Oh, man. I swear this book has had a serious impact on pretty much every woman writer I respect. Which made reading it so difficult the first time -- I was saving it for just the right moment, but what if my expectations were too high? What if I just didn't tune in like everyone else? But no fear -- she had me by page 10 or so.

The love story, incidentally, is a clear and startlingly direct influence on Bujold's later books, if you ever get that far. Now I know why that romance worked so well.