Lois McMaster Bujold Archives

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance — Lois McMaster Bujold

Published on October 20, 2018Leave a comment

Cover of Vorpatril's Alliance

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
Lois McMaster Bujold
573 pages
published in 2012

It was only a last minute impulse that made me grab Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance from my bookshelves when I went to visit my parents last Friday, but the end result was that I started reading it when I’d arrived and finished it the same night, at 2:30 AM. Some novels just grab you like that and Bujold is more likely than most writers to write them. Her Vorkosigan saga has long been comfort reading for me, but as I’ve noticed time and again, especially on rereads, her novels always have more depth than you first realise.

Post A Civil Campaign, the Vorkosigan series has been a bit disappointing to me however, as Bujold seemed content just to coast. Both Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn were fairly conventional adventures, where Miles gets himself into trouble and has to get himself out of it again, lacking some of the with and sparkle of the earlier books. Worse, these completely sideline Ekaterin, Miles’ wife, who had proven herself to be a worthy co-protagonist in Komarr and the aforementioned A Civil Campaign. Worse, Miles himself had become a bit boring, having overcome most of the challenges life had thrown at him.

But Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance doesn’t star Miles, but rather Miles idiotic cousin, Ivan. And Ivan is an inspired choice. Whereas Miles is smug and glib, able to just power through adversary through sheer force of personality if nothing else, Ivan starts off out of his depth and remains that way to the end. At times, he’s more a concerned bystander than an actual participant in his own adventures. What he does have in common with his hyperactive cousin is that both are able to make incredibly bad choices that tend to work out incredibly well for them. Most of the time.

For Ivan, it all starts when Byerly Vorrutyer rings his doorbell one evening after work. Byerly you may remember from earlier books in the series, on the surface a wastrel and minor, somewhat dodgy aristocrat who in truth works for the Imperial Security services. While Ivan is on Komarr because he’s on the staff of the admiral holding inspections there , Byerly is there to investigate some conspiracy. And lucky Ivan, now Byerly needs him to seduce the girl who seems to be the main target of the conspiracy. Having protested in vain, the next day Ivan visits the girl at her work, buys a hideous gift for Miles as a cover, attempts to flirt, then follows her home where he’s promptly stun gunned by her unsuspected, blue skinned companion…

The only thing Ivan succeeds in is convincing them not to dispose of him out of hand and it’s fortunate indeed for Tej — the girl in question– and Rish — her blue companion — that he did so. Because later that night the real assassins they were worried about appeared, Ivan manages to successfully stall them even when tied to a chair for Tej and Rish to take action and one phone call to the local Kommarian police later they manage to safely flee to Ivan’s apartment. Because of that phone call though the police arrives to question Ivan about what happened that night and because they show up at his work and because he’s of course rather important in his own way (by accident of birth, rather than merit) ImpSec also gets involved.

All of which he could probably deal with on his own, but he’s loath to deliver Tej to the Kommarian authorities when there are still people after her and Rish’s lives. When things come to a head the police is at his door with a search warrant, he makes the sort of desparate gamble he normally condemns Miles for and persuades Tej to marry him using an old Barrayan ritual, with Byerly as witness. And it works. Up to a point. All his immediate problems disappear and he, Tej and Rish get to hitch a ride with Ivan’s boss to Barrayar. There, Ivan had explained to Tej, it will be easy to get a divorce and it’s unlikely the assassins will be able to reach them. Everything’s coming up roses, but he’ll still have to explain everything to his family…

And with this Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance shifts into something like a comedy of manners, reminiscent of A Civil Campaign. Because of course it’s not that simple. For a start, while both are completely oblivious to it, it’s clear to the reader and Ivan’s circle of friends & family that he and Tej are attracted to each other, do make a good couple. Not in the least because within their respective families they sort of hold the same reputation of nice, but useless and share the experience of having their contributions overlooked, of being ignored. Tej is the youngest daughter of the head of one of the great houses on Jackson’s Whole, who had to flee for her life during a coup against the House, not knowing whether the rest of her family was still alive. Before that, she was always the baby of the family, loved but seen as little more than a pawn to be married off to another House when convenient.

Ivan of course is “that Idiot, Ivan”, always stuck in the shadow of not only Miles, but also his mother and aunt and content to remain there for the most part, his response to being quite high up in the line of succession to the Barrayaran throne. Now we’ve seen much of this only from Miles’ point of view, so it’s great to see Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance taking the time to flesh this out a bit more, as Ivan has to deal with the burgeoning relationship between his mother and Simon Illyan, the retired ImpSec head that was started a few books earlier. It’s nice to see Ivan as more than just a foil for Miles’ schemes, with some genuinely touching scenes with him and his mother.

Then, in the final third of the novel we switch gears again as it turns out Tej’s family is still alive and is on Barrayar. Now we get Ivan and Tej caught between a rock and a hard place, as the patriarch of the family makes some sort of bet with Simon Illyan about some sort of treasure dating back to the Cetengandan occupation of Barrayar some fifty years ago. Now it’s more of a comedic crime caper as Ivan has to find out just hat is going on while Tej’s assassins are also closing again…

After two minor novels in the series, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance comes as a relief. It shows there’s still life in this series, even if only when the focus is taken away from Miles. Best read if you’ve already read the rest of the series, though you can skip the two novels between it and A Cvil Campaign.

Ethan of Athos — Lois McMaster Bujold

Published on November 10, 20141 Comment

Cover of Ethan of Athos

Ethan of Athos
Lois McMaster Bujold
237 pages
published in 1986

Ethan of Athos is the third published book in Bujold’s Vorkosigan series and the third published in 1986. Whereas Shards of Honor told the story of how Miles Vorkosigan’s parents met and The Warrior’s Apprentice showed his first adventure, this is a spinoff not featuring any of the main characters in the series. In fact, at first it barely seems to take place in the same universe.

It all starts on the all male planet of Athos (named after the all-male Greek monastry on mount Athos, natch) where Ethan’s greatest worry is how to take his relationship a stage further and get his boyfriend to be more responsible. His dayjob is as a obstetrician. On a planet full of men natural child birth is of course impossible so uterine replicators using female gene cultures taken along by the original colonists are used instead. Recently these cultures have started to deteriorate however, showing their age and new cultures have been ordered from Jackson’s Whole. Unfortunately, once they show up, these turn out to be unusable thrash. Despite their desire to remain cut off from the rest of the Galaxy, the people of Athos have no choice but to send somebody out into the darkness, somebody pure who can handle the temptations of women, somebody like, well, Ethan.

Ethan is very much an innocent abroad, who course immediately stumbles into a conspiracy surrounding the lost cultures, as he’s kidnapped by Cetegandian agents, the dominant military power, who think he’s some sort of intelligence agent. They’re looking for a Terrance Cee, who turns out to be one of their escaped genetic experiments, a limited telepath who had used the shipment of tissue cultures to Athos to smuggle out the genes of his murdered female counterpart.

He’s in over his head, but luckily he stumbled into Elli Quinn, of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, taking a recuperative holiday after the events of The Warrior’s Apprentice. She’s actually in the employ of the Jackson’s Whole House responsible for the shipment of gene tissues to Athos, to keep an eye on the Cetegandians and find out what their interest in it is. Ethan, Terrance and Elli have to reluctantly team up to defeat their enemies, despite Ethan’s severe misgivings about women as the source of all evil.

As per usual with Bujold the plot and story is compelling enough that it’s hard to miss the serious world building underneath. Ethan’s consciousness raising with regards to the true nature of women is obvious enough, but the society of Athos itself deserves more attention. The planet without men is a hoary old sf cliche, but planets without women are rare if non-existent. Athos was founded as a refuge for what its founders thought were a persecuted minority, ridiculous as that sounds. It still has that siege mentality in its dealings with the wider galaxy and frex the access to galactic literature, but the society itself is refreshingly normal. Athos is a planet full of homosexual men, where heterosexuality is not just rare, but impossible. This is a single gender planet that’s not a monstrosity or missing something.

It also shows how early in her writing Bujold has been writing about what you might call traditional female concerns, dressed up in mil-sf adventure romps. The whole story is arguably driven by Ethan (and by extension, Athos) need to start a family. He starts in a traditionally female, nurturing role and doesn’t transform into an action hero but returns happily to his chosen career. Bujold presents all this matter of factly; she has that knack of slipping these sort of outrageous ideas if you think about them for a moment quietly past the reader.

It’s fun to see how different and yet recognisable by the same writer each of the three novels Bujold got published in 1986 were and how ambitious in retrospect she already was. Ethan of Athos, though usually seen as a minor novel in the Vorkosigan series, really is as ambitious and interesting as any of them.

The Warrior’s Apprentice — Lois McMaster Bujold

Published on July 28, 20141 Comment

Cover of The Warrior's Apprentice

The Warrior’s Apprentice
Lois McMaster Bujold
315 pages
published in 1986

As you probably know, Bob, The Warrior’s Apprentice is the second novel in the Vorkosigan Saga series of mil-sf adventures and came out in the same year as the first, Shards of Honor. Whereas that book starred Miles parents, this is the introduction of Miles Vorkosigan, the just under five foot crippled before birth by a neurotoxin attack on his mother, insanely charismatic, insanely hyperactive military genius who, at the start of the novel is trying to make it through the eliminations for officer candidacy in the Barrayaran Imperial Military Service. The written exam is no problem; it’s the physical tests that are a challenge for somebody who could break his bones just by sitting down hard.

His strategy is to take it slow and careful, but being seventeen he lets himself get goaded by one of his fellow candidates, takes an unnecessary risk and breaks his legs, with it shattering his chances to get into the military. Worse than his own disappointment is his grandfather’s, the liberator of Barrayar of the Cetegendans, who dies the next night — Miles convinced he killed him by breaking his heart. In his despair and sorry he’s glad to get away from Barrayar and, because of the political situation his father too would like to see him visit his mother’s family on Beta Colony, a nicely civilised part of the galaxy where aristocratic notions of honour are held for the anachronisms they are. He doesn’t travel alone; his bodyguard, sergeant Bothari, of course has to travel with him and he manages to persuade his mother to ask Bothari’s daughter, Elena, to come with him as well. He’s of course half in love with her and thinks a trip to another planet and perhaps the chance to learn more of Elena’s long dead mother, would get him into her good graces. Yes, Miles is somewhat of a nice guy but trust me, he grows out of it.

To be honest, Miles is a bit of a schemer and an impulsive gambler; not with something as uninteresting as money, but he does have a knack for spur of the moment impulses landing him in jams that only his gift for gab and quick thinking can get him out of. It’s this impulsiveness that got him to take Elena to Beta Colony and that, not even an hour after landing gets him into trouble again, as he intervenes in a dispute between a desperate pilot and the yard owner who wants to scrap the ship he’s holding hostage. In the end he ends up buying the ship, taking the pilot into his service, then devising a plan to actually pay for all this by smuggling a shipload of weapons to a planet under siege, in the process also rescuing a deserted Barrayaran officer stranded on Beta. All of this not so much planned, but the result of Miles boldy going forward to try and gain enough momentum to get himself out of the mess he just made. As Bujold puts it:

At the end of two days he found himself teetering atop a dizzying financial structure compounded of truth, lies, credit, cash purchases, advances on advances, shortcuts, a tiny bit of blackmail, false advertising, and yet another mortgage on some more of his glow-in-the-dark farmland.

Things get worse once his scheme actually gets underway and he and his plucky band of followers — most of whom following out of curiousity as much as anything — arrive at their destination. Ultimately it ends up with Miles in control of The Dendarii Mercenaries, a mercenary band he had first made up to get the representative of the planet he was going to smuggle weapons to to trust him and that ended up consisting of most of the mercenaries actually besieging that planet. Watching this all unfold is a collossall romp punctured by “I’ll figure something out” from Miles.

It’s in fact such an entertaining romp that it can be hard to notice the more serious parts of the story. These aren’t bloodless adventures and when people die, it has an impact, even on their killers. Early in a jump pilot dies as the result of an interrogation Miles had ordered to get the codes for a ship and it haunts him. Similarly, while the way in which he swears people to his service at the drop of a hat is played for comic relief, Bujold also makes serious points about loyalty and leadership.

I’m not sure when exactly I first read The Warrior’s Apprentice, but it was before Shards of Honor. The revelations about Elena’s true parentage and her father’s role in it therefore came as much as a shock to me as it did to her, as she turned out to be the product of rape, the mother who had supposedly died when she was a young child still alive, her father having been the rapist. In the hands of a lesser writer this could’ve been tacky, out of place in what seems at first to be a wish fulfilment adventure story, but Bujold handles this sensibly and believable. She doesn’t shy away from the fact that Elena’s ignorance of her father’s past did her no favours, or that Miles’ parents had been more concerned with her father’s well being than perhaps her own.

What also puts The Warrior’s Apprentice above mere wish fulfilment is the fact that Miles doesn’t get the girl. Elena falls for somebody else entirely, turns out to be her own woman, not just an trophy or a pet project. That’s really what puts the whole Vorkosigan series on a higher level than most other adventure sf series; Bujold never forgets there are other people besides Miles and while he might sometimes only see object to be manipulated, she never forgets.

Diplomatic Immunity – Lois McMaster Bujold

Published on November 9, 2010

Cover of the Diplomatic Immunity

Diplomatic Immunity
Lois McMaster Bujold
367 pages
published in 2002

Rereading Diplomatic Immunity on the heels of Komarr and A Civil Campaign drove home how conventional and slight it was compared to those two novels. It’s as if Bujold, having lost her nerve after having written two somewhat unusual novels, decided to go back to a tried and true formula of getting Miles into trouble and letting him dig his way out of it. Of course, she had also started her fantasy series at this point, so a more charitable explenation is that she had simply lost interest in Miles Vorkosigan and only wrote this to please her fans.

In any case Diplomatic Immunity is a bit disappointing. Nothing wrong with it as a story, but it misses the sociological insights and character depth of the previous two novels. What’s more, we only see things from Miles’ point of view, again unlike Komarr and A Civil Campaign. Which means that Ekaterin is demoted from co-protagonist to supporting character and worse, barely present. It’s Miles’ show all the way and Ekaterin is only there to lend moral support. Which is a criminal waste: she is what made Komarr and A Civil Campaign so good, as intriguing and strong a character as Miles himself. This novel would’ve been so much better if Bujold had let Ekaterin play an equal important part in the plot as Miles.

The plot itself is discussed in my original review. Sufficient to say that I’d largely forgotten it in the six years since. It’s compelling enough while reading, but ultimately on the slight side. I think I was right to describe it then as an exercise in nostalgia, a last look at Miles before Bujold went on to greener pastures, even though a new novel, Cryoburn has been published since.

Komarr – Lois McMaster Bujold

Published on November 4, 20101 Comment

Cover of Komarr

Komarr
Lois McMaster Bujold
311 pages
published in 1998

Komarr was the first Miles Vorkosigan book I’d ever read, back in 1998. At the time it was the latest in the series to have been published and deliberately written as a jump on point for new readers like me. I didn’t jump in completely ignorant however, as the Vorkosigan series was one of the favourite series of rec.arts.sf.written, which each new novel thoroughly dissected and discussed. It was these discussions that prompted me to finally pick up one of the series and luckily, it was the perfect starting point.

What I missed about Komarr the first time around was how feminist it is in its own right. It’s not an overtly political book, but the heart of the story is how one woman manages to escape from a bad marriage and the gender assumptions, traditions and expectations she grew up with. It’s her story that makes Komarr special, in what otherwise would’ve been a fun but unremarkable adventure science fiction story. As I’ve realised since, Lois Bujold has always been good at infusing even her slightest science fiction with subtle sociological backgrounds, imagining what effects the usual genre props might actually have on a society. So for example, the coming of Galactic gender assignment technologies to backward Barrayar has lead to a glut of males, as tradition values male heirs more than costly daughters and every family scrambled to make sure they got their quota of males. It’s something that has happened in the real world as well, not that outrageous a prediction to be sure, but Bujold pulls that sort of thing all the time, hidden in plain view in the background to Miles’ adventures.