Lois Mc Master Bujold Archives

Barrayar — Lois Mc Master Bujold

Published on July 15, 20121 Comment

Cover of Barrayar

Barrayar
Lois McMaster Bujold
386 pages
published in 1991

Barrayar was actually the first ever Bujold story I ever read and I hated it. That’s because it was the last part of its serialisation in Analog that I read and I had no idea of what was going. Coming back to it now, after having read all the Miles Vorkosigan books at least once, I enjoyed it much more. Like any prequel Barrayar depends for some of its impact on the reader’s knowledge of the main series. If you don’t know who Miles Vorkosigan is and why he is the incredibly determined little mutant runt that he is when we first met him in the Warrior’s Apprentice, the details of how he got to be that way won’t matter all that much.

Chronologically, Barrayar takes place almost immediately after Shards of Honor and is the second and so far last novel to star Cordelia Vorkosigan/Ransom. Cordelia and Aral are settling in to newly married live on Barrayar, with Cordelia pregnant with Miles. Then the old emperor dies and Aral becomes regent to his young grandson and he and Cordelia are soon plunged into the dangerous, still very medieval politics of the Barrayaran court and nobility. How dangerous Cordelia only realises when they’re the victims of an assasination attempt, with poison gas grenades thrown into their house.

They survive, but the antidote Cordelia has to take to counteract the poison gas has a very bad side effect, acting as a teratogenic agent on the fetus she is carrying, posing a real risk to its bone development. Normally there would be nothing for it but to abort the fetus or risk a stillbirth, but Cordelia is not the type of woman to just give up. On a more civilised planet, where medical science was more advanced, there would be chance for the baby, as it could be put into an uterine replicator and treated outside the womb. But Barrayar doesn’t have any of them, or does it?

There are after all still the uterine replicators which housed the children born of the rape of female prisoners of war taken in Barrayar’s last war, which had been forgotten about after they served their purposes. Cordelia manages to track them down, get Miles installed in one and get a bone strengthening programme going on. It takes all her strength but she gets her way and everything looks to be on the up and then the civil war breaks out.

And Miles is behind enemy lines, in the captial, trapped with the rebels. So Cordelia decides to go and get him to safety. Which is sort of where I came in the first time I read this, in the last third of the story. No wonder I was confused.

In retrospect, Barrayar is a turning point in the Vorkosigan series. The novels before it had been cleverly written, more intelligent than they need to be light science fiction adventure stories. With Barrayar the series took a leap in quality and became more serious and slightly darker, setting the tone for later entries like Mirror Dance and Memory.

Barrayar is also another reminder of how subtle Bujold can be in showing the effects of her science fictional technology. There isn’t any of the technogeekery or infodumping of some authors I could mention, but at the same time the plot is very much driven by a classic piece of science fiction kit, the artificial womb or uterine replicator. Here it is more of a macgufin of course, something for the protagonist to chase, but over the course of the series we slowly see the impact the introduction of uterine replicators has on Barrayaran society. And here is where it started.

Barrayar is not the best of the Vorkosigan series, but it is the best of the early part of the series. Don’t read it if you haven’t read the earlier published novels yet.

A Civil Campaign – Lois Mc Master Bujold

Published on August 28, 2011

Cover of A Civil Campaign

A Civil Campaign
Lois McMaster Bujold
534 pages
published in 1999

A Civil Campaign should have been the last novel in the Vorkosigan series. Starting with Brothers in Arms and continuing through Mirror Dance, Memory and Komarr Lois McMaster Bujold had constantly upped the ante for Miles, not just by giving him bigger challenges to overcome, but by forcing him to grow up and become mature, putting him in situations where his character strengths are useless or even counterproductive. A Civil Campaign is the culmination of that process, as Miles crashes hard against the realisation that his usual crisis management tactics are not suitable for trying to win the hand of the woman he fell in love with the first time he saw her. At the same time Bujold also ties up all the loose ends from the earlier novels, providing a proper ending for the series. It’s not a book for people new to the series.

In the previous book, Komarr, Miles had met Ekaterin, a duty bound Vor woman trapped in a loveless marriage, and fallen hard for her from the first moment. With Ekaterin now a widow, Miles sets out to court her, but with the best of intentions decides to do so without her knowning or telling her that this is what he’s doing. Surely the same tactics of deception that worked so well in his career as a galactic man of mystery will be good enough to win him a wife? Of course there’s also the small matter of the imperial wedding to prepare for, the return of his clone brother Mark with his Escobarian business partner and their somewhat too biological startup they’ve set up in Vorkosigan House, the blossoming relationship of Mark with Kareen, the daughter of one of Miles’ father’s — count Vorkosigan — oldest friends and various other minor complications and side issues Miless will have to deal with, but how hard can it all be?

In typical Miles style, on small deception leads to another and it all blows up in spectacularl fashion when the small and intimate dinner Miles planned for him and Ekaterin and some carefully selected guests grows out of control and everything that shouldn’t have come out in the open just yet, does. It’s then that Miles finally learns you can plan to conquer a woman’s heart like you can plan the conquest of a star system. It’s a brutally crafted, darkly funny comedic scene, excruciating in the way the best comedy can be. It makes me wince everytime I read it. For Miles, once he gets out of his funk, it’s the chance to do what he does best: damage limitation.

What makes A Civil Campaign so good are the characters, as Bujold has developed them over the course of the series. Miles, though he should know better by now, is still the same cocky little manipulator he always was going into the book, only to come acropper because of it, but is able to learn from his mistakes and grow up. Ekaterin, though angry at Miles’ deception is also able in the end to set herself over it. Most of the people involved in the various plots and subplots, the viewpoint characters, are confused to what they want and how they can get it, struggling even to get to a place where they can find out what they need to do. In the end it’s all set to rights of course, but it takes effort for everybody. And it’s only once the disastrous dinner party has happened and everybody’s dreams seem shattered that rebuilding can take place, helped by one of the greatest supporting characters in science fiction, Cordelia.

Despite the lack of galactic intrigue and worldshattering conspiracies this is the most compelling novel in the whole Vorkosigan saga and also the most entertaining and witty. You could call A Civil Campaign a regency romance in space, Bujold keeping the tone light even when Miles’ dreams are shattered. This light mood is sustained by the callbacks and references to earlier stories, making it something of a box of chocolates for a Vorkosigan fan, with something for everyone. It all helps to set off the darker parts of the plot.

Speaking of regency romance, this is more Jane Austen than Georgette Heyer, as the reality from Ekaterin’s point of view is far more serious than it is for Miles, no matter how bad he feels when he thinks he may just have chased away the love of his life. Barrayar is a primitive, conservative society and the role of women in it is not at all equal to that of men. She has to deal with the expectations of Barrayar society and her own family in addition to everything Miles has to go through and at one point she might just lose her son, Nicky, if she does the wrong thing. After Komarr it’s another example of how Bujold manages to sneak in some light feminism…

Shards of Honor – Lois Mc Master Bujold (reread)

Published on November 14, 20101 Comment

Cover of Shards of Honor

Shards of Honor
Lois McMaster Bujold
313 pages
published in 1986

I’ve reviewed Shards of Honor before, way back in 2001. Chronologically it’s the earliest story in the Vorkosigan series, with the exception of Falling Free. It is also the earliest published novel in the series and was based on an idea Bujold had for a Star Trek story. In the original story, the roles of Aral and Cordelia would’ve been played by a Klingon warrior and a Vulcan scientist; you can still sort of see the traces of this in the published book.

Cordelia Naismith is the captain of a Betan Planetary Survey Mission investigating a newly discovered planet, when her expedition is attacked by a Barrayaran force. She’s stunned and when she comes to she’s alone with the leader of that force, Aral Vorkosigan, left behind for death by his own internal enemies. They negotiate an uneasy truce to try and survive on a hostile planet to reach a survial cache left behind by the Barrayarans. After a long and ardeous trek they reach the cache, but something unexpected has happened in the meantime: they’ve fallen in love.