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Loading... Falling Free (1988)by Lois McMaster Bujold
Set 200 years before the Vorkosigan saga begins, this is the story of the beginnings of the Quaddies. They are a bio-genetic engineered race of people, created to live in free fall (the state of no gravity in space) with minimum damage to their bodies. What happens to such a people when there are no laws to give them human status? They are classified as organic matter belonging to the company which created them. What happens when their usefulness to said company becomes obsolete? Bujold creates memorable characters and moral situations. She asks us to think about things not in a knee-jerk way, but in a long-term consequential way. She doesn't preach, she shows. For me, the technical bits went on too long and with too much detail, but I'm sure other folks love those bits. For having never read LMB, I was pleasantly surprised. Not sure I'd jump right in and read everything thing else she's ever written; but I liked this story. I liked this early entry in the Vorkosigan saga (it predates Miles and his planet by several hundred years) well enough, but it seemed a little flat after some of Bujold's later work. It was well done but not as funny as the Miles books. This is one of those [b:Murphy's Law|225591|Murphy's Law (Law Series, Book #2)|Lori Foster|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172865904s/225591.jpg|2924954] books, where everything that can go wrong, does, so you have to read it all the way through and get everything straightened out so you can sleep. Maeve Binchy's books are like this too, except hers are about Irish people and not about genetically-enhanced four-armed teenage space engineers.
Falling Free is one of Bujold’s early books, and it isn’t as technically accomplished as her later work. It’s definitely one of her minor books, but she’s so good that a minor book for her would be a major one for anyone else. Is contained in
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 067157812X, Mass Market Paperback)Leo Graf was an effective engineer ...Safety Regs weren't just the rule book he swore by; he'd helped write them. All that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat. Leo was profoundly uneasy with the corporation exploitation of his bright new students - till that exploitation turned to something much worse. He hadn't anticipated a situation where the right thing to do was neither safe, nor in the rules...Leo Graf adopted 1000 quaddies - now all he had to do was teach them to be free.(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:52:22 -0500) A Vorkosigan adventure. Sci-fi. Winner of Nebula Award. |
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Falling Free is kind of like a summer movie. You’re vaguely amused while you’re watching it, but there’s no character development and nothing thought-provoking, just plot and asses. That was my experience with this novel.
And for some reason, there is a completely tacked-on love angle that comes practically out of the blue. After expressing inexplicable and unprompted romantic feelings all of THREE TIMES throughout the entire story, the novel ends with Leo and one of the quaddies kissing passionately and thinking about a new life together.
Their relationship has zero development and adds absolutely nothing to the story. I have no idea why LMB shoved it in.
After how much I loved Paladin of Souls, I was disappointed in my gurl LMB. I think it really shows that this is one of her early novels.
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