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

4.0

5 for the humor, 3 for the fact that this plot seems to jump out as a glaring attempt to cater to current trends in romance by doing some incredibly twisty retconning to everything we know about some of these characters. And by incredibly, I do mean /not believable/. And all the pages of justification of how this could have been true all along do not make it believable to me.

Spoiler

I'm sorry, but there's no way that this complete twist on Aral Vorkosigan's personality, and Aral and Cordelia's marriage, could possibly have been kept secret, as public figures as they were. Simon Illyan wouldn't have permitted it for security reasons - do you not think that at the time he would have had the slightest hesitation in having someone remove a young officer who was creating a serious security/scandal risk? There was just nothing in the pages and pages of explanations of how they kept it all secret that made me believe it could have been done. Nor do I think that it was necessary to twist it that way to have most of the plot make sense. I can easily think of half a dozen more believable reasons for the reproductive choices to be offered, and for that plot line to proceed apace.

That said, the subplots were great - the bored teenagers subplot; the twenty-something aides and the Cetagandan subplot... those I enjoyed a lot.