I'm still processing it, but...

[elfs]

The difference between Weber and Bujold is that Bujold never stopped trying to figure out how to destroy the little lord.

Comments

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I think Weber finally decided to stopped making sense to putting her in those situations because she grew beyond them, where Bujold has a character that didn't grow up - until he turned 40.

To be fair...

[norikos-author.livejournal.com]

Honor was supposed to be dead by now. _At All Costs_ (or possibly the one before that, I can't recall) was supposed to have killed her off; her _children_ were supposed to be the ones who took down the real bad guys.

Then Eric Flint jumped the timeline ahead with _Crown of Slaves_, meaning that there wasn't time to let the kids grow up, and Weber had to do some hasty replotting.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

I rather like this notion.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I should have asked - which book brought this on?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Cryoburn, the latest book. It's 300 pages of set-up for one sentence of severe emotional impact, although I knew what was coming three paragraphs before Miles did (although maybe that's in character). I will say this, Bujold managed after a dozen novels to deliver a single sentence as hard, demanding, and affirming of the Motherhood Statement, as Banks managed to deliver its counterpoint at the end of Feersum Endjinn.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I suspected that was it.

FYI: At the end of the book, Miles is 39. At the end of "At All Costs" Honor is about 62.

The difference, in my opinion, is that it gets harder and hard to throw them into these death defying situations over and over and not be repetitive or to have the audience start saying "How stupid do you have to BE to go into these situations in the first place?"