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psocopteraThe Martian is awesome and a quality adaptation - I thought they did a great job capturing what was cool about the story while making some (necessary) simplifications for length and pacing. And they didn't introduce too much Hollywood stupidity.
I've been looking forward to The Fifth Season for a couple of years now, ever since N.K. Jemisin announced it, and I was super-excited about it right up until I picked it up from the library and read the first page and all joy immediately vanished from the prospect of reading it. I pushed through the first couple chapters and skipped around a little to try to see how much it was, uh, like its own beginning, and - look, I absolutely think Jemisin has the right to explore whatever topics and themes she wants to, whatever stories she feels drawn to tell, it might be a really smart and powerful book. But I, a person with non-infinite time, mostly like to spend my reading time these days reading books I think I'll *enjoy*, and there are things in the real world that are awful and horrible that I don't need extra of in my fiction. (Rot13d if you're curious what I'm talking about: puvyq zheqre naq puvyq nohfr.)
And I read the eARC of Bujold's latest Vorkosigan book, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. All further discussion behind the cut, with many specific spoilers. So this book had me gasping and crying in *chapter 1*, and I was all set for a wild ride, but unfortunately I ended up spending much more of it cringing and infuriated over Bujold's decision to *completely* offscreen Jole's gay relationship with Aral, to focus on the heterosexual and monogamous new relationship with Cordelia. It's like, we didn't even get to find out about this relationship until Aral was three years safely dead, and then we get pretty much jack shit about it in flashbacks or Jole's memories. His rekindled/rediscovered romance with Cordelia is all very sweet and nicely done but I'm sorry, no, Cordelia and Aral got an entire *book*, and you're telling me *Cordelia herself* never even got to hear the story of how Jole and Aral got together??
"He was always a bit cagey about how you two got started", "I go off to visit my mother on Beta Colony leaving him in no worse straits than another of his unrequited silent crushes. I come back to find you two up and running", "The standard for declassification is still fifty years, isn’t it? That sounds about right to me." "Never mind, then." NEVER MIND, THEN? This is the relationship that literally gets called another marriage, and Cordelia was *never fucking curious about how she ended up with another spouse*? For much of the book, I held out some hope that Jole would end up telling the story in the inevitable revelation-to-Miles scene, I mean, readers obviously can't get everything they want in the first chapter of a novel, and that seemed like the *big thing* that was out there that we'd be waiting for, but... no. “Aral collected me first.” Miles' relationship with Ekaterin is one of my favorite romance arcs in fiction and what Aral and Jole get is THAT? Setting aside the representation issue, I just don't understand it as a storytelling choice, to introduce this major relationship/hugely important character background thing and then barely touch it.
But in fact the representation thing really bothers me too. The thing that really killed me wasn't about Jole and Aral at all, it was a casual, in-passing scene where Cordelia and Jole each collect a free kiss from a kissing booth, and Cordelia kisses a young man, and Jole is kissed by two young women, and then he makes brief eye contact with the young man but is careful to not turn his head towards him. And, like, fuck. Here it is 2015 in the real world and the fucking future in the Vorkosigan world, and not just the future in a scifi sense but also the future where Cordelia has been working to progressivize Barrayar for forty years, and we can't have a fucking on-screen gay kiss?? These are the absolute most powerful, unassailable people in their solar system and Jole's bisexuality, let alone his relationship with Aral, has to be a forever hidden, unspeakable secret? There's so much here that's so fucking heartbreaking - Miles, when Jole finally tells him, realizes that Jole was a *bereaved spouse* at Aral's funeral and never had any acknowledgment of that or opportunity to show it, except to Cordelia - and, okay, yes, I get that series continuity and worldbuilding put Jole in that closet, in-world, I can sort of accept that. But I can't accept the thinness and bloodlessness of Jole's backstory with Aral. There's a bit in c.2 where Jole is masturbating at a fertility clinic and he, like, first tries to think of Aral, in a very general way, but veers immediately into picturing his dead body, and then has a detailed fantasy about Cordelia, and it's like, okaaaay, we get it, queerness is dead, only heterosexuality here. Even Cordelia's mourning for Aral seems more real and detailed and profound than Jole's.
Cordelia's mourning is some of the strongest stuff of the book, her whole arc of figuring out how to keep living is pretty strong, although in fact she's also pretty much already made all of her decisions, and the only big choices of the book are Jole's. Because I was reading electronically, I had no idea how close to the end I was, and I kept expecting some kind of Plot to break out - a conspiracy, an attack, a disaster. In fact this is a book about a man choosing to quit his prestigious career to have babies, which, hey, is a plot we don't see much of. But it is very much a book where the volcano does not go off - it's a book where the dormant secrets fail to erupt and destroy anything, where Cordelia's practicality rules the day and the capital gets relocated, the right people get told the right secrets, and everything wraps up tidily. I know I said this after Cryoburn, but I think this is actually the Last Vorkosigan Book, the last loose end, the final happily ever after that takes everyone into the sunset. (Until the gay telepaths boil out of Athos in a sort of Revenge of the Queers, but let's pretend we've all forgotten about that.) I can't exactly blame Bujold for wanting to do that, and there's something very powerful about the way she's managed to wind down war and conflict in her universe until "trouble with Cetagandans" here is, like, a fist fight over an art project, and science and exploration have displaced military as the worthy dedications of characters' lives - the epilogue is pretty much literally the final triumph of the Betan Survey in the conquest of Sergyar, which *so neatly* ties off and bookends the series. I just wish bisexuality and polyamory were allowed to be part of this on-screen happy ending instead of a sort of character-background footnote.
I've been looking forward to The Fifth Season for a couple of years now, ever since N.K. Jemisin announced it, and I was super-excited about it right up until I picked it up from the library and read the first page and all joy immediately vanished from the prospect of reading it. I pushed through the first couple chapters and skipped around a little to try to see how much it was, uh, like its own beginning, and - look, I absolutely think Jemisin has the right to explore whatever topics and themes she wants to, whatever stories she feels drawn to tell, it might be a really smart and powerful book. But I, a person with non-infinite time, mostly like to spend my reading time these days reading books I think I'll *enjoy*, and there are things in the real world that are awful and horrible that I don't need extra of in my fiction. (Rot13d if you're curious what I'm talking about: puvyq zheqre naq puvyq nohfr.)
And I read the eARC of Bujold's latest Vorkosigan book, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. All further discussion behind the cut, with many specific spoilers. So this book had me gasping and crying in *chapter 1*, and I was all set for a wild ride, but unfortunately I ended up spending much more of it cringing and infuriated over Bujold's decision to *completely* offscreen Jole's gay relationship with Aral, to focus on the heterosexual and monogamous new relationship with Cordelia. It's like, we didn't even get to find out about this relationship until Aral was three years safely dead, and then we get pretty much jack shit about it in flashbacks or Jole's memories. His rekindled/rediscovered romance with Cordelia is all very sweet and nicely done but I'm sorry, no, Cordelia and Aral got an entire *book*, and you're telling me *Cordelia herself* never even got to hear the story of how Jole and Aral got together??
"He was always a bit cagey about how you two got started", "I go off to visit my mother on Beta Colony leaving him in no worse straits than another of his unrequited silent crushes. I come back to find you two up and running", "The standard for declassification is still fifty years, isn’t it? That sounds about right to me." "Never mind, then." NEVER MIND, THEN? This is the relationship that literally gets called another marriage, and Cordelia was *never fucking curious about how she ended up with another spouse*? For much of the book, I held out some hope that Jole would end up telling the story in the inevitable revelation-to-Miles scene, I mean, readers obviously can't get everything they want in the first chapter of a novel, and that seemed like the *big thing* that was out there that we'd be waiting for, but... no. “Aral collected me first.” Miles' relationship with Ekaterin is one of my favorite romance arcs in fiction and what Aral and Jole get is THAT? Setting aside the representation issue, I just don't understand it as a storytelling choice, to introduce this major relationship/hugely important character background thing and then barely touch it.
But in fact the representation thing really bothers me too. The thing that really killed me wasn't about Jole and Aral at all, it was a casual, in-passing scene where Cordelia and Jole each collect a free kiss from a kissing booth, and Cordelia kisses a young man, and Jole is kissed by two young women, and then he makes brief eye contact with the young man but is careful to not turn his head towards him. And, like, fuck. Here it is 2015 in the real world and the fucking future in the Vorkosigan world, and not just the future in a scifi sense but also the future where Cordelia has been working to progressivize Barrayar for forty years, and we can't have a fucking on-screen gay kiss?? These are the absolute most powerful, unassailable people in their solar system and Jole's bisexuality, let alone his relationship with Aral, has to be a forever hidden, unspeakable secret? There's so much here that's so fucking heartbreaking - Miles, when Jole finally tells him, realizes that Jole was a *bereaved spouse* at Aral's funeral and never had any acknowledgment of that or opportunity to show it, except to Cordelia - and, okay, yes, I get that series continuity and worldbuilding put Jole in that closet, in-world, I can sort of accept that. But I can't accept the thinness and bloodlessness of Jole's backstory with Aral. There's a bit in c.2 where Jole is masturbating at a fertility clinic and he, like, first tries to think of Aral, in a very general way, but veers immediately into picturing his dead body, and then has a detailed fantasy about Cordelia, and it's like, okaaaay, we get it, queerness is dead, only heterosexuality here. Even Cordelia's mourning for Aral seems more real and detailed and profound than Jole's.
Cordelia's mourning is some of the strongest stuff of the book, her whole arc of figuring out how to keep living is pretty strong, although in fact she's also pretty much already made all of her decisions, and the only big choices of the book are Jole's. Because I was reading electronically, I had no idea how close to the end I was, and I kept expecting some kind of Plot to break out - a conspiracy, an attack, a disaster. In fact this is a book about a man choosing to quit his prestigious career to have babies, which, hey, is a plot we don't see much of. But it is very much a book where the volcano does not go off - it's a book where the dormant secrets fail to erupt and destroy anything, where Cordelia's practicality rules the day and the capital gets relocated, the right people get told the right secrets, and everything wraps up tidily. I know I said this after Cryoburn, but I think this is actually the Last Vorkosigan Book, the last loose end, the final happily ever after that takes everyone into the sunset. (Until the gay telepaths boil out of Athos in a sort of Revenge of the Queers, but let's pretend we've all forgotten about that.) I can't exactly blame Bujold for wanting to do that, and there's something very powerful about the way she's managed to wind down war and conflict in her universe until "trouble with Cetagandans" here is, like, a fist fight over an art project, and science and exploration have displaced military as the worthy dedications of characters' lives - the epilogue is pretty much literally the final triumph of the Betan Survey in the conquest of Sergyar, which *so neatly* ties off and bookends the series. I just wish bisexuality and polyamory were allowed to be part of this on-screen happy ending instead of a sort of character-background footnote.
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Date: 2015-11-02 04:05 am (UTC)But it's not for everyone I guess. Certainly the thing you're talking about was a theme in the book, and one the book keeps coming back to throughout. It's not what I would consider the main theme, though--if it were, that would have been too much for me, too, probably. But definitely it's a consistent theme. So, yeah, if you were that uncomfortable with it, putting it down was probably the right choice.
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Date: 2015-11-02 03:03 pm (UTC)Agree on The Martian. Perhaps the curse of movies with titles referencing Mars has been broken.
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Date: 2015-11-08 09:46 pm (UTC)Haha, so true. I kept waiting for that (and other plot action) through the whole book (look, they're all miles out of the city, clearly the volcano will blow now!) but it was all just people hashing over life decisions. Which isn't terrible but... some goodreads reviewer summed it up for me well "it read less like a Vorkosigan book than a really long fanfic" I guess it is fair to not be a normal Vorkisigan book as it was instead a Naismith book, and I'm happy to have read it. I just wish there had been non-spoilery warnings early in the book announcement process on so I had my expectations in order.