I’m just getting into Brothers on Arms on an electronic chronological reread of ‘em and it’s just reinforced my love of the series so much (I’ve read ‘em all before, but out of order like whoa - to give you some idea, I started with Memory, which was a Christmas present many years ago.). I think it’s the way I’d recommend approaching it. It’s true that one can look back at, say, some of the stuff that happens to Cordelia with a knowing eye once one has read Miles’ adventures, but on the other hand, I think it provides just as much pleasure to know “first hand” what sort of things Miles’ parents went through and the truth of situations he has only an edited knowledge of.
What. Just… what. I read the link and looked at a few chapters of the book and now I see this comment. What. What.
I hate everybody who ever paid money for these things.
I love the Vorkosigan Saga so much. I had to get an ACL operation on my knee at the end of 1996 just as I was graduating college, so I knew I’d be bedridden for quite a few weeks at best, first before the operation and then later after the operation. I’d always meant to read the Vorkosigan books, so that was the time I chose to go grab them all from the local library at the time.
Back then the latest book was Mirror Dance, and Memory had just come out on hardcover right before my operation. So I got Memory as well.
After reading through most of the series as a great old adventure, I had a great time. But Memory was the one that really took me by surprise. At the time, I was going through my own transformation in life, going from one phase to another. I wasn’t expecting a character in an adventure series to go through something similar, and it really hit home. I absolutely loved Memory, and it’s still my favorite book in the series.
So wait: Sinnick, is every hardcover edition of this new book supposed to come with the whole saga on Disc? If so, I might make an exception and buy a hardcover book. (I hate Hardcovers because they are so tough to read in bed and in the bathroom, the two places where I read the most).
Ringo gives what amounts to a series of lectures, during the first (and least readable) of the series, on various matters relating to safety and consent.
This puts him three steps ahead of society at large, and two steps ahead of 99% of fiction which purports to address anything related to sexuality.
So you’ve read the series – can I ask you something? Are these books meant to be taken as books, or is it more like having someone else imagine a sex fantasy for you, and all that matters is how appealing it is. Because I guess I get it if it’s meant to be just pornography (though the right-wing fervor somehow makes it more distasteful than hardcore porn to me) and not, like, a novel.
(Sorry this is off topic)
Have you read any romance novels?
They’re basically porn with a pretense for a plot. :)
I had a hard time liking Memory. Not because of the transformation, which is interesting. But because Miles does some stuff that’s really, really not good while trying to hide his disability. Hiding stuff from ImpSec isn’t surprising for him, but he puts people under his command as Naismith in mortal danger, and Miles should have recognized that.
Yes, I know that’s the point, but it made me not like the character for the first time in the series. Part of Miles’ charm is his sense of personal responsibility to his troops. There’s a bit in Komarr where Bujold plays off this in a short scene re-enacting a critical bit from The Borders of Infinity. If you’ve read the series, you know what I’m talking about.
Alright, that helps me make sense of these things.
I can’t believe you’re apologizing for that stuff. One lecture does not make up for how he depicts women in those books. It’s John Norman level crap, which isn’t particularly a coincidence, since the first book mentions “Gor sex slave” scenarios. While it doesn’t quite reach “all women secretly want to be raped by a real man” levels, it comes very, very close. Certainly that scenario plays out many times with many different women.
It also reminds me of Jack Chalker. Chalker constantly wrote about women forced into some form of sexual slavery or another, and how it was really, really bad, but somehow he had to touch on the subject in book after book despite how bad it was.
Confession time. I’ve read a couple of them. For pretty much the same reasons David Hines outlines: I read Kildar first, and when it’s not about forcing teenagers into his harem, it’s pretty good for a B novel. It reads like 1632 or An Island In the Sea of Time or something similar. There’s no time travel or science fiction elements, but it’s about organizing a society that’s in the hinterlands of Russia against local threats. The “build stuff” part is good fun to read, and if you’re into action novels, those parts are decent too.
I read Ghost expecting more of the same, even though it was the first book. Ghost is… well, Ghost is really offensive on many levels. Ghost I don’t think is really meant to be taken as a novel, the way the sequel was. It’s wank material, but not just sexual wank material, it’s political wank material. You know the guy who brought an assault rifle to protest at a Democratic rally in the '08 election? Imagine that he wrote a novel in which his political fantasies came true. Where everyone would become staunch Republicans if they just understood that terrorists are bad people. No, really, that happens in Ghost.
Hines completely nails everything about the series.
OH AARON SOFAER NO
No is meaningless here. Abandon all hope in the face of the spectre of spectrums.
WTF seriously? That Ringo shit is crap.
— Alan
In a pointless attempt to steer this back on-topic, I must point out there’s sex in the Vorkosigan books. Never, uh, blow-by-blow, but Miles does a lot of what he likes to refer to as “mountain climbing.” No whores or rape scenarios, either.
And with all of its myriad faults - don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s good - it’s still head and shoulders over, for example, romance novels. Or Wuthering Heights.
Anyway! Back to Miles. One of the ongoing in-jokes at Baen is Miles cameos - or, more specifically, cameos of Admiral Naismith. Admiral Helmut, “Dark Lord” of the Sixth, in We Few is one of these.
He’s a really awesome character.
MONSTER* SEX!
she’s not really a monster*
**except technically
I think so. The CD is inside this little envelope which is attached to the book via a perforated seam; it’s not just an insert. And the cover of the book has a “Free CD Inside” inset that’s not just a sticker. I assume it’s there for all of them.
I know what you are saying about hardcovers though, especially the dust jacket, which I always remove while I’m reading them. But I made an exception for this series because I was excited.
Here are my comments on the most recent and on the series from last month:
Cryoburn didn’t really do it for me.
I’m really interested, however, to see how the next chapter in Miles’ life goes.
Now, obviously, it’s a hard act to follow Admiral Naismith from a sheer excitement perspective, but with the exception of A Civil Campaign, I’ve honestly thought the Imperial Auditor role’s constraints weren’t as interesting.
Cryoburn had a hell of a tearjerker, though, at the very end…
:(