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Sep. 3rd, 2013 12:08 pmAs always, I'm like a year behind everyone else on this, but I have finally read Captain Vorpatril's Alliance!
. . . okay, I have to start by saying that this edition, at least, has the worst Vorkosigan cover of all time. OF ALL TIME. Take a gander at this:
I happened to be reading this book while on my road trip with Gen, and every time we would meet up with someone on the trip, I would pull out the cover for the express purpose of horrifying them. "WHY IS THE BLUE LADY FROLICKING!" they would inevitably cry. "WHAT IS SHE LEAPING POINTLESSLY FOR?" "I DON'T KNOW," I would sob in response. "I DON'T KNOW."
Every so often we would sit at a coffeeshop and have some reading time. I would pull out my half-naked blue ladies, and Gen would pull out Rousseau.
Anyway, terrible cover aside, this was a perfectly . . . inoffensive Vorkosigan book? Like most of the recent Vorkosigans, I guess. The plot of this one is that Ivan stumbles into a fake marriage with a very nice Jacksonian girl with a complicated family, including a blue sister (hence the frolicking blue lady on the cover), and everyone eventually ends up being part of a heist of sorts. Hijinks, etc., although the hijinks are also sort of strangely low-energy and low-stakes. Perhaps low-stakes, low-energy hijinks are just inevitably what happens when you put Miles out of the picture and let Ivan -- who is very dedicated to maintaining low stakes and low energy as much as possible -- take center stage. It was fine. It was fine! But I miss the page-turning quality of early Vorkosigans. Maybe I'll read Shards of Honor again.
. . . okay, I have to start by saying that this edition, at least, has the worst Vorkosigan cover of all time. OF ALL TIME. Take a gander at this:
I happened to be reading this book while on my road trip with Gen, and every time we would meet up with someone on the trip, I would pull out the cover for the express purpose of horrifying them. "WHY IS THE BLUE LADY FROLICKING!" they would inevitably cry. "WHAT IS SHE LEAPING POINTLESSLY FOR?" "I DON'T KNOW," I would sob in response. "I DON'T KNOW."
Every so often we would sit at a coffeeshop and have some reading time. I would pull out my half-naked blue ladies, and Gen would pull out Rousseau.
Anyway, terrible cover aside, this was a perfectly . . . inoffensive Vorkosigan book? Like most of the recent Vorkosigans, I guess. The plot of this one is that Ivan stumbles into a fake marriage with a very nice Jacksonian girl with a complicated family, including a blue sister (hence the frolicking blue lady on the cover), and everyone eventually ends up being part of a heist of sorts. Hijinks, etc., although the hijinks are also sort of strangely low-energy and low-stakes. Perhaps low-stakes, low-energy hijinks are just inevitably what happens when you put Miles out of the picture and let Ivan -- who is very dedicated to maintaining low stakes and low energy as much as possible -- take center stage. It was fine. It was fine! But I miss the page-turning quality of early Vorkosigans. Maybe I'll read Shards of Honor again.
