Would they be outraged if Jole was a girl?

(I was going to post this on Facebook, but then I remembered I have a very dusty book review blog where it would fit :) )

The latest installment in Lois McMaster Bujold's excellent Miles Vorkosigan series is coming out in February, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen.

The publisher, Baen Books, does a very cool thing - they make the "Advanced Reader Copies" of their books (pre-editing versions, basically) available online several months before publication, so if you're a huge fan of a series, you can choose to spend $15 and get an early fix. Of course I took that option - there's a lot of series I'll spend the $15 to get the next book for, but I'd have probably spent a multiple of that for a Vorkosigan book.

Let's start with the non-spoiler part of this review/rant - I loved this book! It's a great look at Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, one of my favorite characters, from the perspective of Oliver Jole, a senior member of her administration and her late husband's long-time aide-de-camp. The "late-husband" part of that is a spoiler for the earlier Cryoburn, but it's in the cover blurb for this book so hard to avoid... Oliver is the main POV characters, although some chapters are from Cordelia's POV as well. Miles makes an appearance for the last half or so of the book, and, as usual, is quite hilarious, especially since he doesn't quite understand what's going on and it's driving him nuts.

Some fans are upset that there isn't much action in this book, but I enjoyed it for its exploration of the planet and the society, and the characters.

Beyond here, this review/rant is going to have some spoilers, although the main point is alluded to in chapter 1, and pretty clear by chapter 2.



Beyond here lie spoilers (and ranting)!




A lot of the books in the series deal with the conflict between Barrayar's very conservative social standards, and the much more permissive norms around the galaxy. The first book about the Vorkosigans chronologically, Shards of Honor, is about Cordelia's meeting with Aral - Cordelia from socially-permissive Beta Colony, and Aral from Barrayar.

It was clear from Shards of Honor that Aral in his youth was promiscuously bisexual, and then happily married with Cordelia.

Where she's from, sexual orientation and interest is something you advertise with your earrings (whether you're male, female, or one of the rare genetically-engineered hermaphrodites) and no choice is "wrong". Barrayar is just recovering from centuries of isolation from the galaxy (their wormhole had closed) where the had regressed to horse-powered technology levels and had a very conservative social framework.

There's a great passage in that novel where a political enemy in arch-conservative Barrayar tries to sabotage Aral's marriage to Cordelia by telling here that Aral is gay. Cordelia, from much much more progressive Beta Colony, responds by saying "he was bisexual, now he's monogamous", not even realizing right away that she was supposed to be outraged at that accusation.

Aral and Cordelia were monogamous for 20+ years, and then Aral started a consensual relationship with his (male and much younger) assistant Jole with Cordelia's knowledge and approval. That relationship eventually expanded to include Cordelia, and she considered Jole to be a co-spouse, a concept which makes perfect sense on her liberal home of Beta Colony, but completely impossible in conservative Barrayar. That relationship lasted 20+ years until Aral's death.

The story is basically about Jole and Cordelia, and how they're adjusting to Aral's death.

If you look at the reviews under "Book Ratings" partway down the eARC page, they break down into 3 camps: "I loved it!" (my review is in that category), "there was no action, so I was bored" (ok, fair enough, although a lot of the later novels in this series are more mystery/romance than military adventure), and then finally the category that drives me nuts, "I didn't like this book because it betrays my understanding of Aral and Cordelia's relationship."

My aggravation is with that last set of reviews. (Edit: A lot of them seem to think Cordelia "lied" when she said Aral was monogamous.  a) that was cocktail party conversation to a political enemy, and b), that was 20 years before he wasn't monogamous - so even if it changed, that doesn't make it wrong at the time.) Why is Aral and Cordelia's relationship made less if they both decide to bring in a 3rd person? It's not something that would work for me, but I don't think their choice has anything to do with me. I don't understand why people are so offended by this.

I can't help but wonder if they'd be as offended if a woman had been brought into the relationship. Would this mysteriously be ok to them then?

Why is A&C's relationship made less by this mutual choice of theirs? They didn't do this until their son was already grown and moved away from home. Though Aral is Jole's military superior, there's no hint that there was any abuse in this relationship - Jole has very positive memories of Aral and Cordelia, and J&C are still close colleagues after his death.

I'm really puzzled by this set of reactions.

If you can explain it to me, please leave a comment!

_The Will of the Empress_, and idiot publishers...

...or editors, or mapmakers.

• Type: Young adult Fantasy (Ages 13 and up? I'm not an expert.)
  
• Rating: PG (some violence, some adult relationships of various flavours alluded to, nothing graphic)
• Target Gender: Either (It's about 3 girls and a boy (well, young ladies and a young man), and there's enough intrigue, action, and romance to keep anyone interested, I think)
  

It's a young adult book, I'd guess targeted at the same age range as the Harry Potter or Diane Duane books.

The Will of the Empress is Tamora Pierce's new book,
set in the world of the Circle of Magic and The Circle
Opens series.

Good book! She created great characters, and it's been
fun watching them grow up over the last 8 books. They're
adults now, and their problems, conflicts, and situations
are all getting more adult as well.

I enjoyed it a lot.

EXCEPT...

!@$!@#$!@!@, some IDIOT put a major spoiler on the MAP
in the FRONT of the !@#$!@ book!!

ARRRRRGH!

I don't know if the blame goes to Pierce herself, or
to "L. Kubinyi", who created the map, or to someone
in Scholastic's production department. No clue. But
it's REALLY annoying to be reading a book, trying to
figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad
guys, when you know from the map that "so-and-so
ambushes the good guys here". And the book's trying
pretty hard to make so-and-so look like one of the
good guys, early on.

Idiots.

In any case, I heartily recommend the book, if you
liked the earlier Circle series. Just don't look
at the map. You don't need it anyhow, the action's
not that geographically complicated.

Reading...

I've been reading way too many books for a long time, now. It started in grade school, with Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, and it's still going on these days with SF and Fantasy novels of various flavours.

The main thing that's changed is that now, I read about as many e-books as paper books. PDAs have gotten to the point where reading is very comfortable on them, at least for me. I've got 2 very useable reading devices, my Sony Clie palm os device (model PEG-TH55 to be more precise) and my new phone, a Samsung SCH-i730.

The Clie has a much bigger and higher resolution screen, with a 320x480 pixel resolution. But the phone is, well, a phone :) So I might eventually put the Clie away and just carry the phone, cutting down on the number of gadgets I need to charge every night.

I bought my first ebooks many ages ago from PeanutPress, which became Palm Books (I think) and is now EReader. But nowadays, I buy most books at Fictionwise, since they support more ebook formats.

Another decent source of ebooks is Embiid, but their pipeline of new books has gotten pretty sparse in the past year. They're still the only game in town for Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Liad ebooks, though.

I'll probably post a few articles later about the "fun" I've been having getting the Samsung phone working correctly. Tracking down a decent web browser and e book readers for it has been an interesting challenge.

"Princess Academy"

(This is the first "book review" post I'm making, so I'm experimenting with Amazon links. Hopefully they won't be too messed up.)

The book I just finished is The Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale.

• Type: Children's Fantasy (Ages 10 and up? I'm not an expert.)
  
• Rating: G (some violence, nothing graphic)
• Target Gender: F (It's about girls and for girls, but not so mushy that I couldn't read it)
  

It's a children's book, I'd guess targeted at the same age range as the Harry Potter books.

Basically, a prophecy reveals that the new queen of the kingdom must come from a very poor village on the outskirts, so all the girls in the village are dragged off to princess school. :) It's a good premise, and it leads to a well-written and original story. The setting is well fleshed out, with an interesting mix of characters.

Avoid the Amazon reviews if you can; as usual, one of them winds up revealing the "final twist", although the book was still a good read with that spoiled.

I'd recommend it.

Welcome!

A new blog gets created every second, "they" say. I guess this is my second :)

My name's Mike; I'm a programmer from Canada living in Connecticut, USA. 6% sales tax beats 15%, any day. More books for me! :) (I also tend to overuse smileys. I'd hate for anyone to think I'm saying any of this seriously...)

I've got no idea what this blog's going to be about; or even if I'll manage to post updates at all. I'm a great procrastinator.

Odds are, I'll post a note when I finish a good book. Or abandon a bad one. Or when my girlfriend drags me to see a movie.

Comments welcome, once there's something here to comment about!