The Taming of the Heroine
Jul. 7th, 2004 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselJan 2004
Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold - Baen 1996.
* * * * *
For some reason, Lois McMaster Bujold has never been as big a hit in SF circles in this country as she is in the United States (a sort of reverse Terry Pratchett). This is odd, as she has won several Hugos and Nebulas and her books are well-written, witty and extremely likeable. For those who haven't come across her, she's a cross between Anne McCaffrey (when she was good) and C.J. Cherryh. This makes her sound derivative and second-rate, which she most definitely is not - what I mean is that she combines the wit and good humour of the former with the solid craftsmanship and attention to detail of the latter.
Bujold's set-up is a fairly conventional SF trope -a nexus of worlds connected by wormholes which are navigated by jump ships (as usual, the drastic effects of FTL travel on causality are ignored). One world, Barryar, became disconnected from the wormhole nexus shortly after it was colonised and reverted to a quasi-medieval society (why it devolved is not clear, but there is an earlier book called Falling Free which might explain it). Newly discovered wormholes have subsequently opened Barryar up to galactic society once again, causing tensions between its rigid, conservative and militaristic caste structure and those who want to embrace galactic morals and technologies. This is a neat setting because it has an in-built dramatic tension and allows Bujold to use the sorts of politics, plotting and romance usually found in fantasies but in an SF setting. It does, however, lead to some inconsistencies in technology - the Barryarans have air cars and advanced weapons, for example, but no mobile phones.
The heroine of the two books that make up Cordelia's Honor is the eponymous Cordelia Naismith, a science expedition commander from Beta Colony and a typical representative of galactic civilisation. Her botanical study trip to a lonely planet is attacked and she ends up the prisoner of Aral Vorkosigan, a Barryan officer who for complicated political reasons has been abandoned by his regiment. Together they set off across a hostile planet to find a weapons cache which will allow Vorkosigan to regain control. The inevitable mutual attraction is well handled - unusually for SF, both protagonists are mature, intelligent and middle-aged.
Aral regains control of his regiment, but events conspire to split them up again and they end up on opposing sides of an interstellar war, the cause of which turns out to be implausible but quite impressively nasty. In fact, viewed objectively there are a lot of implausibilities - a particularly egregious example is when Cordelia, totally unaided, manages to take control of a spaceship held by eight heavily armed men in a sequence which is pure Rambo plotting. The problem is not so much with how she does it, as why - she knows it's a death-trap, so why does she do something so suicidal? It is a measure of Bujold's skillful writing that you are too busy rooting for Cordelia to notice at the time.
The remainder of book one deals with the war and its aftermath and with Cordelia's and Aral's growing romance, which follows, satisfyingly, the expected trajectory. Book two takes place on Barryar, where Aral and Cordelia are now married and expecting a child. Aral is regent to the four year old Emperor of Barryar, and the book is about a coup d'etat staged by conservative forces.
It is in this second book that some of the weaknesses of Bujold's setting become apparent. In book one, Cordelia is a strong, capable leader and therefore very much a mover and shaker of the plot. In book two, she is trapped in a society with essentially Victorian values - Barryaran women are not supposed to get involved in politics or the military, and she can't break out or rebel because that would bring dishonour on her beloved husband. The social restrictions and her pregnancy combine to make Cordelia a relatively passive observer during the first half. Bujold contrives to bring her centre stage again towards the end, when she engages in another heroic but foolhardy rescue mission, but anyone with a feminist bent will be disappointed at Cordelia's trajectory from independence to passivity. This process is complete by the time of "the Warrior's Apprentice", the next book chronologically in the sequence and the first to star Miles Vorkosigan, Cordelia's brilliant but disabled son. There Cordelia shows little of the independence and heroic qualities found in this book and instead is relegated to the role of loving but dutiful mother. This may perhaps be necessary to prevent too many heroes from spoiling the literary broth, but is a shame nonetheless, as it leaves the remaining books with a more conventional young male protagonist (albeit a highly engaging one).
That said, these are really good books. Bujold's tactic of asking "what's the worst thing that could happen to my protagonist now?" creates plenty of drama and more or less forces sympathy from the reader, and her dialogue is excellent. Baen is bringing out the early Vorkosigan books as compendia of which Cordelia's Honor is the first - I've read Young Miles, the next in the sequence, and shall certainly be collecting the rest.
Oh yes, and a word of warning. If, like me, you hate having the plot of a book revealed before you've read it, do not look at the timeline at the back as it gives away the details of the entire sequence.
Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold - Baen 1996.
* * * * *
For some reason, Lois McMaster Bujold has never been as big a hit in SF circles in this country as she is in the United States (a sort of reverse Terry Pratchett). This is odd, as she has won several Hugos and Nebulas and her books are well-written, witty and extremely likeable. For those who haven't come across her, she's a cross between Anne McCaffrey (when she was good) and C.J. Cherryh. This makes her sound derivative and second-rate, which she most definitely is not - what I mean is that she combines the wit and good humour of the former with the solid craftsmanship and attention to detail of the latter.
Bujold's set-up is a fairly conventional SF trope -a nexus of worlds connected by wormholes which are navigated by jump ships (as usual, the drastic effects of FTL travel on causality are ignored). One world, Barryar, became disconnected from the wormhole nexus shortly after it was colonised and reverted to a quasi-medieval society (why it devolved is not clear, but there is an earlier book called Falling Free which might explain it). Newly discovered wormholes have subsequently opened Barryar up to galactic society once again, causing tensions between its rigid, conservative and militaristic caste structure and those who want to embrace galactic morals and technologies. This is a neat setting because it has an in-built dramatic tension and allows Bujold to use the sorts of politics, plotting and romance usually found in fantasies but in an SF setting. It does, however, lead to some inconsistencies in technology - the Barryarans have air cars and advanced weapons, for example, but no mobile phones.
The heroine of the two books that make up Cordelia's Honor is the eponymous Cordelia Naismith, a science expedition commander from Beta Colony and a typical representative of galactic civilisation. Her botanical study trip to a lonely planet is attacked and she ends up the prisoner of Aral Vorkosigan, a Barryan officer who for complicated political reasons has been abandoned by his regiment. Together they set off across a hostile planet to find a weapons cache which will allow Vorkosigan to regain control. The inevitable mutual attraction is well handled - unusually for SF, both protagonists are mature, intelligent and middle-aged.
Aral regains control of his regiment, but events conspire to split them up again and they end up on opposing sides of an interstellar war, the cause of which turns out to be implausible but quite impressively nasty. In fact, viewed objectively there are a lot of implausibilities - a particularly egregious example is when Cordelia, totally unaided, manages to take control of a spaceship held by eight heavily armed men in a sequence which is pure Rambo plotting. The problem is not so much with how she does it, as why - she knows it's a death-trap, so why does she do something so suicidal? It is a measure of Bujold's skillful writing that you are too busy rooting for Cordelia to notice at the time.
The remainder of book one deals with the war and its aftermath and with Cordelia's and Aral's growing romance, which follows, satisfyingly, the expected trajectory. Book two takes place on Barryar, where Aral and Cordelia are now married and expecting a child. Aral is regent to the four year old Emperor of Barryar, and the book is about a coup d'etat staged by conservative forces.
It is in this second book that some of the weaknesses of Bujold's setting become apparent. In book one, Cordelia is a strong, capable leader and therefore very much a mover and shaker of the plot. In book two, she is trapped in a society with essentially Victorian values - Barryaran women are not supposed to get involved in politics or the military, and she can't break out or rebel because that would bring dishonour on her beloved husband. The social restrictions and her pregnancy combine to make Cordelia a relatively passive observer during the first half. Bujold contrives to bring her centre stage again towards the end, when she engages in another heroic but foolhardy rescue mission, but anyone with a feminist bent will be disappointed at Cordelia's trajectory from independence to passivity. This process is complete by the time of "the Warrior's Apprentice", the next book chronologically in the sequence and the first to star Miles Vorkosigan, Cordelia's brilliant but disabled son. There Cordelia shows little of the independence and heroic qualities found in this book and instead is relegated to the role of loving but dutiful mother. This may perhaps be necessary to prevent too many heroes from spoiling the literary broth, but is a shame nonetheless, as it leaves the remaining books with a more conventional young male protagonist (albeit a highly engaging one).
That said, these are really good books. Bujold's tactic of asking "what's the worst thing that could happen to my protagonist now?" creates plenty of drama and more or less forces sympathy from the reader, and her dialogue is excellent. Baen is bringing out the early Vorkosigan books as compendia of which Cordelia's Honor is the first - I've read Young Miles, the next in the sequence, and shall certainly be collecting the rest.
Oh yes, and a word of warning. If, like me, you hate having the plot of a book revealed before you've read it, do not look at the timeline at the back as it gives away the details of the entire sequence.