Book Review: Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold

[hrj]

My primary blog has moved, but feel free to comment in either place.

If I made a list of the books I re-read shortly after finishing, ordered by the briefness of the delay in starting that re-read, the top five slots would all be occupied by books in Bujold’s Vorkosigan series. While I have deep philosophical problems with some aspects of underlying socio-political messages of the stories, I will be one of the first to admire her ability to create a “good read”.

I say all this to provide a context for my reaction to this latest Vorkosigan story. Meh. Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen follows the unexpectedly [to the reader] intertwined personal lives Cordelia Vorkosigan (Regent of the planet of Sergyar) and Oliver Jole (Admiral in charge of same) several years after the death of Aral Vorkosigan, Cordelia’s husband and Oliver’s long-term lover. Now that they are beginning to recover emotionally from the death of the man they both loved, Cordelia has plans for her future that offer Oliver some options that only this latest generation of Barayarans have any need or ability to take account of. Options that involve creative uses of reproductive technology.

GJ&tRQ isn’t a romance in any sort of structural sense, but it is very much organized around personal, domestic concerns and consequences. Family dynamics. Relationships. Life choices. That sort of thing. And given that one of the things I’ve always loved about the series is the focus on those dynamics, one might think the love would carry over here. But…meh. All in all, it felt like nothing much happened. The dancers walked through the figures and returned to their places, a little flushed and out of breath, but nothing more. And the non-personal aspects of the plot revolve around the everyday logistics of running a colony planet. Early on in the story, the phrase “bureaucracy porn” popped into my head. I’m sure a thrilling novel could be built around diplomatic disasters and finding ways to turn the tables on dishonest contractors, but this novel wasn’t it.

I joke that the series hasn’t been quite as interesting since Miles became happy, but there’s a definite correlation in my enjoyment of the books. A Civil Campaign was the last one that triggered an immediate re-read. About a third of the way through GJ&tRQ, I realized that if I put the book down and walked away, I wouldn’t feel like I’d missed anything. It is a technical well-written story about interesting characters, but it feels like the butter is being scraped over too much toast at this point. I’m sure that Bujold can still write a book that would have me diving back to page one after I get to “the end”, but I’ve come to the conclusion that such a book is likely to be outside the Vorkosigan universe.

Comments

[lifeofglamour.livejournal.com]

Huh. I'm on page 105 of GJ&tRQ (so...about a third of the way through) and I'm feeling similarly...bored and my mind is wandering. So far nothing has really happened, and that's NOT what I've come to expect in a Bujold novel, or in the Vorkosigan series. I keep thinking, "Oh maybe now - maybe this is the thing that kicks off the action...oh, no, just some teenagers joyriding, now they're going home...dammit."
I want to finish it for completeness sake, but I'm sad to see that it's not going to get any better. :-\

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's...ok? If you haven't quit yet, you'll probably be glad you finished it.

[beth-bernobich.livejournal.com]

I had the same reaction, alas.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

That's a good verbalization of my reaction, although I hadn't thought it through. Memory is my favorite in the series and one I still go back and re-read. (Civil Campaign I re-read as well, but it's fluff comparatively.)

I think Bujold has fallen a bit into the Anne McCaffrey trap of "I really, really just want to write Regency romances, and I'm going to do that even if the universe(s) don't want to comply."

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't want to second-guess why an author chooses to write specific stories. But I suspect that there's a large enough Vorkosigan fanbase out there that, if that's what she wants to write, she can coast on it for quite some time.

[soon_lee]

I enjoyed it quite a bit, though I wouldn't be much surprised if this is the last Vorkosigan book we get, unless she decides to focus on the next generation (Miles & Ekaterina's offspring).

Though it was a relatively quiet book, I very much enjoyed the "after the War" approach it took, as well as the focus on middle-aged characters. We rarely seek books exploring the aftermath of the world-threatening conflicts, and we similarly rarely see protagonists who are not bright-eyed, young heroes & heroines. I found GJ&tRQ a breath of fresh air.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I don't mind quiet books, and I love books with protagonists closer to my own age range (50s), but... I guess it's that the things she does that *aren't* angsty high-stakes intrigue and adventure aren't things that do it for me. The quiet stories I enjoy about middle-aged characters are different stories than what she's writing.

It's the usual problem of the Venn diagram of book likes: it's sometimes hard to predict exactly which overlapping circles are the ones that pushed your buttons until they're removed from the set of layers.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

GJatRQ isn't on my list of top Vorkosiverse stories either. That said, it was still a good read. Of the more recent books in the series, I keep going back to Diplomatic Immunity, but even that wasn't an immediate re-read.

This one almost felt like it was a stepping-stone sort of story: one that, while certainly readable in its own right, may be more important in the long run by filling in important bits (and LOTS of them) for later Vorkosiverse novels.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I'll keep following for "later", assuming that's the intent. I've learned my lesson in the past about continuing to follow a series out of loyalty well past the point when I'm still enjoying it.