A couple-three years back, I devoured the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, all in a row in a manner that I clearly no longer utilize. They were good, and I recommend them highly. That said, I was of course interested in the idea of her new book (which has since started to turn into a series of its own), and I eventually snagged a copy of The Curse of Chalion. Only, when I started to read it four months ago (maybe six?), I got about a page and a half in, felt like I was being betrayed into generic fantasy of the most boring stripe, and set it aside for a magical place I like to call the future.

The good news is this: the future has come, and it turned out to be a lot brighter than I would have guessed. I’m not even sure what was so objectionable about that first page; I guess it was just a matter of mood. Anyhow, it’s cool. Cazaril, our hero, is returning home to recapture the simple life he remembers as a castle page, after spending some time as a galley slave. Only, the thing about heroes is life never turns out quite as they hope, and he’s instead re-embroiled in the same politics that led to his original fate (but at a much higher, or perhaps deeper, level) faster than you can make up an appropriate metaphor.

Good stuff: politics, swordplay, treachery, chases, romance, a medieval wet t-shirt contest, demons, and the mysteries of the past and the present. Not only that, but her prose has gotten prettier than I remember it being; from time to time, I’d forget and think I was reading Kay. Finally, it rates well on a theological level. Her version of how gods and men interact with the world and each other is a reasonable approximation of how I imagine these things to work, too, at least. Also, I like that religiousity can be important, nay integral to the storyline without at the same time making the story look like a Chick tract. At some point, I will buy the first sequel and read it too, continuing my ongoing tradition of reviewing any given book months or years after the general public has forgotten it was ever published. Because that’s the kind of quality that I’ve always promised to provide to you, the reader.