{"id":52096,"date":"2025-06-07T11:24:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T18:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=52096"},"modified":"2025-08-23T19:21:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T02:21:53","slug":"the-vorkosigan-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2025\/06\/07\/the-vorkosigan-saga\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vorkosigan Saga"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:498,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/World_of_the_Five_Gods&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20251231155230\\\/https:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/World_of_the_Five_Gods&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-01 06:45:22&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 15:41:41&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 18:25:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 18:25:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>And that&#8217;s it \u2014\u00a0this morning, I finished off Lois McMaster Bujold&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/tag\/vorkosigan-saga\/\">Vorkosigan Saga<\/a>. A little under two years (non-consecutively; many other books have been read in between these) of the adventures of Miles Vorkosigan and his family, friends, and enemies.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/IMG_4347.jpeg\" alt=\"A complete collection of Vorkosigan saga novels in mass market paperback, arranged in internal chronological order.\" title=\"IMG_4347.jpeg\" border=\"0\" width=\"747\" height=\"276\" \/><br \/>\n<\/figure>\n<p>This was neither planned nor expected. I started because I&#8217;m <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/hugo-reading\/\">reading my way through<\/a> all the Hugo Best Novel winners, and several of the Vorkosigan books are on that list, I continued because even though neither romance nor military sci-fi are genres I usually go for, the books are just so <em>good<\/em> that they pulled me in. (And, well, I don&#8217;t like coming into a series midway through if I can help it, so I had to read the books that were earlier or in between the Hugo winners.)<\/p>\n<p>Bujold&#8217;s characters are wonderfully realized. Not always heroes or even particularly heroic (and sometimes rather disturbing), but always very real. The books are funny &#8212; I wouldn&#8217;t really call any of them comedies, but they are frequently comedic. And the world building (over multiple worlds scattered across a wormhole-connected galaxy) is great, with cultures that are obviously related while also being very separate and distinct.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, while I certainly didn&#8217;t expect this when I started, this has become a favorite series, and I&#8217;m very much looking forward to seeing what Bujold does in a fantasy world, as I head into her <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/World_of_the_Five_Gods\">World of the Five Gods<\/a> series (of which the second, <i>Paladin of Souls<\/i>, is the next Hugo Best Novel book on my list). (It&#8217;s a good sign that both the Vorkosigan Saga and the World of the Five Gods series have won Best Series Hugos&#8230;.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, I finished off Lois McMaster Bujold&#8217;s Vorkosigan Saga, a series I didn&#8217;t expect to enjoy as much as I have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036],"tags":[5779,5780],"class_list":["post-52096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-lois-mcmaster-bujold","tag-vorkosigan-saga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52096"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52313,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52096\/revisions\/52313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}