what drives the story of these books.  The setting is fairly standard for space opera (though with many nice details and inventive ideas), and there’s no big idea or hook — what drew me in was the character of Miles, and how the story just naturally grew out of him.  In fact, when I finished Young Miles, I went straight into the next omnibus, Miles, Mystery, and Mayhem, and was only able to stop once we hit a story that did not focus on Miles.  (I read Cetaganda, but once I hit Ethan of Athos, I was finally able to stop.  For a while.)

I have since pushed Young Miles on a reader who does not normally read SF; she loved it.  I think I may have found, in the Vorkosigan novels, another universal recommendation — I think that, like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, I could recommend Young Miles to anyone and they would enjoy it.  It’s not overly technical or science-heavy, and the stories are so character-driven that you can’t help but be pulled along to find out what happens next.

I know I’m (very) late to the party on this series, but Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels are fantastic, and worth checking out even if you don’t normally read SF.  Highly, highly, highly recommended.