{"id":1198,"date":"2011-06-07T09:16:55","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T13:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2011-08-03T01:43:47","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T05:43:47","slug":"js-take-on-skyfall-by-catherine-asaro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/2011\/06\/07\/hrm\/js-take-on-skyfall-by-catherine-asaro\/","title":{"rendered":"J’s Take on Skyfall by Catherine Asaro"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Skyfall<\/a>
\nSkyfall<\/i> comes first in the internal chronology of Asaro’s Skolian Empire series, but was not the first book published in it. This is the first one I’ve read, though I will eventually have to read more to catch up to Quantum Rose<\/i>, which won the Nebula in 2001. (Look for it in The Nebula Project in October of 2012 if we keep up our current pace.)<\/p>\n

I didn’t know too much about the book or the series going into it. Just that it was classified as space opera, and that there were quite a lot of books. And that it was written by a woman. So parallels to Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga were inevitable. I liked that, so why shouldn’t I like this? And why haven’t I read any of this before?<\/p>\n

I’m not quite sure what to make of Skyfall<\/i>. On the one hand, I did enjoy parts of it, and might even enjoy it more on a second read. But mostly throughout the book, I had a feeling of… I don’t know where this is going. We start out with an important woman on her way to an important vote. And then the whole plot where I thought we were headed seems to get derailed as she ends up on this out-of-the-way planet and then.. gets kidnapped\/wanders off into the mountains rather than wait for her ride home. Then it seems to be this bizarre romance story.<\/p>\n

We start switching points of view between her and her son, and I start thinking about Dune. And what’s with all these books about men and their mothers?<\/p>\n

Nearing the end of the book, it got really good. And by the time I finished reading it, I finally felt like I understood where all the earlier stuff had been headed and why it was there. Which is why I think I might enjoy it more on a reread. I think especially if I reread it after having read more of this series.<\/p>\n

Because I do think, from my limited perspective at this point, that this book would’ve made more sense and been a more enjoyable read, had I had some background in this series before. So that maybe the proper way to read this series isn’t internal chronology, but by publication date.<\/p>\n

But, I don’t know. I could be wrong. Barring memory disorders, you can’t read a series for the first time both ways and do a true comparison.<\/p>\n

I did sneak a peek at the family tree at the back of this book. Enough to realize I did not want to look at it closely! There must definitely be spoilers in there for what comes ‘next’ (‘previously’). There’s a definite spoiler in there for this<\/i> book, so I’ve warned my fellow TTers. I hope they heed the warning. I know the extras like this are more tempting for others than they are for me. I didn’t even look at the other supplemental information. Spoilers = Bad!<\/p>\n

Will I read more of this series? Yes. But if I didn’t have Quantum Rose<\/i> scheduled on my plate, I probably wouldn’t go back to this series so soon. I’m not dying to absorb all of them one after the other. To be fair though, I still have 2 Vorkosigan books I’m behind on. And I do love those. Maybe I’m just not much of a series marathoner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Skyfall comes first in the internal chronology of Asaro’s Skolian Empire series, but was not the first book published in it. This is the first one I’ve read, though I will eventually have to read more to catch up to Quantum Rose, which won the Nebula in 2001. (Look for it in The Nebula Project … Continue reading “J’s Take on Skyfall by Catherine Asaro”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,8,6,7,109],"tags":[27,108],"class_list":["post-1198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-catherine-asaro","category-books","category-j","category-review","category-skyfall","tag-science-fiction","tag-space-opera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/tripletake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}