book review: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

[psocoptera]

Overall opinion, scrubbed as spoiler-free as possible: positive! (I can't imagine that there is anyone in the world who cares about my recommendation in this case - either you like the Vorkosigan books and want to read this one, or you don't and you don't, or you're curious about them but are going to start in the right place which is certainly not here - but there it is.)



I loved it. This is definitely Ivan's Civil Campaign and not Ivan's Memory, but you know what, I am just fine with that. I *like* happy romantic comedies, and CVA made me laugh out loud in a bunch of places. (The sinking of ImpSec has immediately jumped very high onto my list of favorite-ever Vorkosigan scenes, and had me laughing loudly enough that I woke the baby, and it was worth it.) And I liked Tej - I loved her little names for people, like The Gregor, and The Coz, and calling Ivan "Ivan Xav" - and I liked her for Ivan.

It felt very solidly part of the series, both in the explicit callbacks (Tej and Rish recalling Baron Fell's Quaddie musician) and in the recurrance of certain images and themes - drains and sewers, ImpSec headquarters, things sinking into mud, seal daggers. And of course we got fantastic Illyan, and good Alys, and some nice Gregor, and a good Ekaterin cameo, and Miles managed to not take over Ivan's book. Yay, Ivan. An Ivan book was maybe not the Vorkosigan book I wanted most, but I really enjoyed getting one - getting to see how he's quietly very good at his job even if it's not a flashy job, his *savviness* and how much it orients towards avoiding attracting problematic attention, his lingering kitten issues. I really liked how his claustrophobia was handled - it's definitely *there*, but it's also not crippling, he's not happy but he's able to deal with the dark/wet/tight/biohazardous/underground maybe even better than he would have thought he could. I love that he manages to get himself "exiled" to a tropical island at the end. (I also loved that Simon and Alys finally got a galactic vacation.) I've read some reviews where people thought the Jacksonians felt kind of random, or wondered why there had to be so many of them, but I thought that was perfect - Ivan's relationship with his mother has always been one of his key character threads, so the surprise acquisition of nine new meddlesome scheming in-laws struck me as exactly on-target to his development - no, this isn't as angsty as when Cordelia or Miles or Aral hits a key character/plot turning point, but Ivan has always had a lighter-hearted arc.

The thing I haven't mentioned yet: I was extremely disappointed by Bujold's decision to pair Byerly off with a female character. Ok, no, his name's not Gayerly, I don't mean to imply that bisexuals can't or shouldn't be in happy opposite-sex relationships. But... it also felt like a diminishment of diversity in the books, without any real gain to character insight or plot flow or anything. Rish could have been male with almost zero impact - Ivan loses his "kidnapped by two beautiful women" joke - so, why not? Heteronormativity, I assume. Bah.

However, Allegre and Simon replaying the animation of ImpSec sinking, and Gregor glued to the rear window as his armsmen drag him away, were good enough that I'm inclined to forgive Bujold blowing it with By.

So, speculation time: is this the last Vorkosigan book, or if not, what more can we hope for? My theory is still that the Vorkosigan timeline effectively ends when Miles gives his speech at Aral's funeral and decides to give the speech that's been written for him instead of ad-libbing - that this is the moment when Miles firmly and finally renounces wacky adventures and commits himself to his responsibilities, and that insofar as Miles is the animating spirit of the Vorkosigan universe (even in this book, when he isn't there, Ivan finds himself thinking of the misadventure as a Miles-type event), there is no more story beyond that. So it doesn't surprise me that this book is a backfill of an earlier point in the timeline, and I think any other books would have to be also. Which is too bad, because the book *I* want most is when the bomb lit in Ethan of Athos finally goes off, and ten thousand telepaths come swarming out of Athos to make trouble, ideally around the same time as the Cetas have managed to reboot *their* telepathy program, and it all comes to a head with a sort of orgiastic reveal of everyone's darkest secrets, and Miles finds out about the Escobar plot, and has to talk to Cordelia about the fact that he's learning this after his father is gone, and he'll never be able to talk to him about it. But I do not expect to ever get this book. I think it is somewhat more possible that we could get Sergyar, about Cordelia and Aral's wacky times viceroying it up, or possibly another Mark book (which, bleah, I don't really like Mark, but I think Bujold does). But honestly, things feel rather... *tidy*, at this point. Pretty much everyone we ever heard of is married and in some kind of reasonable career for their interests. I would love the ladies detective agency book, in which Laisa and Ekaterin team up to solve some kind of mystery related to Barryaran terraforming and lingering Cetagandan mutagens, while struggling to balance their public roles with their many children, or something, but I have no hope for that given we didn't even get the obvious Ekaterin POV in Diplomatic Immunity. So my suspicion is that this is the last one.

Comments

[randysmith]

(Carefully averting my eyes from your entry while writing a comment--please leave spoilers out of the response comment if possible.) So I love the Vorkosigan books, but Ivan style can often make me wince. I read the sample chapters for CVA which end at the marriage, and it felt like Ivan was completely bumbling through up to that point. If that just makes me wince, is it worth reading? I guess my basic question is, does he become competent in some way that's convincing to the reader, presuming the reader has known Ivan all his fictional life?

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Hmm. If Ivan in the first six chapters makes you wince, he may continue to make you wince in many of the remaining ones. However, if you like Simon, there's some good Simon later on, perhaps worthwhile even through the Ivan-POV?

[irilyth]

I think Ivan is more competent than he seems; in fact, there's a moment in one of the earlier books (Cetaganda, maybe?) where it becomes clear that he's *deliberately* less competent than he could be, in some sense, to avoid attention. I didn't like him for a while either, but have come to think he's kind of interesting, as a character who just wants to be a normal maybe-a-little-above-average guy with a normal life, but is surrounded by crazy powerful insane ambitious genius people, and frequently getting sucked into their dangerous lunatic schemes. He's not actually an idiot, he's just trying to keep his head down. :^)

And, I think, this book does show some specific ways in which he is actually very talented.

[rahirah]

I would love a book about A) Cordelia and Aral as viceroys, B) Mark involved in twisty Galactic shenanigans, or C) Miles involved in twisty Barrayaran intrigue in the wake of Aral's death. Alas, I don't think I will get any of them.

[ursula]

I like Mark but hated Civil Campaign. I wonder if the two are connected somehow?