Reading. On Wednesday, even

[vaznetti]

Recently finished:

I finally succumbled to my completist tendencies and read Bujold's latest (last?) Barrayar book, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. I am sorry to say that I did not like it. I am actually 100% behind the idea of Cordelia using Aral's DNA to have a bunch more children, but I would have liked a lot more exploration of the bitterly ironic situation that meant that she could only do so after he was dead and Miles had inherited. This book had basically no struggle and no anger, and I was just... bored. I mean, I knew I probably would not enjoy everything about it, but I was hoping to find something good to cling to. I did not.

Currently reading:

On paper, Piranesi, by Susannah Clarke -- finally! I am really really enjoying this! I love the imagery of the House! I love the way the details of what is going on are slowly being filled in, and the narrative voice is really excellent! I can't wait to find out yet a little bit more about what is going on here! (Don't tell me how it ends.)

On tablet, the GRRM prequel book about the Targaryens. I would actually have to look up the title. Fire and Blood, I think? This may be a sign of the level of my engagement in it, but on the other hand it's soothing to read right before bed, and there's quite a lot of it so it will keep me going for a while. As a book, I don't really care about anything or anyone in it, but that doesn't really interfere with my purpose in reading it, for which see directly above.

Temporarily put aside:

I saw somewhere that someone (wow, isn't this vague?) had requested C. J. Cherryh's Faded Sun trilogy in a fiction exchange, and that reminded me that I owned a copy and have occasionally thought about re-reading it. Also for some reason I don't own a copy of Dune. Why is that? Anyway, I only just started this but I think I'll go back to it when I'm done with Piranesi. I do remember really liking it, back in the day, which to be fair was a long time ago.

I might, though, turn first to the diaries of Tommy Lascelles, because while my mother was here we watched A LOT of The Crown, and it turns out that A has a collected volume of them, mostly from the 1940s or earlier (so before the series begins) and about his time with Edward VIII and George VI. He was such a great character, and so I'm looking forward to these, but either A or Spartacus might nab them first, now that my mother has gone home.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I really like Faded Sun and do reread it occasionally. I think it was the first Cherryh I found, way back when.

[vaznetti]

Once upon a time I read the copies in my local library ragged! It was definitely one of the first ones I encountered as well.

[isis]

I have been avoiding reading Gentleman Jole for pretty much the same reason, and you are not making me want to change my mind!

I tried to read Fire and Blood and it was just so boring. Though I read it as a library book in some huge illustrated edition, so it was fun to look at the pictures - do you get those on the tablet version?

And, Piranesi! I loved it, and I went into it so entirely unspoiled that I had no idea what it was even about, which for me was part of the charm, discovering the world as it unfolded for me. So enjoy that feeling!

[vaznetti]

I don't know quite how I have managed to remain so unspoiled for Piranesi but I am certainly enjoying the experience.

Fire and Blood is really boring -- it isn't a novel at all, just the outline of one. Even with the pictures, which made it into the Kindle version. But I basically don't care about the Targaryens, or the history of Westeros, and this book doesn't convince me that I should. I kind of wish, if he didn't want to finish the main series, that he'd write stories set 100 or 300 years in the future. I'd probably find that more interesting! But it might not be so conducive to sleep.

[rachelmanija]

I was just coming in to comment to say EXACTLY what you were going to say, about all three books, except that my borrowed, illustrated version of the boring GRRM book was a friend's rather than from the library.

[isis]

Hee! Great minds, etc.

[vaznetti]

I am kind of vaguely offended that GRRM did that instead of working on ASOIAF. I mean, normally I'd say that the one thing he can reliably do is tell a good story, but instead we got whatever that was.

I always knew that one day I'd give in and read Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, but if you can possibly help it, don't bother.

[muridae]

I read the sample chapters of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen before the book was released and thought that it read very much like self-fanfic. That opening section read better to me on the second attempt when I read the whole thing, but the impression is still there. As it is in a few of the later Vorkosigan Saga novels - Ivan's book has a couple of sections that are more interested in dwelling on reminiscence about past events than telling a story that moves forwards too.

I got to quite like some of the new characters, but I kept looking for the plot. Was it going to be volcanoes? Or a raid on the ghost yard of floating decommissioned ships? And then it turned out to be a story about procrastination, about people taking their time to tell other people about things that were changing in their lives.

I also thought that Cordelia did rather overdo it. One or two more children by Aral I can see. But six? You'd be swamped by the crowd and might not ever get to know and enjoy them as individuals sufficiently. Mind you, Miles seems to think the same way. But I think I'd have scaled down the reproduction just a tiny bit.

But I guess what I really miss is Aral. I'd have liked to have seen this setting and some of its events take place during the time when he and Cordelia were running Chaos Colony in tandem. Or have it told partly in the present and partly in flashback to that time, with more showing and less telling. And up the stakes by having an actual crisis.

I didn't hate it. I've even re-read it. I would just like it to have been... more.

[vaznetti]

The lack of any conflict is what I really noticed -- even the later books tend to have some kind of external crisis, but here there was really nothing at all. Like you, I kept looking out for it; there was a moment when they commented that the Cetegandans could actually just destroy them, whenever they want, and then everyone just kind of shrugged and moved on.

I agree about the fanficcy feeling. For me its the sense that the characters can't actually fail, and that the author's desire for them to be happy overrides the needs of the story. It ends up reading as very... smug, I guess.

One of the things that I wanted from the book was to get a sense of life on Sergyar -- but yes, I think I wanted to see Cordelia and Aral doing that together. I'm also interested in Cordelia's post-Aral life, but I wanted that to be different, somehow. It all seemed very thin.

[muridae]

I think this book needed to be a sequel to one that was never written. Sergyar with Aral and Cordelia (and establish the relationship between them and Jole, who'd previously not rated more than a handful of paragraphs). Then Sergyar after Aral, as a follow up, which would have made everything that happened feel a bit more earned. As it was, all the difficult emotional bits happened off the page, hand waved away into the past.

And while I quite liked Jole, I'm disappointed that his hitherto unsuspected involvement up-ends everything I thought I understood about Aral and Cordelia's relationship, as well as negating one of my favourite exchanges from Barrayar:

"He's bisexual, you know." He took a delicate sip of his wine.

"Was bisexual," she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. "Now he's monogamous."

It makes me think a little less of Aral that this apparently didn't remain true.

[coffeeandink]

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen has to be the most heteronormative queering of a canon I have ever encountered, and it just leaves a sour taste for me.

[vaznetti]

That is a very good way of putting it. It actually read like de-queering.

[coffeeandink]

Yeah, it's like: there was a queer relationship all along, but we never saw it, and now we see ... the m/f pairing that didn't exist before. I'm also deeply unpersuaded by Cordelia thinking that Jole was part of her marriage ... while he went completely unacknowledged by the rest of the world and unknown to her own child.