A review by katieinca
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold

1.0

Hands down my least favorite of these. Don't get me wrong, it had some good scenes. I love these characters. I like picturing the years of Aral & Cordelia & Jole having been happy together while we were busy with Miles. But I kept waiting for a plot that never came. It's not a romance - Jole and Cordelia figure that out early on. It's not... other stuff. It has the feeling of that last chapter of Harry Potter where that doesn't do much except say "look, everyone's going to be okay, they have kids, they're happy, yadda yadda." I just wish she could have had these characters have these conversations while there was a mystery to solve or a crisis to avert or some other kind of adventure to go on. Or else had a novella about Jole & Cordelia getting together and a few short stories with the interesting conversations, and skip the rest. We kept reading a chapter of this, looking at each other and saying "should we do another one?" and deciding "nah, maybe tomorrow."