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A review by ninjamuse
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold
2.0
In brief: Three years after the death of Cordelia Vorkosigan’s husband (and Oliver Jole’s life partner), the two bereaved begin thinking about love, family, and their future once again. Fifteenth in a series.
Thoughts: I described this book to a few people while I was reading it and the adjective I settled on was “comfortable”. This is a dear series for me, with a lot of nostalgia, and reading this latest installment felt very much like visiting old friends—and not just because a lot of recurring characters and societies and motifs appeared, or because Bujold is, in a way, bringing the series full circle. There’s nothing really difficult about the story here, or the writing. It’s a very gentle comedy with a few SFnal things at its core, and it was great to see realistic healing from grief and a middle-aged romance! Also to have Bujold acknowledge that the reproductive tech threaded through the series could have positive impacts on the lives of queer couples and the post-menopausal.
However, I’m not really sure how I feel about the romance, though I’m feeling better about it after finishing the book than I was in the middle. By the end, Bujold clarified a few points of the current and past relationships that brought things closer to “canonically poly and now they’ve lost a member of their triad” and further from “man falls for his lover’s widow”. Part of me wants to shout “yay poly!” and another points out that Bujold’s track record with queer stuff is … not the greatest and that I’m neither poly, gay, or bi so am not the best person to comment one way or the other. Bujold does confirm a lot more about gay people have historically fit into Barrayaran society, so at least she’s fixing an oversight or two.
This is definitely not the novel to start the series with. There are too many in-jokes, too many references, too much summing up of the series for that. If you’re a Vorkosigan fan already, enough that you’ve read the bulk of the books including Shards of Honour and Barrayar, I’d rec it just to cap the series off—but know it’s not her strongest by a long shot.
Warnings: The sexuality stuff mentioned above. One joke about an intersex character’s potential to confuse The Straights.
6/10
Thoughts: I described this book to a few people while I was reading it and the adjective I settled on was “comfortable”. This is a dear series for me, with a lot of nostalgia, and reading this latest installment felt very much like visiting old friends—and not just because a lot of recurring characters and societies and motifs appeared, or because Bujold is, in a way, bringing the series full circle. There’s nothing really difficult about the story here, or the writing. It’s a very gentle comedy with a few SFnal things at its core, and it was great to see realistic healing from grief and a middle-aged romance! Also to have Bujold acknowledge that the reproductive tech threaded through the series could have positive impacts on the lives of queer couples and the post-menopausal.
However, I’m not really sure how I feel about the romance, though I’m feeling better about it after finishing the book than I was in the middle. By the end, Bujold clarified a few points of the current and past relationships that brought things closer to “canonically poly and now they’ve lost a member of their triad” and further from “man falls for his lover’s widow”. Part of me wants to shout “yay poly!” and another points out that Bujold’s track record with queer stuff is … not the greatest and that I’m neither poly, gay, or bi so am not the best person to comment one way or the other. Bujold does confirm a lot more about gay people have historically fit into Barrayaran society, so at least she’s fixing an oversight or two.
This is definitely not the novel to start the series with. There are too many in-jokes, too many references, too much summing up of the series for that. If you’re a Vorkosigan fan already, enough that you’ve read the bulk of the books including Shards of Honour and Barrayar, I’d rec it just to cap the series off—but know it’s not her strongest by a long shot.
Warnings: The sexuality stuff mentioned above. One joke about an intersex character’s potential to confuse The Straights.
6/10