A review by klettie
Brothers in Arms, by Lois McMaster Bujold
4.0
4/5… but really 3.5/5. I’m rounding up.
-----
Check out my blog!
-----
I’ll always round up for you, LMB! I said before about Cetaganda: not all Vorkosigan books can be so compelling. Maybe I was trying to read this one too quickly, or maybe it just wasn’t as fresh for me as some of the others felt. It doesn’t feel totally fair just to talk about how this one didn’t *quite* stack up to the others, though, so I’ll start with the good (there is a lot of it):
1) Future Earth is a functionally solarpunk vision, and I love it. Solarpunk is a scifi subculture dedicated to hopeful futures, building visions that we can work toward. Lois McMaster Bujold’s vision of Earth is such a Utopia. Where the rest of the –galaxy? universe? unclear — is racked with conflict and colonization, Earth is in a peaceful backwater that is disconnected from the rest of the universe. Without hitting us over the head with it, LMB shows us that Earth now is quiet and thoughtful and civilized. More than anything it is quaintly historic.
2) Mark, the clone, and the discussions of clone ethics were excellent — I could have used more. LMB rarely if ever hits us over the head with any kind of social message, and she doesn’t here either, but I kind of wish she had explored the clone question in more depth. As always, she puts some of her most progressive, provocative thoughts into Cordelia’s and Betan society’s norms: that Mark, as a clone, is naturally Miles’s brother by law, that there is nothing wrong with cloning. Instead, what is wrong is the subsequent takeover of the body by a rich old person, per what happens in Jackson’s Whole. We saw a little of this world, and I’m hungry for more here. Mark in general was an excellent character — the idea that he was created to be Miles means that his inherent relationship with Miles is fraught.
3) FINALLY, we get more about Komarr! I know we have known of Komarr’s strategic importance for a while, and we’ve known Aral to be the “Butcher of Komarr.” In this book we finally learn about what actually happened, and why it continues to be challenging from a astro-political view. I would have enjoyed automatically understanding why it was significant that Galeni was from Komarr without having it explained to me, but I’m glad to have learned about it at all.
4) Speaking of which… FINALLY we get a competent superior to Miles! Galeni is an exceptional human being, and I deeply appreciated the growing respect between Miles and Galeni. Miles has been plagued with superiors who don’t understand his particular brand of genius, who are Barrayaran career soldiers who follow orders and protocol to a T, and I’m tired of it. I was so excited for this theme to be broken, and for Miles to connect with someone in his own force with a level of competence that he had.
5) The Dendarii Fleet’s money troubles were so real. I keep thinking of more good things about this book, and this was yet another one. The financial pressure on the
Dendarii fleet was always lurking. I appreciated the use of capitalism in this space opera context to ground the story in something that feels hyper realistic to us non-space travelers.
6) Elli Quinn, Elena Bothari, what lovely lady isn’t Miles going to fall for? I’m a little tired of every book having a new woman for Miles to fall in love with. I could say: at least they don’t all fall in love with him? But it doesn’t help.The women are real characters in these books — but Miles doesn’t always treat them like real characters. He’s still pretty young when it comes to these relationships.
7) Miles mostly felt safe throughout this story, and his disabilities felt more like veneer than they did in other books. In the first book, Warrior’s Apprentice, the fear of Miles’s bones breaking was ever present, only mitigated by the presence of Bothari. When Bothari died, Miles no longer felt safe — I feared for him. That carried through The Vor Game, but got lost in Cetaganda and Brothers in Arms. Miles feels undefeatable now. LMB needs to make us feel like Miles is really at risk. I hope to see more of that in future books.
I can’t speed through these, they are too good, and yet I find myself consuming them like cheese and crackers, soup on a cold day, lemonade in summer. I will be so sad when they are over.
-----
Check out my blog!
-----
I’ll always round up for you, LMB! I said before about Cetaganda: not all Vorkosigan books can be so compelling. Maybe I was trying to read this one too quickly, or maybe it just wasn’t as fresh for me as some of the others felt. It doesn’t feel totally fair just to talk about how this one didn’t *quite* stack up to the others, though, so I’ll start with the good (there is a lot of it):
1) Future Earth is a functionally solarpunk vision, and I love it. Solarpunk is a scifi subculture dedicated to hopeful futures, building visions that we can work toward. Lois McMaster Bujold’s vision of Earth is such a Utopia. Where the rest of the –galaxy? universe? unclear — is racked with conflict and colonization, Earth is in a peaceful backwater that is disconnected from the rest of the universe. Without hitting us over the head with it, LMB shows us that Earth now is quiet and thoughtful and civilized. More than anything it is quaintly historic.
Spoiler
2) Mark, the clone, and the discussions of clone ethics were excellent — I could have used more. LMB rarely if ever hits us over the head with any kind of social message, and she doesn’t here either, but I kind of wish she had explored the clone question in more depth. As always, she puts some of her most progressive, provocative thoughts into Cordelia’s and Betan society’s norms: that Mark, as a clone, is naturally Miles’s brother by law, that there is nothing wrong with cloning. Instead, what is wrong is the subsequent takeover of the body by a rich old person, per what happens in Jackson’s Whole. We saw a little of this world, and I’m hungry for more here. Mark in general was an excellent character — the idea that he was created to be Miles means that his inherent relationship with Miles is fraught.
3) FINALLY, we get more about Komarr! I know we have known of Komarr’s strategic importance for a while, and we’ve known Aral to be the “Butcher of Komarr.” In this book we finally learn about what actually happened, and why it continues to be challenging from a astro-political view. I would have enjoyed automatically understanding why it was significant that Galeni was from Komarr without having it explained to me, but I’m glad to have learned about it at all.
4) Speaking of which… FINALLY we get a competent superior to Miles! Galeni is an exceptional human being, and I deeply appreciated the growing respect between Miles and Galeni. Miles has been plagued with superiors who don’t understand his particular brand of genius, who are Barrayaran career soldiers who follow orders and protocol to a T, and I’m tired of it. I was so excited for this theme to be broken, and for Miles to connect with someone in his own force with a level of competence that he had.
5) The Dendarii Fleet’s money troubles were so real. I keep thinking of more good things about this book, and this was yet another one. The financial pressure on the
Dendarii fleet was always lurking.
Spoiler
Sure, they never mutinied on him — but they could have, and would have, and6) Elli Quinn, Elena Bothari, what lovely lady isn’t Miles going to fall for? I’m a little tired of every book having a new woman for Miles to fall in love with. I could say: at least they don’t all fall in love with him? But it doesn’t help.
Spoiler
I thought the part where he proposed to Elli Quinn was bonkers, but I liked the way she let him down.7) Miles mostly felt safe throughout this story, and his disabilities felt more like veneer than they did in other books. In the first book, Warrior’s Apprentice, the fear of Miles’s bones breaking was ever present, only mitigated by the presence of Bothari. When Bothari died, Miles no longer felt safe — I feared for him. That carried through The Vor Game, but got lost in Cetaganda and Brothers in Arms. Miles feels undefeatable now. LMB needs to make us feel like Miles is really at risk. I hope to see more of that in future books.
I can’t speed through these, they are too good, and yet I find myself consuming them like cheese and crackers, soup on a cold day, lemonade in summer. I will be so sad when they are over.