nishatalitha

I have Bujold's new book. *gloats* It's the fourth in her Sharing Knife series, and now that I've read Horizon I can see why she wanted to call the second duology The Wide Green World.

Currently on the second read through and really enjoying it. Horizon concludes the story in a way that Legacy didn't and couldn't. I'm satisfied by the ending and I want more stories - even as the world expands and Dag and Fawn's knowledge and experience expand, at the same time, you wind up, you wind in as they come more together. And the world is a wide green place and I want to know what happens to other people. I want to see Luthlia.

People on the Bujold mailing list have been comparing it to a Western, but I've read westerns - well, Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey mostly - enough to know the genre, anyway. The Sharing Knife books don't feel like a western novel to me. They feel more like what Hamilton Public Library classified as Saga. I never read much of the Saga section; I was always more interested in the romance, science-fiction and fantasy sections, but Jeanette Oke and the like were shelved in that section. Ongoing stories, about the same families of people, set in the same world. The ones I read tended to have some sort of morality tale in the background (or the foreground). A lot of them were Christian.

And while the Sharing Knife series are clearly fantasy, are clearly romance (well, Beguilement anyway), are clearly set in America - I don't think they're westerns. Certainly not westerns as mashugenah would describe them!

One thing I've discovered as I've awaited each new book over the past few year is that the Sharing Knife books have grown on me. I adored Chalion from the very beginning and loved the universe. I wasn't so fond of Legacy (it would be my least favourite of the series), but the world has intrigued me more and more over the past few years, just as Miles-before-Memory has lost his appeal. I tried describing it to tamarillow as that the Sharing Knife books are like a second-hand coat, brought with memories already embedded and something you shape anew for yourself, whereas the Five Gods books are like a made to measure coat; fits instantly and comfortably. I'm not sure the analogy holds up particularly well, but the gist of is that both stories fit me in different ways.

Before I forget to pass this on, people who like Bujold's Vorkosigan saga should look at this What I did on my summer vacation, to which I got the link from someone on the Bujold ML.

We made italian parsley pesto tonight. We made a double recipe and even so, have most of the plant still in the garden. Three cups of parsley leaves made only a slight dent in it. We had some trouble with the food processor, used a different one, and eventually I found the right blade for the actual food processor (still in the original packaging) and things went much more smoothly thereafter.

I have been brimming over with energy lately. I've wanted to be out and about and moving. Unfortunately, the weather hasn't been cooperating, and I didn't quite want it enough last night to turn up to Martin Luckie park; sorry house_monkey. So tonight, I skipped for five minutes after we'd made the pesto (used the kitchen timer) and that really killed my legs and I cleaned half the kitchen. Only half because I got distracted with dinner and I was cleaning very thoroughly. As in dusting the top of the fridge and wiping the things on it kind of thorough.

The cat decided to show me how much she loves me again. Today that meant pulling out my chair to sit down and check emails and finding a dead bird under the desk. Fortunately, it's a thrush, which means that I don't have to get her a bell yet (it would drive both of us crazy). As soon as she catches a native, she gets one. The dead bird is now residing at the bottom of the wheelie bin under a bag of gorse clippings.

All three of us who live here heard from bl9_knt today, so hopefully we'll be seeing him and purplesparkler on Sunday.

My CD player really needs replacing; I have found a CD that will work instead of the still-missing tape, but the player is rather dubious about the CD (the CD player is nine years old or so) and needs to play through a CD that I know it will read before I put the one I want to go to sleep with again. (For those of you interested, the first CD is Emma Shapplin's Carmine Meo and the one I use to go to sleep is a Reader's Digest CD - Symphony of the Senses, which is kinda new agey and not really my usual listening to thing, only it works for this.)

For the bujold_fic ficathon. I am never ever planning to write Bujold fic again. It's too hard.

Title: Cattilara and the Demon
Author: nishatalitha
Recipiant: silver05
Rating: PG
Notes: Silver05 wondered what was in the letter Iselle wrote to Bergon in The Curse of Chalion. Unfortunately, Iselle stayed stubbornly silent on that matter, but Silver05 also suggested that a story from Lady Cattilara and/or her demon's perspective would be interesting, and Cattilara was much more obliging. Thanks to my flatmate, C, and quietann for the beta.
Spoilers: Paladin of Souls

( Cattilara and the Demon )