Dune. Arrakis. eBook.

[BlackVoid]

Vorkosigan series: I started with the prequels.

Falling Free is a good book
Shards of Honor is enjoyable too
Barrayar - gave up after 1/3
The Warrior's Apprentice - gave up after 1/2

These books are more suitable for teenagers in my opinion. After the first half of the Warrior's Apprentice I decided that this is not for me. Way too naive and straightforward. Then I read more of the story on Wikipedia. Wow. I am glad I gave up on the series. Yeah, he gets into trouble easily but gets out of it equally easy.
Caution, spoilers here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga
I will not quote, go to the above link and read a few contents.

But back to topic.

Dune is a classic without doubt. I would be still curious the hear more about the other books. Having disliked Dune Messiah, I am a bit skeptical towards them.

What I like in sci-fi is alien races, secrets, mysteries, discovery with REALISM. Something that is imaginative and also believable. Political intrigue and cartoon/hollywood style superheroes turn me off. We have enough of the former in real life (and that is sometimes fascinating), and enough of the latter in Hollywood movies. Books should be about something else.
Dune is a great book, because there are many insights that go beyond the story. Paul may be a hero, but he is not some instant super-kid. It is also realistic in its own way that is consistent with the world. Compared to the world of Dune, the world of Miles Vorkosigan is dull and unimaginative. The quaddies in the prequel Falling Free were a nice novelty and that kept me going. For a while.

I really do not understand how Barrayar is in the same category as Dune (as both are Hugo winners).

[mores]

Dune II was an awesome real-time strategy game that revolutionized the computer gaming industry in about the same way Doom did by immersing us in first-person-shooters.

Can your kindle do THAT ?

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

Vorkosigan series: I started with the prequels.

Falling Free is a good book
Shards of Honor is enjoyable too
Barrayar - gave up after 1/3
The Warrior's Apprentice - gave up after 1/2

These books are more suitable for teenagers in my opinion. After the first half of the Warrior's Apprentice I decided that this is not for me. Way too naive and straightforward. Then I read more of the story on Wikipedia. Wow. I am glad I gave up on the series. Yeah, he gets into trouble easily but gets out of it equally easy.

<<SNIP>>

I really do not understand how Barrayar is in the same category as Dune (as both are Hugo winners).

Winning a Hugo is a popularity contest, not a quality assessment. That said, I love this series (and Lois McMaster Bujold's writing in general). I suspect that my main reason is shared by many others -- her characters feel real in a way that most other SF authors fail to achieve. They love, hate, fail, triumph, and interact with each other in ways that emphasize that reality.

Lois doesn't resort to literary pyrotechnics (or literary obscurity) to achieve this effect, either. Instead, she uses deceptively simple prose that is so smooth and slick that you don't notice how carefully it's crafted.

As for the "he gets into trouble easily but gets out of it equally easy", well, that's because the ostensible plot of the novel isn't where the main action is. Lois Bujold is a writer from the "what's the worst thing I can do to this character, and how can they grow by surmounting it?" school. And that "worst thing" is rarely the main adventure element of the plot. Overall, it's fine hard science fiction -- mostly on the effect very advanced biotech has on societies -- but the truly key elements of the stories (the character-based stuff) could be written nearly as well in any other genre.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

Xenophon

P.S. By giving up on The Warrior's Apprentice you missed seeing Miles discover just how overly naive and straight-forward he's been. And his trying to cope with the human cost of his actions. And the latter part of Barrayar shows, among other things, why it is that in the thoroughly patriarchal Barrayaran society everybody treats Cordelia Naismith with extreme respect. It also has quite a few things to say about relationships, people, honesty, and the possible costs of one's decisions.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

[bill_mchale]

I agree Xenophon, mostly. Yep, he gets into trouble easily, yes, much of the joy of the books comes from the characters and how they grow and change through the series. Where I disagree, and its more with Blackvoid is that Miles gets out of trouble easily. It may sometimes seem that way because the normal plotting of the books is often reminiscent of cinematic space opera in that the plot usually resolves in the last 2 chapters or so after getting steadily more complicated for the first 4/5s of the book. That being said, usually that resolution is worked into the plot from early on, and more importantly Miles and others in the story rarely come out of the situation completely unscathed... in fact several of the books deal directly with the consequences of previous books.

--
Bill

[DixieGal]

I just wanted to pop in quickly and mention that while it is true that Dune Messiah is a drag, it's worth the trouble to skim on through so that the rest of the books in the original 6 make sense. In my humble opinion, Chapterhouse Dune was as good as or better than Dune.

Spoiler:

Chapterhouse Dune tells the story of the Atreides and Harkonnans, et al, through the eyes of the witchy high priestess. While the boys are off warring and having their fun blasting each other across Arrakis, the religious caste was working behind the scenes to regain the political power they lost to Paul.

If you didn't read it, then I suggest you give it a try.

[mtnmedic]

BIG Dune fan here...from WAY back. Count me as one of the few who actually like Brian and Kevin's adaptation. I've read everything completely (in the order given earlier in this thread) except for the last two books, which I am working on (well into Hunters of Dune...so far it's actually pretty good) including The Road to Dune and Dreamer of Dune. To be honest, I think Brian and Kevin actually have stayed fairly close to Frank's vision. Much of what they've written follows and supports Frank's history of the future, characters and events. You can't expect their writing style to be the same as Frank's. Otherwise, you're just setting yourself up for a huge disappointment. His style and knack for letting us into the minds of his characters is lost forever. Using his notes and unfinished works, Brian and Kevin have done an admirable job. I applaud them for taking on such a huge and important endeavor. I challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to write a better story. I think the problem with people not liking what they've read from Brian and Kevin is due to, in large part, their unfair expectation that the new books should read like Frank's. Another reason is possibly that they can't handle the emotional roller coaster involved with the new stories. But that's just it-these people don't seem to GET that's what it's all about: the trials, tribulations, suffrage, successes and glories of societal development and human evolution spanning over thousands of years. As for me, I believe Brian and Kevin -in bookending Frank's works- have succeeded in evoking from me such strong emotions and a deep sense of a long, epic journey whose events, places and people of the past are but faded echoes from a distant horizon that beckon to us for a "simpler time" as we move forward in an uncharted, unpredictable future.




Of Frank's original six books, I think Chapterhouse and Heretics were the best.



Ultimately all things are known because you want to believe you know.
-Zensunni koan