Liaden Reading: Great Migration Duology

I final­ly got a chance to read both vol­umes of the Great Migra­tion Duol­o­gy by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Crys­tal Sol­dier and Crys­tal Drag­on.

I read Crys­tal Sol­dier a few years ago, right after it came out. I’d for­got­ten some details, so I re-read it before start­ing Crys­tal Drag­on. CS was good, but CD was mar­velous. I can’t do it jus­tice, but if you’ve read any­thing set in the Liaden Uni­verse, you want to read these. If you haven’t, they’re a love­ly place to start. Despite the fact that I knew one thing had to hap­pen, I cried. There are very few books that get to me on that level.

The whole series is sci­ence fic­tion with a nice touch of romance. They don’t get mushy, and this duol­o­gy, in par­tic­u­lar, is far from “soft,” but the rela­tion­ships feel right. There are some fan­ta­sy ele­ments that dis­al­low a “hard SF” label, but that’s fine. They nev­er claimed to be hard sci­ence fiction.

Now I hope to get hold of both vol­umes of the Liaden Uni­verse Com­pan­ion. I have all but the last two chap­books, so I think I have all the sto­ries, but it would be nice to have them all together.