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snugglekittyLast week, Crystal Soldier showed up at my door. I'm one of the rabid fans who pre-orders all new Liaden books, jumping up and down and chortling with glee, generally. I held off on reading it until I was in an okay mood - didn't want to rush anything, wanted to enjoy it as much as possible.
I finished it this afternoon. It's half of a duology, so it kind of stops in the middle, which I expected. And those of us who have read other Liaden books know already what happens to the main characters in the rest of their lives, so it wasn't a painful cliffhanger.
I liked the book a lot. A relief - I had been worried, since I didn't really enjoy Balance of Trade, even though I loved the novella it was based on. The authors are continuing to integrate more hard sci fi into their works, and they seem to be getting better at it. It didn't seem as tacked on as it did with Balance of Trade. Like many Liaden books, it features a hardbitten deadly female and a deadly but more soft-spoken male. They don't seem to be trying too hard to make the books exactly match the excerpts from Cantra's log book in the later books (or maybe we're just not there yet) and I feel good about that. I think that if they tried to make it too identical, it wouldn't have many surprises.
And I just have to say that I LOOOOVE the idea of genetically engineered scholar-assassins. If I could be one when I grew up, I probably would.
I finished it this afternoon. It's half of a duology, so it kind of stops in the middle, which I expected. And those of us who have read other Liaden books know already what happens to the main characters in the rest of their lives, so it wasn't a painful cliffhanger.
I liked the book a lot. A relief - I had been worried, since I didn't really enjoy Balance of Trade, even though I loved the novella it was based on. The authors are continuing to integrate more hard sci fi into their works, and they seem to be getting better at it. It didn't seem as tacked on as it did with Balance of Trade. Like many Liaden books, it features a hardbitten deadly female and a deadly but more soft-spoken male. They don't seem to be trying too hard to make the books exactly match the excerpts from Cantra's log book in the later books (or maybe we're just not there yet) and I feel good about that. I think that if they tried to make it too identical, it wouldn't have many surprises.
And I just have to say that I LOOOOVE the idea of genetically engineered scholar-assassins. If I could be one when I grew up, I probably would.
