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[skygiants]

As 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.

Comments

[nocarename]

Ivan's problem is that he tries to be sane. Which is much nicer to live, generally, but not as exciting to read, yes. (Some people might think that Cordelia is sane. Sane people don't generally jump through blind wormholes for civil servant pay.)

“So, um...” Ivan considered how to phrase this. “How far up does the rank have to go before someone in your parade of concerned officers comes out and says, What the hell, Simon?”
“I wait with some fascination to find out.”

[rymenhild]

The most interesting reviews of CVA I've seen argue that there should have been higher stakes. I mean, think of what a journalist could make of the events of CVA. There should be a major, empire-shaking scandal. I mean, the following (all spoilers, in ROT13) isn't even false until the last few implications:

N unhg ynql jub _crefbanyyl_ bpphcvrq Oneenlne unf erghearq, jvgu n pevzvany flaqvpngr sebz Wnpxfba'f Jubyr, gb envq gur cvyyntr bs jne. Va gur cebprff fur naq ure grnz unir qrfgeblrq gur VzcFrp ohvyqvat naq cbyyhgrq gur cynarg jvgu ovbybtvpny jrncbaf. Zhygvcyr zrzoref bs gur vaarezbfg pvepyr bs gur vaarezbfg evat bs gur Oneenlnena Rzcver unir pbyyhqrq jvgu Ynql turz Rfgvs gb ernpu guvf erfhyg. Zbfg cebzvaragyl, Fvzba Vyylna, gur greevslvat sbezre puvrs bs VzcFrp uvzfrys, naq gur cnegare bs gur guveq-zbfg-vzcbegnag jbzna va gur ragver Rzcver, unf pbaavirq jvgu Ynql turz Rfgvs naq ure grnz. Gur Rzcrebe uvzfrys jnf oevorq, jvgu gur fcbvyf bs jne, gb gerng gur crecrgengbef yvtugyl. Rzcrebe Tertbe nyfb hfrq gur jbefg xvaq bs arcbgvfz, nf bar zrzore bs gur Wnpxfbavna pevzvany flaqvpngr vf zneevrq gb Ybeq Vina Ibecngevy, gur Rzcrebe'f pbhfva, jub rira abj vf ab zber guna gragu va yvar sbe gur Vzcrevny pnzc fgbby. Ybeq Ibecngevy'f yriry bs vaibyirzrag vf hapyrne, naq vg'f ragveryl cbffvoyr gung uvf xabja nyyvrf, gur Ibexbfvtnaf, jrer nyfb vaibyirq va guvf uvtu pbeehcgvba naq crphyngvba fpnaqny. Jr pna'g rira fraq na Nhqvgbe va gb svaq bhg jung ernyyl unccrarq, orpnhfr Ybeq Nhqvgbe Zvyrf Ibexbfvtna pbhyq or va guvf hc gb uvf irel fubeg arpx.

[cordialcount]

Very lovely placement for the "one of sf's outstanding talents" blurb-- looks more like it's referring to Rish's frolicking skills than Bujold's writing.

I still vote for this as worst Vorkosigan cover ever, although the first Baen edition of CVA obviously takes second place:

Supposedly Miles. I think it looks more like a cross between a little grey alien, of the nighttime anal probe kind, and something from the Bharaputra labs. (And the space station (??), it is purple, are the publishers considering unnaturally bright and textured objects a visual motif for this series?)

eta: "Perfectly inoffensive" is the best description of CVA I've seen yet. ♥

[likeadeuce]

This sounds like a fanfic I would really enjoy but I'm not totally sold on it as a novel. . .

[kaberett]

Except, of course, for the staggering transphobia so bad that I've not managed to get more than ten pages in. :-/

(ON THE PLUS SIDE this reminds me that I have yet to get around to this year's reread of A Deeper Season, so.)

[skygiants]

I was looking forward to protagonist!Ivan, and I still think protagonist!Ivan could work really well -- I like protagonists like Ivan! -- but he needs more of a foil than he got in this book, really. Because all throughout, Ivan is still doing his level best to avoid protagonisting, and no one's really forcing him to do it.

[skygiants]

I almost made a list in this review of things that the book could have engaged with, if it had wanted to be anything other than fluff, which it did not. On that list would have been:

- actual complicated reactions of Barrayarans to a FORMER IMPERIAL CETAGANDAN COLONIST coming back to ROB THE PLANET, other than "wow, what an entertainingly plucky old lady!"
- actual complicated dynamics between "legitimate" heir siblings and biologically engineered as status symbols multicolored siblings
- actual complicated clash of priorities between Ivan and his new girlfriend, who instead conveniently failed to absorb most of Jacksonian culture that her family takes for granted

But this book did not want in any way to do that! Which is fine, and the book's prerogative I guess, but.

[skygiants]

I dunno, man, I still think the lounging/frolicking ladies of various colors take the cake. At least Miles is supposed to be kind of weird-looking.

[skygiants]

It did feel quite a lot like a fluffy fanfic! FAKEOUT MARRIAGE. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do love fakeout marriage tropes, but nonetheless.

[skygiants]

Oh shit, I missed the transphobia (or at least, anything worse than the usual levels of completely missing the point re characters like Dono and Bel.) Remind me?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Which edition is that? I keep seeing this version:

[kaberett]

I'd winced a bit at past portrayals of Dono and Bel, but they'd felt clueless but benevolent? Whereas Ivan and By chuckling over Dono, and the authorial voice then taking pains to point out that the last woman you introduced me to thought she was a man, just... was so skin-crawlingly horrible that I couldn't? I am possibly mis-remembering the precise details, because See Also Skin-Crawling Horror, but at least with prior mess-ups wrt Bel it was explicitly stated that "it" was Bel's preferred pronoun, and I felt like perving over the body of someone who is 100% comfortable with their set-up is less gross in trans terms than outright laughing at people's identities, for all that it's Othering :-/

[james_davis_nicoll]

Never mind. Found it.

[skygiants]

Oh, ugh, I had totally forgotten about that -- I tend to skim any mention of Dono these days just because I have no expectation of it being done well, but that's no excuse. I'm sorry you got punched by the prose!

[skygiants]

Oh good, because my answer would have been "the one the library had!"

[kate_nepveu]

Oh good, I thought it was just that I didn't pay attention to ebook covers. Nice to know that Baen decided taste wasn't working for them when it came to paperbacks . . .

[nocarename]

Baen covers are (pretty) consistently terrible for hardcopy works.

Which makes me sad.

[ceitfianna]

Inoffensive works for a description, I felt like Bujold wanted to write a fluffy romance and did and people could deal. I enjoyed it since I like Ivan's take on the world and yes, higher stakes would have been nice but it was a fun ride.

[rachelmanija]

Ivan needed to be put in a situation in which being passive would have had catastrophic consequences.

[rachelmanija]

I think that's much worse than "leaping blue lady and upside-down underwear lady." That smile is nightmare fuel.

[nocarename]

Or at least sufficiently disastrous that he spends the rest of the novel trying to channel Miles in an effort to win back ground.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I'm not exactly complaining about it! It was fun enough to read, just, you know, not much there there.

[ceitfianna]

I agree completely, a very different sort of book from the norm of high action and suspense of the other ones.

[januar]

That's a real book cover? Because it looks like it should be one of those modified book covers.

[skygiants]

It is ALL TOO TERRIBLY REAL.

[bobcatmoran]

The problem is, the sane cover up above, in hardback, had the ridiculous dancing/sexily lounging women taking up the entire back. When I checked it out of the library, I'd consistently remember that the cover was awful but forget which part was awful. So I'd employ my usual awful cover strategy of setting it down back-cover up, and then have to flip it over, because seriously, what.

[meganbmoore]

I had to explain my laughter to coworkers.

[kate_nepveu]

Oh no! There is an unexpected advantage of ebooks!

[gramarye1971]

...with the hat and sunglasses combo, my mind went immediately to Manuel Noriega, former leader of Panama. And that is not a good association to have, all things considered. Some cover designer has a lot to answer for!

[jinian]

They're actually getting worse over time, which I didn't think was possible. Wen Spencer in particular is getting the most miserable covers ever made, though this one is certainly... impressive.

[cordialcount]

My first thought was Kim Jong Il, but your association is much more apt! It's as if they want you to vote with Vor­droz­da against Mercenary Dictator Miles.

[cordialcount]

The cover for CVA seems accurate, at least! I can damn Bujold for choosing anime-colored ladies and naked scenes with Tel: it's all in the book, it's not the cover artist's fault Baen has been gleefully adding to its reputation for horrible-but-sort-of-related covers for three decades. I cannot tell in what universe the German guy could ever be followed by anything other than tranquilizers; it is just... this whole other level of wrong for me.

[cordialcount]

*g* Rish's hair isn't going to be a pleasant memory, but at least Tej and Ivan look normal.

[nocarename]

Statistically, having an attractive woman without much clothes on showing on the cover makes guys more likely to buy the book.

But, yeah. It's not Komarr, or any of their YA titles. *sigh*

[skygiants]

YOU'RE WELCOME, COWORKERS :D

[ailis_fictive]

This has been my argument from the start; it is fanfic by the original author. Which, happy fun fanfic YAY (the extended snake metaphor is priceless, and the fate of ImpSec had me choking with laughter) but stack it up next to Memory, or even A Civil Campaign, and it just blows away like a leaf.

(I mean, the section in the middle where we catch up with all the minor characters for the info-dump on What Up With Us Now...??? Yeep. Tensely plotted it wasn't.)