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okay, how on earth does one pronounce "Vorkosigan"?
I am not doing very well inna head, at the moment. (If I owe you an email/comment/phone call, it is not because I don't love you.) I am okay. Sort of. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shimgray talks me down by making whale noises. forthwritten has been telling me about liturgical vestments. Still here.
Anyway. I have finished Cordelia's Honour. It is kind of awesome. Okay, actually, it's really awesome. The first novel, Shards of Honour, is... okay. Actually, no, it's more than okay, it's not spectacular, but it's nice enough. Cordelia is the only character who really comes to life in it, but she does, so beautifully - she's brilliant, and brave, and also very human, and I really, really like the way she's drawn. It's a long time since I read a novel with a female protagonist who actually rang true to me - this is not a male action hero with breasts, nor a Lara Croft type, nor a wilting flower, but a woman who's sometimes a hero and sometimes miserably afraid, who takes life very seriously and has a sense of humour. I like that, very much. And the romance is lovely. Again, it rings true - it's not fluffy or overblown, but sweet, full of sex and charm. (I was upset at the lack of onscreen wedding. I have been reading too much Patrick O'Brian and demand weddings.)
And then the second novel, Barrayar, is just fantastic, and people keep telling me this, but yes, you can see the maturation of Bujold's writing style. Suddenly all the characters come to life - all of them, except Cordelia, were a bit cardboard previously, and then suddenly all their motivations make sense. I loved it, and I can't remember liking a novel nearly so much for a while. I especially like how it isn't Science Fiction with initial caps - it's a story about war and family and people, with a kind of scenic background of faster-than-light travel and uterine replicators. The imperial structure of Barrayar is marvellously mediaeval, or at least, a lot like India - complete with heavily feudal power structures, grand old patriarchs, sexism, racism, dowries and caste - and I love that Cordelia provides an ultra-liberal, socialist-utopian commentary on the whole thing. It's a delight.
Also? Also. Aral Vorkosigan is bisexual. Yeah. This is not handled perfectly. There's a brief exchange where Bujold seems to imply that "bisexual" cannot equate to "monogamous", or that a bisexual person in a relationship stops being a bisexual person, or something. But... I don't know, I get the sense that this is a case of sloppy use of language, not sloppy thinking. Because the joke is that it takes Cordelia several paragraphs to realise that the fact that someone telling her this is supposed to be an insult, and her reply is pretty smooth, all things considered - despite the odd use of terms, she goes on to tell the guy, frostily, that she didn't think she was marrying a forty-four-year-old virgin. His bisexuality is a matter of supreme indifference to her, and by extension, to the reader (tight third-person narration throughout, naturally).
Which I find... interesting. Is this the only example, in science fiction and fannish source generally, of a character who is unproblematically bisexual and described as such? I mean - in the sense that he doesn't exist in a universe where everyone is bisexual (like, say, the Culture), and it isn't code for him having sex with everything in sight, and it isn't "experimentation" or a transitional phase on the way to coming out as gay. Bi-visbility, yadda yadda, do not get me started on Willow Rosenberg. I liked seeing it treated as, well, just as a thing.
And, finally, the head in the bag? Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. I should keep reading these.
(Also, this is a![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide fandom, yes? Yes.)
shimgray talks me down by making whale noises. forthwritten has been telling me about liturgical vestments. Still here.Anyway. I have finished Cordelia's Honour. It is kind of awesome. Okay, actually, it's really awesome. The first novel, Shards of Honour, is... okay. Actually, no, it's more than okay, it's not spectacular, but it's nice enough. Cordelia is the only character who really comes to life in it, but she does, so beautifully - she's brilliant, and brave, and also very human, and I really, really like the way she's drawn. It's a long time since I read a novel with a female protagonist who actually rang true to me - this is not a male action hero with breasts, nor a Lara Croft type, nor a wilting flower, but a woman who's sometimes a hero and sometimes miserably afraid, who takes life very seriously and has a sense of humour. I like that, very much. And the romance is lovely. Again, it rings true - it's not fluffy or overblown, but sweet, full of sex and charm. (I was upset at the lack of onscreen wedding. I have been reading too much Patrick O'Brian and demand weddings.)
And then the second novel, Barrayar, is just fantastic, and people keep telling me this, but yes, you can see the maturation of Bujold's writing style. Suddenly all the characters come to life - all of them, except Cordelia, were a bit cardboard previously, and then suddenly all their motivations make sense. I loved it, and I can't remember liking a novel nearly so much for a while. I especially like how it isn't Science Fiction with initial caps - it's a story about war and family and people, with a kind of scenic background of faster-than-light travel and uterine replicators. The imperial structure of Barrayar is marvellously mediaeval, or at least, a lot like India - complete with heavily feudal power structures, grand old patriarchs, sexism, racism, dowries and caste - and I love that Cordelia provides an ultra-liberal, socialist-utopian commentary on the whole thing. It's a delight.
Also? Also. Aral Vorkosigan is bisexual. Yeah. This is not handled perfectly. There's a brief exchange where Bujold seems to imply that "bisexual" cannot equate to "monogamous", or that a bisexual person in a relationship stops being a bisexual person, or something. But... I don't know, I get the sense that this is a case of sloppy use of language, not sloppy thinking. Because the joke is that it takes Cordelia several paragraphs to realise that the fact that someone telling her this is supposed to be an insult, and her reply is pretty smooth, all things considered - despite the odd use of terms, she goes on to tell the guy, frostily, that she didn't think she was marrying a forty-four-year-old virgin. His bisexuality is a matter of supreme indifference to her, and by extension, to the reader (tight third-person narration throughout, naturally).
Which I find... interesting. Is this the only example, in science fiction and fannish source generally, of a character who is unproblematically bisexual and described as such? I mean - in the sense that he doesn't exist in a universe where everyone is bisexual (like, say, the Culture), and it isn't code for him having sex with everything in sight, and it isn't "experimentation" or a transitional phase on the way to coming out as gay. Bi-visbility, yadda yadda, do not get me started on Willow Rosenberg. I liked seeing it treated as, well, just as a thing.
And, finally, the head in the bag? Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. I should keep reading these.
(Also, this is a
yuletide fandom, yes? Yes.)
no subject
As for unproblematically bisexual characters, there are a couple in Melanie Rawn's Exiles series, including one who's in the second tier of main characters. Sexual politics are a bit different in that universe (it's a matriarchy, but not one that functions as an exact mirror of a patriarchy), but it's certainly not an everybody-is-bisexual type place. I think you'd really enjoy the books, but I recommend that you don't start reading them until she publishes the third one in the trilogy - I have literally been waiting ten years (and counting!) for that book.
Oh, and I spotted upthread that you gave up on Tamora Pierce around The Immortals. I really recommend reading her latest - it's a total change of pace for her, stylewise, and revolves around George Cooper's ancestor who was in the very early Tortal police. You're welcome to my copy if you'd like it :)
no subject
Thank you for the rec! I should remember that - I'm trying at the minute to read more SF and genre fiction, I was forgetting how much I liked it.
Tamora Pierce - yes. I read Alanna's books, which I liked a lot, and Daine's, which I liked rather less, and then Kel, whom I thought was okay but was rehashing Alanna a little bit. Thank you for that rec, too!