Lois McMaster Bujold

I love when one of my all-time favorites gets a write-up.

In today's Star Tribune, science fiction and fantasy writer Lois McMaster Bujold was featured on the front page of the Arts & Entertainment section.

Known for her character-driven plots and interesting ways of envisioning other worlds, Lois has three major series under her belt at this point. The most sprawling is the 17-book Miles Vorkosigan saga.

Miles's charm is a bit hard to get across in a summary... let's see. Born severely disabled because he was poisoned in utero, Miles has brittle-bone syndrome to the point where all of his bones have been replaced with synthetics (it is science fiction, after all). Because of his condition, he is only about four feet tall, but still manages to become an intergalactic space hero and master of espionage. With romance, intrigue and all.

Another series, called the Chalion series, is more traditional fantasy, set in a world similar to medieval Europe, except that the gods are real and magic works. There are some great characters in these books (The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls are the two best known of the series).

Her most recent books are called the Sharing Knife series, and I have not read them, though the third one is just coming out this week. I decided to wait to read them until all or most of them are out so I won't have the frustration of waiting to read them once I get started. It sounds like there are four in all, the last due in 2009, so I will just have to wait a bit longer.

On a side note, I think I saw Lois once, before I had started reading her books. I went to a book signing at Uncle Hugo's science fiction bookstore with the late, truly great Octavia Butler several years ago, and a woman, whom I now realize looked a lot like Lois, was there chatting with Octavia and the fans who had turned out to see her. I'll never be sure if I'm right about that, though, unless Lois confirms it some day.