Lois McMaster Bujold

The Curse of Chalion: Beautifully written, easily stands alone, excellent audiobook.

Lois McMaster Bujold has long been esteemed in the science fiction genre, so I expected great things from The Curse of Chalion, and I'm happy to report that I wasn't disappointed. This is an excellent piece of work! Bujold's story is completely fresh, and the world-building and magic system are unique, too. I was hooked from page one and it proceeds at a pleasant pace with plenty of surprises and plot twists. Characterization is deep and somehow Bujold made me really like the main character, Cazaril, right from the start, even though he is not the type of hero I thought I preferred (see here for the lurid details of that). As a psychologist, I especially appreciate how the characters realistically maintained their natural personalities throughout the story while maturing (or becoming more immature) as they grew from their experiences.

And, so importantly, The Curse of Chalion is beautifully written. If you've read many of my reviews here, you know that I tend to be very critical about the writing style. But Bujold's writing is perfect. I'd like to especially mention the dialogue, which I think is so hard for an author to get just right. Some authors make their characters so annoyingly quick-witted and perfect in speech that it's completely unbelievable. Lois McMaster Bujold characters pause, hem and haw, and say "um" just like I do. And they occasionally have conversations that provide a dry comic relief (I laughed out loud many times).

I read part of this book in print, and I listened to part of it on audiobook. There are many ways an audiobook reader can ruin a book, but I was, as usual, impressed with this Blackstone Audio production. Lloyd James is an excellent reader who has a nice voice and uses different voices and speaking styles for each character. It is very easy to follow and pleasant to listen to. I highly recommend this format for Curse of Chalion.

Curse of Chalion is the first in a series of books which are set in the same world and have some of the same characters, but which can be read independently. So, Curse can stand alone if you like, but I think you'll want to go on to Paladin of Souls because it's highly decorated (see above) and it tells a story which you'll want to hear after reading Curse. —K.H.

Paladin of Souls: Another wonderful book in the Chalion series

Paladin of Souls takes place just after the events of The Curse of Chalion and focuses on one of the minor female characters in Curse. It can stand alone, but you'll get a lot more out of it if you read Curse first.

This is another beautifully written masterpiece which won several prestigious awards, including a Hugo and a Nebula. Not only is Lois McMaster Bujold an excellent writer, but her world of Chalion is believable and complex, the magic is deep, fascinating, and just plain scary.

Bujold's Chalion is very far from the wizard-coming-of-age, orphan-boy-saves-the-world, or hunk-whips-up-on-the-bad-guys-with-a-cool-sword kind of fantasy epic. This is fresh. And highly recommended. —K.H.

The Hallowed Hunt

I think Lois McMaster Bujold has exactly the right idea with the Chalion series. Each book stands alone, but if you have read the first one (Curse of Chalion), you get all the background material you need to understand the geographical, political, and religious systems of her world. This means that later books (Paladin of Souls and The Hallowed Hunt) can have fresh new characters and plots, but we don't have to endure many info dumps. The magic system, meanwhile, gets more and more complex, as we learn more in each book. Perhaps best of all, the plot can wrap up at the end of each novel.

What I like best about Bujold is her wonderfully imaginative and complicated magic. I love how she lets the reader discover it a little at a time (it would be overwhelming if she threw it all at us at once). We learn about the magic as the characters do, and this makes for a lot of mystery and tension. Plots get deeper, more complex, and scarier throughout this series.

Bujold's characters are always deep, especially the point-of-view character whose private thoughts we are privy to. In The Hallowed Hunt, that character is Ingrey, a nobleman who bears a wolf spirit and has been charged to transport the noblewoman Ijada to the capital, for she's been accused of killing the prince who tried to rape her. The prince was dabbling in some dark sorcery which affected Ijada, and together Ingrey and Ijada must unravel the mystery of the spirit animals. As they learn more and more, the magic get deeper, darker, and actually quite frightening.

The Hallowed Hunt is another excellent installment in the Chalion series. I'm not rating it as highly as the others, though, because I felt like the climax at the end wasn't quite as tight as the previous two books. Ingrey, the hero, ended up correctly guessing some of the solutions and Bujold threw in a bit of romantic fluff involving two beating half-hearts that made my eyes roll. But, all in all, it was a very good fantasy and I sincerely hope that Bujold will grace us with more Chalion stories in the future.  —K.H.