Damn, that woman can write

[elfs]

So, I just finished reading A Civil Campaign, the second-to-last Miles Vorkosigan novel, and I can only read in awe at the way everything in Bujold's story fit together, the complete intertwining of storylines and incidents, the way she foreshadows without telegraphing. I can tell now when I'm being set up, because she wastes not a word on things of no importance, so when she gives a paragraph of botany or history you know it'll mean something later-- but she's so damned good you have no idea what.

I wish I could write like that. Now I have to go out and find Diplomatic Immunity.

One thing that I've discovered is that Bujold uses italics too much. I didn't know this before, as I was using an e-book reader that didn't support italics. But now that I've actually read her on paper I find that I didn't enjoy it as much. She gives too much away with her italics; I like hearing the voice the authors words create, rather than the artifice of emphasis granted by italicization. Bujold is good enough she doesn't need that kind of crutch.

Comments

The italics may not be her fault

[maklyr.livejournal.com]

As C. J. Cherryh pointed out many years ago on her website, copyeditors have a lot of leeway to do "stupid" things to your manuscript. One of the incidents she recounts features a young copyeditor who consistently revised Cherryh's grammar incorrectly, to the point that she simply gave up trying with that particular sentence.

Given that I have noted an overweening abundance of italicized text in other Baen publications and that I think Bujold rocks, I'd give her the benefit of the doubt and blame her copyeditor(s). :)