So the Garden continues along its slow path, but less garden and more relationship, so the juxtaposition of formality and beauty against politics and war is muddied by the silt of the protagonist's relationships. It's as if we are dipping into the mundane - well people have to live - even characters in books. Where the book felt like a spacious canvas, on which well spaced pebbles and plants were lining up for the perfect formal garden, now we are stuck in one of the service paths, overgrown with all sorts of plants that shouldn't really be there, if we want to keep our beauty intact.
And then there's Terms of Enlistment - free again through Kindle Unlimited, in the sub-genre Military Sci-fi, and firmly entrenched in every single cliche of genre - but nonetheless readable for that. It is Starship Troopers written all over again - Heinlein perfected the genre even as he started it (well he may not have started it but he was the first one that I read). I am a sucker for these - the escape into the platoon, the training and the drill sergeants where most people drop out - everything the same even down to the female recruits being the ones who get to be the pilots (so much less messy than being a marine don't you think). I suppose I'll finish it, but I have a feeling that it ain't going anywhere that I haven't been before.
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