honey and sting

My "pine lists" of late have been for Lois McMaster Bujold's novels. Her newest Chalion-series book The Hallowed Hunt is done (http://www.dendarii.com/news/04Sep.html) and in the publisher's pipeline for May. Dangerous stuff indeed if you like the intersection of magic and romance.

The Chalion series is set in a vaguely medeival world where magic is recognized, though mostly by the God-touched "saints", not the everyday people. Of course, becoming God-touched can leave you quite bewildered, and they tend to be able to see things that others cannot. The other fun complication is her pantheon -- there's the Father, the Mother, the Son, and the Daughter. Those who live in Chalion add the Bastard to that list, and it's an ongoing source of conflict between the Quintarians in Chalion and their Quatarian neighbors who believe that believing in the Bastard is the worst sort of heresy.

Bujold's other major series is the Vorkosigan series that intersects romance with space opera. That's been the guiding metaphor for my relationship with ambar -- we often wind up referring to incidents and/or quotes in the books.

I also pine for new issues of the Collected Works of Theodore Sturgeon (http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/sturgeon/#news). Volume 10 is sadly overdue.