{"id":6400,"date":"2018-02-26T09:18:16","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T14:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=6400"},"modified":"2018-02-26T09:21:38","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T14:21:38","slug":"barrayar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/26\/barrayar\/","title":{"rendered":"Barrayar."},"content":{"rendered":"

My latest post for Insiders covers draft prospects Brady Singer and Jackson Kowar<\/a>, plus notes on some other players at Florida and Miami.<\/p>\n

I came into Lois McMaster Bujold\u2019s Vor novels out of order, starting with The Vor Game<\/a><\/em>, then Mirror Dance<\/a><\/em>, and just now getting to the second book in the series and the one that introduces the star character of Miles Vorkosigan, Barrayar<\/a><\/em>. Miles starts the novel as an embryo and ends it as a troublemaking toddler, so he\u2019s not a central character, but the story of how he ended up with the bone disorder that came to dictate much of the path of his life – along with his friendship with the Emperor – is at the heart of this quick, enjoyable novel.<\/p>\n

The protagonist here is Miles\u2019s mother, Lady Cordelia (Naismith) Vorkosigan, herself a soldier of sorts from Beta Colony, now married to Lord Aral Vorkosigan, her former enemy in battle, and living on the planet Barrayar. Aral has become regent on the death of the old Emperor, with the successor Georg still in single digits. A coup attempt ensues, driving the couple into exile, but leaving the still undeveloped fetus that will become Miles growing in a \u201cuterine replicator\u201d in the capital city, under guard, when they\u2019re forced into hiding. The main thrust of the book revolves around Cordelia\u2019s flight and daredevil attempt to infiltrate the city to grab the replicator and rescue the fetus whom Aral\u2019s father has already promised to reject as his grandson.<\/p>\n

<\/a>This was the first of three Vor novels to win the Hugo – McMaster Bujold also won for a fantasy novel, Paladin of Souls<\/a><\/em>, that didn\u2019t grab me like these books have – and the only one that doesn\u2019t have the rascal Miles at its heart. Without him to cause confusion and delay (and eventually save the day), the book is a lot less funny, and instead gives us the very serious Cordelia as its hero, with Aral present and supportive, but unusually willing for a Barrayaran husband to respect the wishes and opinions of his wife. Instead, it\u2019s a straight adventure\/rescue novel with a feminist bent – granted, that\u2019s also quite unusual in the sci-fi world, but now that I\u2019ve read all but 5 of the Hugo winners (and at least one by every author to win it), I feel confident in asserting that the winning books authored by women are both better overall and include better, more fully-realized female or non-male characters. It\u2019s not even close.<\/p>\n

Cordelia doesn\u2019t get a lot of time to completely grow as a character in this brief book, which is quite a bit shorter than the other two Vor novels I\u2019ve read, but she\u2019s well-rounded from the start: Strong, assertive, self-doubting, acutely conscious of her outside status, completely dedicated to her family, struggling with fealty to her husband\u2019s position in society and desire to have him safe at home. Reading this first would have probably given me more insight into her cameos in later novels; she\u2019s obviously a critical influence on Miles\u2019 development, but here we see exactly what she had to do to rescue him and to what lengths she was willing to go.<\/p>\n

The book also introduced a number of characters who appear later in the series, although there\u2019s one book before this one, Shards of Honor<\/em>, that includes the battle where Aral and Cordelia meet, where I assume some of the other characters (Illyan, Kothari) also appear. I\u2019ll probably start there now that I\u2019ve read the winners in the series and go forward in chronological order. If you\u2019re interested in reading just one or two of these books, though, I\u2019d recommend something with Miles in it, because he\u2019s much more fun than his parents.<\/p>\n

Next up: I just finished the second Hugo winner, The Forever Machine<\/a><\/em>, which lived up to its reputation as the worst novel to win the award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My latest post for Insiders covers draft prospects Brady Singer and Jackson Kowar, plus notes on some other players at Florida and Miami. I came into Lois McMaster Bujold\u2019s Vor novels out of order, starting with The Vor Game, then Mirror Dance, and just now getting to the second book in the series and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,327,603,927,524],"class_list":["post-6400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-literature","tag-feminist-literature","tag-hugo-award","tag-locus-award","tag-science-fiction","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6400"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6402,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400\/revisions\/6402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}