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So after putting it off for ages I sat and devoured books 2, 3, and 4 of the Steerswoman Series over the last day or two (here's my previous review: I am Doomed). And they were great, and the ending was satisfying enough for the middle of a series and no new books have been written in the series in over a decade.
They continue to be very readable, engaging, clever, compassionate science-y fantasy. They remind me a lot of Lois McMaster Bujold, though not as well written or morally complex and more science-y. The two flaws that bugged me were (a) The occasional Stupid Girly Mean Girl, and not many sympathetic girly girls to make up for it and (b) certain repeated plots. I like those plots, and they were all done well, but they were so similar it feels almost insulting that she still expects us to be surprised by the same twists.
She does the "wait did they have sex in that gap between chapters?" approach to relationships, but friendships are taken much more seriously. Some pretty awful things happen (including, very occasionally, to children), but the stories are mostly pretty optimistic. She seems to enjoy fridging men more than women :D
There's an unselfconscious diversity I like, gender and physical disability being the two done best, women and disabled people are just there being common and competent and actual people. The racial diversity is a little more heavy handed (and almost perpendicular to ethnic groups, whose depiction I'm still chewing over) and there is a single clunky scene of IT'S OK TO BE LESBIANS. Not so much with the trans or non binary people, while gender roles vary there's definitely Men and Women.
Anyway! If you can handle ending on "we have won this battle but not finished our overall quest" I reccomend the books pretty strongly.
They continue to be very readable, engaging, clever, compassionate science-y fantasy. They remind me a lot of Lois McMaster Bujold, though not as well written or morally complex and more science-y. The two flaws that bugged me were (a) The occasional Stupid Girly Mean Girl, and not many sympathetic girly girls to make up for it and (b) certain repeated plots. I like those plots, and they were all done well, but they were so similar it feels almost insulting that she still expects us to be surprised by the same twists.
She does the "wait did they have sex in that gap between chapters?" approach to relationships, but friendships are taken much more seriously. Some pretty awful things happen (including, very occasionally, to children), but the stories are mostly pretty optimistic. She seems to enjoy fridging men more than women :D
There's an unselfconscious diversity I like, gender and physical disability being the two done best, women and disabled people are just there being common and competent and actual people. The racial diversity is a little more heavy handed (and almost perpendicular to ethnic groups, whose depiction I'm still chewing over) and there is a single clunky scene of IT'S OK TO BE LESBIANS. Not so much with the trans or non binary people, while gender roles vary there's definitely Men and Women.
Anyway! If you can handle ending on "we have won this battle but not finished our overall quest" I reccomend the books pretty strongly.
