The Curse of Chalion
A man broken in body and spirit, Cazaril has returned to the noble household he once served as page, and is named, to his great surprise, secretary-tutor to the beautiful, strong-willed sister of the impetuous boy who is next in line to rule. It is as assignment Cazaril dreads, for it must ultimately lead him to the place he most fears: the royal court of Cardegoss, where the powerful enemies who once placed him in chains now occupy lofty positions. but it is more than the traitorous intrigues of villains that threaten Cazaril and the Royesse Iselle here, for a sinister curse hangs like a sword over the entire blighted House of Chalion and all who stand in their circle. And only by employing the darkest, most forbidden of magics can Cazaril hope to protect his royal charge -- an act that will mark the loyal, damaged servant as a tool of the miraculous... and trap him, flesh and soul, in a maze of demonic paradox, damnation, and death.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
8mentions
3people
2015–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Definitely -- and there are a million of them, so it can keep you occupied for a while. Her non-Vorkosigan fantasy books are also pretty great (Wold of the Five Gods series / Curse of Chalion, etc).
- Pratchett and Bujold are pretty much my top-two, which extends the the degree to which I feel compelled to share quotes. Both are rather character-oriented and often I find things (jokes, references, turns of phrase) on a re-read that I didn't catch the first time.
My main caution is that I wouldn't start with Pratchett's earliest works--there are already bunch of suggested reading-order guides out there. I spent a decade thinking Pratchett was overrated because I started with the wrong book. (IIRC The Colour of Magic seemed just too much of a parade of absurd situations for their own sake.) I like the City Watch books (starting in Guards! Guards!) and Small Gods is a decent stand-alone.
For Bujold, the Vorkosigan series is the flagship, where I'd put the Curse of Chalion (fantasy) as a second.
- The question isn't quite as hard as with Terry Pratchett novels (yes, I do place Bujold in that tier) and I think the major choices boil down to:
1. Cordelias' Honor: Unusually, this is not about the character who will star in the next umpteen novels, but it does a lot of world-building and introduces some important characters who will be pervasive supporting cast later. (It's an omnibus that merges what was originally published separately: Shards of Honor, Aftermath, Barrayar.)
2. The Warrior's Apprentice: The first of the books focusing on the main protagonist of the rest of the series, however if you value knowing the world-building, backstories, and references to earlier books, then this would be a weaker start.
3. Falling Free: A stand-alone novel 200 years earlier in the main universe, which can be good or bad depending on your appetite.
Honorable mention: The Curse of Chalion if you prefer fantasy. [0]
_________
[0] There's also The Sharing Knife series which is... I dunno, fantasy of the hinted-post-apocalyptic variety? Somehow I was never drawn into those, in my dim memory they were disappointing.*
- I will not pretend that reading is easy. I cannot appreciate your difficulty. I am eager to read. I read voraciously. What number you've read in your life, I consume in a year. I should, perhaps, regard you as a marathon runner would regard a couch potato looking to get into the sport of running.
I have this to say: I will _never_ reach the bottom of books' wellspring of value. I have not, yet reached diminishing marginal returns. Every book I read makes the next one more valuable.
You don't, however, have to read as much as I do to gain the benefit. My whole life, every year has brought me a handful of life-altering, mind-blowing new books.
That being said, I have put down many bad ones. Do not be afraid to quit a boring book. There are too many to read. There are so many more out there. Skip to the next one.
> I assume that the best part of the best books will surface in daily conversations.
I don't.
> I even find myself reading the comments and not reading the article most of the time.
Me, too. Books are way different, however. Articles too often, in my experience, couch the _news_ in many paragraphs of exposition, and background context. I skim them looking for the _novel_ information. Not so, with books, which I read in order to _augment_ my contextual, background understanding.
Time spent absorbed in a book allows for deeper re-wiring of one's basic precepts. An article may help you navigate your current mental models with agility, but only a book offers us the substantial choice of retaining or replacing them.
> Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books. -- bell hooks
Novels, likewise, afford a world-altering subsumption of reality. Our imaginations are massively powerful--or else, to put it another way, our connection to material reality is tenuous, and can be all-too-easily shifted to project ourselves into fantasies. A visit to alternate realms--even as mundane as contemporary fiction set in a different town--grants us opportunities that short forms don't. I have only rarely been swept away by a reddit comment, and felt myself to have visited another place. (One example might be the roadside in "Today You, Tomorrow me.")
I think you're reading in the wrong genre. There are dozens, and truly their boundaries are fluid, but self-help is perhaps the most vapid.
You are missing out.
I would recommend Bujold's "The Curse of Chalion" as a fantastic, mature novel with fantasy elements, or Stephenson's "Snowcrash" for a colorful adventure not without gravitas. If you're trying to gain non-fiction information, I would recommend Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America," CrimethInc's "No Wall They Can Build," or Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets."
In the realm of pure intellectual pursuit, Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" will not disappoint.
- > Firms working at their dead level best to be up front with candidates still produce steady feeds of candidates who feel misled or unfairly rejected.
True, even the best cases have a nonzero baseline level of dissatisfaction. It reminds me of this quote, where one character publicly accused a judge of being corrupt based on rumor, and another character is asking whether she had anything except town rumor to go on.
> “Tell me, Royesse, what steps did you take beforehand, to assure yourself of the man’s guilt?”
> [...] Her frown deepened. "The townsmen applauded..."
> "Indeed. On average, one-half of all supplicants to come before a judge's bench must depart angry and disappointed. But not, by that, necessarily wronged."
-- The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
- I am reminded of this quote from a fantasy book about the gender-dynamics of displaying emotion:
> "If she wept, wasn't it too extravagant; if she laughed, how odd that she should do so at her brother's funeral; if she spoke, he whispered that she was frenetic; if she fell silent, wasn't she grown strangely gloomy? And you could just watch men begin to see what he told them they were seeing, whether it was there or not. Toward the end of his visit there, he even said such things in her hearing, to see if he could frighten and enrage her, and then accuse her of becoming an unbalanced virago."
(The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold.)
