Melodrama Was Never an Option

[mtvessel]

Nov 2018
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen - Lois McMaster Bujold – Baen Books, 2016
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This latest novel in the Vorkosigan sequence is, I strongly suspect, intended by the author to be the last; you wouldn't return to the main character (Cordelia) and the setting (Sergyar) of the first book in the series unless you are trying to round things off. Whether you consider it a satisfying or a disappointing finale will, in all probability, depend on your willingness to accept Bujold's evident opinion that drama and action are flaws of youth that older, wiser people will seek to avoid. It certainly makes for a slower and more reflective novel than the others in the sequence, which is at least different but not necessarily better.

The plot is a romance, but Bujold sneakily undercuts the early elements of the formula by having had them met before (warning: mild plot spoilers for previous books coming up). Oliver Jole, an admiral in the Sergyar fleet who is currently on shore leave, is rather surprised when Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Vicereine of Sergyar, turns up with a suitcase of gametes that she has brought back from Barrayar and offers him some eggs so that he can have children. We soon learn that the reason for this bizarre offer is that her deceased husband Aral had a scandalous secret (at least to Barrayarans); he was bisexual and had lived in a menage à trois with Cordelia and Jole for some years. Cordelia, being Betan, was fine with this - as she puts it, "melodrama was never an option". The decisions that need to be made over the gametes, plus some sub-plots involving a dodgy job-lot of substandard plascrete foisted on the military by a corrupt contractor, a comedy of cultural misunderstandings between a young ghem-lord from the Cetagandan embassy and one of Jole's staff, and Cordelia's plan to move the capital of Sergyar from the shadow of an active volcano to somewhere a bit safer in the teeth of opposition from vested interests, give plenty of opportunities for the two old friends, both still grieving the loss of Aral, to get to know each other again.

Which they do, and that's basically the story. Miles of course makes an appearance and there are a couple of scenes of mild action, but there is no sustained tension in the plot. That I can live with, but the treatment of Aral's behaviour is more problematic. Seducing a workplace subordinate, particularly in a military organisation where promotion depends on the goodwill of your superiors, raises the question of whether they can genuinely offer consent, but this gets skated over in Jole's memories of the affair (he describes it as like "like being hit by a falling building"). And Cordelia seemed overly anodyne about the fact that Aral started the affair while she was away, rather than waiting until she got back. Betan practicality in matters of the heart is all very well, but not being given the opportunity to assent to the specific arrangement beforehand shows a lack of respect towards her which she would surely have addressed.

There is something to be said for Bujold's approach. I for one worry about the amount of time I spend reading or watching stories that are primarily about teen- or twenty-somethings rather than protagonists who are closer to my own age. While it's true that stories about attractive young people making their life-choices are always going to be compelling (and it's not as if authors and media outlets are offering many interesting alternatives), we should probably make more time for gentle, reflective tales like this, in which people who made their life-choices some time ago get on with living with the consequences. But the truth is, I still like a bit of action and melodrama, and I am not yet ready to do without them entirely.