Chalion series

[Tenalpia]

I am considering buying The Curse of the Chalion / Paladin of Souls / The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold and read a review claiming:

"The first two books in the evocative Chalion series combine the intricacy of George R R Martin with the intensity of Robin Hobb..."

To me this is high praise indeed so I was just wondering if anyone, who has read the series, would agree with this statement or if I would be disappointed / misled.

Of course I will probably read them anyway but I just fancied getting an opinion on a series that sounds great and i can't believe that I hadn't heard of before...

 

[rune]

THis is one author I've yet to try. I'm hoping, eventually, to get the first book in this series from my library

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I've read the first and second book and I'm just waiting until it's financially feasible to get the third.

Chalion I thought was better than Paladin (which was still good) and they are actually stand-alone books, only loosely related, so you can read one and feel satisfied, or read them in any order. If you like the Farseer books you will almost certainly like Chalion, not because the plot and characters are similar -- they aren't -- but because of ... well, I can't exactly say what it is they share, but it's there.

Bujold has a tendency to get nominated for or to win every award in sight, and when I read Chalion it was easy to see why.

 

[Leto]

Isn't she who wrote the Vorkosigian saga too ?

 

[Jay]

Isn't she who wrote the Vorkosigian saga too ?

Yeah, and the word is she is working another fantasy project (unrelated to Chalion).

 

[GOLLUM]

Yep I've got the first 2 books. They're well written with some interesting characterizations but not EPIC on the scale of someone like Martin IMO, so not my more favoured series, although I do like less EPIC tales too...

Book 3 The Hallowed Hunt is out in HB but PB comes out mid 2006.

The new book being referred to is the tentaviley titled The Sharing Knife. Lois has recenty completed the first draft and it is approx twice the length of her other books. It's a stand-alone fantasy novel but future books as part of a series have been mooted.

 

[Tenalpia]

Thanks for that everyone! Something to chew over... I've ordered the books so once I've read them, I'll let you know if I agree with the glowing GRRM / Robin Hobb review...

 

[Taltos]

Don't know if this will help, as the books have been ordered, but for me after reading the first book seemed that Bujold is rewriting the Vorkosigan saga in the fantasy setting instead of SF. The main character was partly Miles (with his handycap) and partly Miles's father (fallen military genius) etc. Too many parallels to the Vorkosigan serie.

Of course this didn't stop me from buying the second book *grumble-grumble*