(no subject)

[skygiants]

While I was backing up old files on my laptop the other day, I discovered my proto-booklog from 2006, before I actually got brave and/or self-important enough to Share My Thoughts With the Internet! Becca-from-five-years-ago apparently had this to say to herself about Diplomatic Immunity:

Not exactly the slapstick comedy of the last one, and I don’t think quite as strong, but still pretty riveting (the disease plot was creepy, and I like Bel, but what on earth happened to the whole character of Ekaterin?)

Future Becca - who does not have an eyepatch or a goatee or an all-leather outfit, how have I been wasting these past five years? - finds herself pretty much in agreement with Past Becca's commentary. I like creepy galactic plague plots, I like the quaddie society, I like that Bel gets to be much more of an independent person (and with less of the problems that twitched at me about the way the narrative talks about Bel in previous books, too) but where on earth is Ekaterin for most of the plot? Given that this book is marketed as 'Miles and Ekaterin fight crime together!' I feel like Ekaterin is a bit underused.

(Also, as always, I miss the Barrayaran cast of characters.)

Still, it is a perfectly decent Vorkosigan book, and now I am officially caught up and ready for Cryoburn when it comes in for me at the library.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

IIRC, Bujold said that when she realized it could've been a dual-POV book, she'd already written the entire thing and would have had to rip it up and start over, and she'd just done that on another book, so no.

It's hard to put down but when it's done I can't help but realize that it's not the book I wanted. Neither, from all reports, is _Cryoburn_ which I may not read, I haven't decided.

Oh, and I recently discovered this AU of the end of this book in which Ivan has to lead the Barrayaran resistance, which is very readable and which I recommend if you like Ivan, though I have a couple of plot-related reservations regarding it.

[skygiants]

Hah, that is an attitude I can absolutely sympathize with . . . while thinking the dual-POV book probably would have been much better. Ekaterin I think is the one who needs to go through character development in this book, moreso than Miles.

Bujold is always hard to put down, but yes, and I think it suffers worse from being right after A Civil Campaign, which is almost exactly the book I want.

Oh, thanks for the link! I do very much like Ivan and so this sounds right up my alley.

[kate_nepveu]

Yes, Ekaterin _has_ a story there and it's frustrating to me to see Miles' gravity warp the book away from it so that the reader's left to infer it.

Also, hi, decided that I comment often enough that I should move you off "tracked" to "reading list."

[skygiants]

Yes, exactly, especially since her Great Moment of Awesome happens while he is unconscious!

Hah, I was actually just thinking you comment often enough that I should boldly make the first move to do so myself. Hi! :D

[kate_nepveu]

Are you on DW too, or should I put your LJ as access there for commenting purposes?

[skygiants]

I am! I'm skygiants on DW; I don't post there yet but I do use it for reading and commenting.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes. Read Guerrilla. I was reading it chapter by chapter as it went up, and... well... let's just say that Cryoburn suffered by comparison. Badly.

[skygiants]

. . . maybe I should not read it until after I've read Cryoburn then? I'd rather not have the suffering-by-comparison going on in the back of my head!

[(Anonymous)]

I have never been even a little bit in love with the Quaddies. Also...they're kind of gross.

Actually, I think I am willing to extend that and say that the whole range of Vorkosigan-saga societies, whether they be Cetagandan, Komarran or from Jackson's Hole, kind of leave me cold. Except maybe Barrayaran society. I am kind of down with that.

[rahkan.livejournal.com]

Mwuahaha, who could that anonymous devil have been?

[skygiants]

MYSTERIOUS. I like the quaddies! And I do not think they are gross; I like that you get a group with a completely different body type that's being presented as graceful and normal. I actually like quite a lot of Bujold's societies, with the inevitable caveats that a.) they are all mostly monocultural, which is a bit ridiculous for a whole planet and b.) while I like them I don't always like the way she writes about them (see again: my complaints about the hermaphrodites.)

What actually kept throwing me me most about quaddie society was their fashion sense. Puffy shorts and slashed doublets? NOOOO WHY.

[rahkan.livejournal.com]

Oh wait, I like the Betans and the hermaphrodites. They were okay too.

I don't really like Bujold's societies because their differences often seem a little arbitrary. Like, why are the Quaddies like that? Having arms in the place of legs and living in free fall doesn't necessarily seem to me like it would result in all this intense egalitarianism and not having unique names and not having any crimes and such stuff as all that.

The same goes for the Cetagandans. Why are they like that? It seems a little dubious. At least there are random and explicit genetic modifications involved, so maybe they're just programmed to be like that.

With Barrayar and Beta colony I can kind of understand why they're like that, so it's alright.

[skygiants]

I'm not sure having arms in the place of legs necessarily needs to lead directly to intense egalitarianism - I mean, I'm willing to believe there are things that affect the growth of a society that we're not told about, because societies are like that. Like, why did Athens develop differently than Sparta in terms of government when they were right next to each other? There are probably lots of reasons! Probably you would not get all of them in A Novel Of Ancient Athens in which the viewpoint character isn't even Athenian. So I'm okay with there being elements in the societies that don't follow a straight line from Founding Element Back in the Day to Interesting Societal Quirk.

[rahkan.livejournal.com]

Sure, but if I lived before Athens existed, while Greece was all ruled by Kings and shit, someone had written a story about a democratic city-state where all the citizens chose their leaders by yearly lot, I would have called bullshit on that too. Actually I probably would have said, "Hecka good story about a place that does not and cannot exist. Would you recite it again please while I try to ascertain its allegorical relation to our present conditions"

Actually, I probably would have said, "Durr?"

....But, you know what I mean.

The quaddies don't seem to me to be within the normal range of the kinds of societies that humans can form, neither in modern day nor within the Barrayar universe. They're substantially nicer and more egalitarian than Beta Colony. I don't really buy it as any kind of actual society, in whatever sense that "actual", within SF, has any kind of meaning. And as a story-thing, it's okay, but not exciting. Which isn't to say that I didn't like Diplomatic Immunity. It was good to see Bel do stuff.

[skygiants]

I like to think I would have said "congratulations on inventing the spec-fic story!" but one would really need the benefit of hindsight for that . . .

Hmm, maybe that's where the difference is - I don't see them as necessarily nicer or more functional than Beta Colony. I think they're a bit small-townish (what do they say they have a population of, five thousand or so? That's only a thousand more than the town where I grew up, which was basically Hobbiton) and there are pros and cons with that. I mean, we get shown a lot of the pros, but on the other hand Miles by the time he gets there is in a situation that is prone to make one go "oh god Quaddies I AM SO SORRY WE SUCK." I would bet Quaddieland has a whole lot of rebellious teenagers who go around getting extraneous piercings and complaining that their space station is totally bourgeois and unhip and creativity-stifling.

[rahkan.livejournal.com]

Quaddie teenagers hanging out in the back of space-pickups and smoking the reefer...hehe

[batyatoon]

To understand why Quaddie society is the way it is, you need to read Falling Free. It's got nothing to do with the fact that they have four arms instead of two arms and two legs, except indirectly/historically.

Trust me, it makes a lot of sense.

I'd love to read something similar for Cetaganda, honestly. How did that society develop?