I'm currently reading Lois McMaster Bujold's latest book,
The Hallowed Hunt, and enjoying it very much. (Bujold is one of my favorite writers, along with Sheri S. Tepper.) At one point, she uses the word "horripilating", and I realized that I've never actually looked it up.
Dictionary.com to the rescue:
hor·rip·i·la·tion
Pronunciation Key (hô-r
p
-l
shn, h
-)
n.
The bristling of the body hair, as from fear or cold; goose bumps.
[Late Latin horripilti
, horripiltin-, from Latin horripiltus, past participle of horripilre, to bristle with hairs : horr
re, to tremble + pil
re, to grow hair (from pilus, hair).]
hor·rip
i·late
v.
In context from the book (no spoilers, unless you consider knowing the names of two characters a spoiler... in which case, you're far more spoiler-sensitive than I am, and you probably won't be happy reading my LJ):
[Ingrey said] "I thought the Bastard was the god of poetry."
"Oh, Him, too, aye, for drinking songs and such. And for those great songs of when the walls come crashing down and all is burning, aye, that make your hairs all stand up, those are fine!" Jokol waved his arms to mime horripilating tragedies suitable for epic verse.
I'm about 2/3 of the way through the book and would definitely recommend it. Although you don't absolutely need to have read
The Curse of Chalion or
Paladin of Souls (so far, no characters from those books have appeared, and I think it's not even set at the same time), you'd probably enjoy it more if you have, as she's not going into nearly as much detail about the theology of the five gods in this one as she did in the previous two.
She is SO good... the books are full of character, funny, Cypher does not like them as much as I, he prefers his SF more like Bruce Sterling.
I love the Miles books, altho towards the end they get a bit formulaic (sp?)
and Lex, Great word! I love words....
I will look for The Hallowed Hunt...
I wasn't so impressed with Diplomatic Immunity, but I thought the chunk of the saga from Memory to Komarr to A Civil Campaign was wonderful. (Although Campaign gets the award for worst! most inaccurate! cover interpretation EVAR. But that's a rant for another day.)
My impression was that she's mostly wrapped up what she wanted to do with Miles, which is why Diplomatic Immunity was less satisfying than the earlier books. But at the same time, she seemed to be opening up possibilities with some of the other characters. Ivan, now. I want to see a book about Ivan. As do most of her readers - apparently "when are you going to do a book about Ivan?" is one of the most frequent questions she gets these days.
I agree, Miles is wrapped up, but there are a few other folks I'd like to see, and frankly, I was disappointed when Mom and Dad Didn't get another book...