Captain Vorpatril's Alliance...
Jun. 29th, 2012 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrakoRead and enjoyed the new Lois McMaster Bujold novel, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. In the ARC edition, available from Baen's website.
What a yummy book for a Barrayar-lover like myself.
In spoilerish detail...
- Ivan's story does justice to him, just as I'd hoped. Without the filter of Miles' point of view, and without the stress of Miles' affairs to cope with, Ivan is a charming, easy-going, personable man.
- Alys - I couldn't believe it. I never liked Alys before. I always found her fairly cold, bitchy about her poor dead husband, a snob with everyone else - always concerned about the proper way to do things, always conniving to get poor reluctant Ivan a wife. But here she was quite delightful: a bit stiff and proper, yes, but not unpleasantly so. Reasonably maternal, and caring where both Tej and Ivan were concerned.
- How things have changed on Barrayar - Ivan can marry someone who's not just and off-worlder, but part Jacksonian and part Cetagandan. And her Cetagandan grandmother is a perfectly acceptable person for Lady Alys to have over for tea.
- Nice clarity about certain Barrayaran rules and customs - their wedding ceremonies, for example.
- I was so glad that no one in the book called him "that idiot Ivan". And the I was spluttering, "Ivan, you idiot," when he was so slow to see that he really, really should keep Tej as his wife because she was just about perfect. I pictured all his relatives (especially Alys and Simon) plotting to keep him married to her. Alys calling up Uncle Falco: "Whatever you do, on no account let that divorce go through!" And Falco being perfectly agreeable to that, especially when he'd met Tej himself.
- The Regency Romance flavour really came through, and I loved that. I wondered if Falco was called Falco because Lois McMaster Bujold is a Lindsay Davis fan.
- Beforehand, I'd had the impression that most of the action would take place on Komarr, or at least, away from Barrayar. I am so delighted that wasn't the case!
- Byerly was delightful, and his parallel romance with Rish just made me wish that I was seeing the action through the point of view of one of them. I'm a reader who has always wanted a romance between By and Ivan, but Rish is almost as good for By as Ivan would be, and better in some ways.
- I loved the Jewels. We've seen a lot in Lois McMaster Bujold's books of the downside of bioengineering: but the Jewels are a huge contrast to Taura's sad past, and it's nice to see genetically modified humans being valued, cherished, and treated like family members. I loved the way they were - literally - so colourful. They made me think of Cirque du Soleil.
- Tej's family were by turns amusing and horrific. Seeing the Jacksonian point of view of the universe - and the Cetagandan - hair raising, yes, but no more than some things I read about or see on television here and now. There was something of the Wild West about them, always looking for their own advantage, always going after a big deal - sort of like Mark, only it makes me like Mark less, while it made me like them more. I'll have to think about why.
- I liked the way Shiv and Simon got along, and undestood each other.
- I really liked Simon without the memory chip. I loved Ivan's realization that his role as Ivan's um-stepfather meant something to him - and I'm sure it meant a lot to Ivan, too, having lived thirty-five years without a father, and still afraid of Uncle Aral.
- For a wild and crazy minute there, I thought or hoped we'd get to see Miles through Ivan's eyes. But no, we got Tej's viewpoint. Good enough. But I'd still like to see Miles more, as Ivan sees him. Ivan could hardly even describe Miles who is, admittedly, somewhat indescribable.
- We get to see the mature Gregor. I liked that. He seems to have developed an impish streak, and a fluency in ruling.
- I liked the way there were little in-jokes that the reader would understand, but the viewpoint character would not - like mailing the ugly vase to Miles as an excuse to meet her.
- I liked the slow buy sure way Tej realized she was happier with Ivan than with her family. And the way Ivan realized he wanted her to stay forever, and then didn't even get a chance to talk to her.
- I liked the suspense when you just knew the bomb was going to go off in the tunnels and rupture the water pipe - the questions being when (obviously at the worst possible time) and how (in the worst possible way).
- There were good twists of technology - little things that took me by surprise, like the mycoborers.
- Great images:
- sorting files by the snake method
- ImpSec's ugly building sliding into the mud
- the old Count's daggers in the treasure trove
- the skeleton of the dead soldier, Abelard, with the bomb strapped to him
- sorting files by the snake method
- I thought Tej was, quite frankly, adorable.
- If anything was disappointing... and really, nothing was, it was the best Bujold novel since Memory, in my opinion - if anything was disappointing, it was that Aral and Cordelia didn't actually appear. And that maybe the climax of both the romance and the action plot were just a teeny but bland. But the rest of it wasn't bland, so that isn't even really a complaint, just an observation.
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Date: 2012-06-30 03:52 am (UTC)Loved the snakes. Also loved Tej's names for people, calling Ivan Ivan Xav because he was the only Ivan Xav in the directory. The Gregor. The Coz. I just lost it when she came up with The Coz.
Anyway, I suspect I'll be fangirl squeeing this one for quite some time. Sigh (happy sigh).
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Date: 2012-07-05 02:27 pm (UTC)I felt I got more sense of the Cetagandan culture in "Lord Vorpatril's Alliance" than in "Cetaganda".
I want to reread!
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Date: 2012-07-05 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-11 08:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-11 11:26 am (UTC)