I’ve been reading this series for almost half a year now, and thought I’d spare it some words, since it’s been something that I’ve been enjoying quite a lot, and seeing the evolution going through as the first books were written in the 80s and the newest came out around last year if I remember completely.

The universe the stories happens in is one that is birthed from a previous one when the restistance lost a war against some overwhelming power. While we have some more inventive aliens like the clutch turtles, a race of big turtles who lives for thousands of years and are slow, or the psychic norbears who are basically reading and communicating through thoughts and sentient trees, but that’s about it for more inventive ones, most of the story takes place with Terrans, basically base humans, the Liaden, which are base humans with some kind of magic power, and living through a very strict set of rules and propriety, and a bit less so, the yxtrang, a military developed version of humans who lost their inclination to serve and grouped together in the chaos of the transition to the new universe, and are now more or less bands of marauding pirates.

There are multiple sub-series through the 25 or so books in the universe, and we’re following different people and different generations of different families through time, mostly consentrating on clan Korval, called “The Tree and Dragon”. You get to know these quite a lot through the stories, and it’s a nice thing to have an anchor.

The books go a bit back and forth in what they are, some are more of a romance story, with people falling in love and so one, some have some stories of war, of growing up in a place foreign to you, some about sentient AIs, and so on, there is a good variety of different places, and people to follow, and it usually keeps the story interesting.

The main thing that I really enjoy in the book is the warmth in the storytelling, there are always some good people to follow, and there are points of community and empathy that just really feels right to me.

Language is handled very well and actually believeably through the stories, and I’m actually really quite impressed by it, each group of people have their own languages, and there are trade which they speak together, there are evolution of languages, accents, and I have to say that it’s done really well, and even more there is no Sapir-Whorfian magical skills that you get from knowing a language.

Much of what we have are stories about cultures crashing, about learning how to live with people you’re unsure about, and in the end finding out that people probably aren’t that different in the end, and that we can do things if we work together on it.

I only have a couple of books to go now in the series, and then I’ll be on the lookout for something else interesting to read, I’m both quite exited to find something new to read, and at the same time kind of sad that this long period of reading is coming to an end.