I really loved this book. :-) (
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madgastronomer, this review is for you. :D)
I wasn't quite sure what to expect going in, because I'd heard so many conflicting reviews of it. But it made me smile so much, and made me go "awww" so much, and made me so fiercely proud of Cordelia, and so fond of Oliver Jole (an accomplishment, since we only really meet him in this book), and made me actually care about Sergyar. It was gentle, it was sweet, it was funny. I really, really liked it.
My two-word summary of GJRQ:
Cordelia's free.Of Barrayar, for the most part. As she says at one point, she's given forty-three years of her life to the Barryaran Imperium--which eats its children and stifles its women and emotionally stunts its men--and she damn well deserves another forty-three years on her own terms. Thankfully, she's Betan, which means that at 76 she's really only in early middle age. This book is the story of the beginning of the second half of her life. And I am
so glad.
I also loved
loved loved that Aral gets to be actively queer here. Of course, he would always have been bisexual whether or not he ever slept with a man again. And I've heard people dislike that he and Cordelia were in a poly marriage with Jole, on the grounds that bisexuality =/= polyamory. And, sure, not everyone bi is poly. But some of us are. And for myself, I am
more annoyed these days with the trope that bisexuality = having a disastrous same-gender fling in your youth and then settling down with an opposite-sex partner, never to seriously consider m/m or f/f again. And given that Aral's disastrous youthful fling was with Ges Bloody Vorrutyer?
Hell yes, I loved that he got to have a happy, healthy, loving, long-term marriage (de facto if not de jure) with a man. For me, Bujold finally came through on the promise of Aral's bisexuality that she'd given us way back in
Shards of Honor and
Barrayar. Hell, Aral was never my favourite, but getting to see his soft squishy insides...I kind of begin to see what Cordelia loved about him.
Oh, and the two surviving members of a poly triad trying to learn to love again after the death of the third...I
might just have a bittersweet narrative button already primed for that, ready to be hit by the right story. <3 Or to put it in other words...I've written that fic.
I've also heard people (based, I think, on an excerpt from a book reading well before the novel was released) decide that this book relegates Cordelia to the role of the slashfic yenta, set aside so the boys can get together. Not at all what I got out of this book. For one thing, Aral and Cordelia have a rock-solid marriage that goes down deep to the bones of the earth; they were also married for twenty years on their own before Oliver showed up. That Aral is bi, and Cordelia is Betan (read: not shocked by polyamory or queerness or kink), and melodrama was never an option...does not mean that Cordelia has in any way been set aside. (They also, you know,
talked about it before Aral up and kissed a boy. It's not a thing he did will-she or nil-she.) Being poly, or in Cordelia's case, poly-compatible monogam-ish, does not mean that the first couple that comes together isn't real and true, any more than it means that any other part of a poly family is a secondary add-on. And if anybody thinks Aral Vorkosigan
could toss Cordelia aside, or indeed that Cordelia would ever allow herself to be sidelined like that...they haven't been reading the same series as I have, that's all I can say. And I say this as someone who doesn't OTP them as hard as many people. The strength of their relationship is just so clearly underlined throughout the series that it's impossible to miss.
This book is about grief and about choosing what to do with the second half of your life, after you've lost someone who was the world to you. It's about "grownup things", not because of the babies, but because of
that.
(As for the babies: I am not, personally, all that invested in having children (okay, I don't actually want any of my own at all), but Cordelia absolutely always did want kids. And, y'know, I'm always going to be more interested in fictional babymaking when it's done with tech rather than pregnancy. Miles and Cordelia may be slightly mad for having/wanting six kids, but you know what,
so did my mother. Without a uterine replicator. It's not necessarily a sign of thinking children are interchangeable widgets, thank you very much.)
The romance itself is very sweet. Oliver Jole was basically a non-entity to me at the start of the book, but by a few chapters in I liked him a lot and was cheering for him and Cordelia. The fact that half the book is written from her perspective and half from his meant that I got to both watch the inside of Cordelia's head and watch someone else admire her, which was pretty great. (Have I mentioned that Cordelia
is my fave?)
And Sergyar! I had no real feelings about Sergyar before this. I pretty much figured giving Aral and Cordelia the job of administering it was Bujold's way of getting them out of the way so Miles could have plot. (Which it probably was.) But with this book she's sold me on the sheer weirdness of it on a xenobiology level. And you know, I always hated that Cordelia had to give up her career in scientific exploration, along with her Betan culture, to settle on Barrayar and marry Aral. So the fact that she can have SCIENCE! in her life again? Is pretty amazing. :D
Freddie Haines: fantastic teenager. :D I loved the line about the quandary involved in praising a kid for having done something well in the course of doing something they shouldn't have done at all. Kaya Vorinnis, also cool. Miles...well, he seems to be settling in to fatherhood and counthood all right, though I was far more invested in him when he was a Dendarii Mercenary. (My prejudices in this canon may make more sense if you realize that I never cared that much for Barrayar per se. Who needs
yet another patriarchal empire?) Also loved the Cetas in this one, and am curious about how that's all going to go: Sergyar is a planet with a Barrayaran majority, sure, but also Betans, Komarrans, and a few Escobarans and Cetagandans as well. It's
not going to be Barrayar in miniature...and not just because of the Vicereine.
So, yes: that soft spot I have for canon poly with queer elements and middle-aged folks, in a space-opera setting? A+ work, Bujold. A+. To quote Gandalf, I have no longer any fear at all for any of them.
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