Bujold, Lois McMaster - Paladin of Souls

[oyceter]

And now, I confess to my flist that I think Bujold is just Not For Me. I read The Curse of Chalion a couple of years ago and wasn't too impressed. I've read most of Komarr and Cordelia's Honor, largely because people have told me that Cordelia's Honor is one of her earliest and therefore not best works. Both of the Miles books I ended up putting down when I was smackdab in the middle of the climactic plot moments, and I've never felt the need to pick them back up again.

Bujold being Not For Me is not just "I admire it technically but don't quite understand and maybe a reread will convince me otherwise." I think it's something about her prose or her characters that slides right off me.

Anyway. Ista is the middle-aged mother of the queen; her life has previously been torn apart by the will of the gods, and she's really not all that open to them anymore. She embarks on a pilgrimage, largely to get away from court life, but ends up entangled in a mess of demons and conspiracies in which the gods are trying to guide her to do something.

I like that Ista is a middle-aged heroine and that she's allowed to have second chances and love again. Other than that, I was mostly bored by the book. Despite Ista's horrific past and the presence of demons in this book, I never felt that she or any of the other characters were really in any danger. And I could have put this down at the giant climactic moment and not felt any need to pick it back up again, which is never a good sign.

I'm really not sure what it is. Part of me wants to say that Bujold's characters feel too well adjusted to me; I know people will come in and talk about Miles and how much angst he goes through, but there's something about the prose or the way it's written that doesn't make the angst feel real to me. Ah well.

Links:
- coffeeandink's review
- truepenny's review (spoilery)
- rilina's review

Comments

[cofax7]

largely because people have told me that Cordelia's Honor is one of her earliest and therefore not best works.

I'm confused; you read *some* of Komarr and didn't finish it, and read *some* of Cordelia's Honor and didn't finish it? Also, CH is actually a compendium of Shards of Honor and Barrayar. Shards is pretty much a romance-with-politics-and-action. It was Bujold's first finished work, but sold after The Warrior's Apprentice (the first actual book about Miles). Barrayar was written some years later, and is a political thriller, I guess you would say, with not much in the way of romance in it. It's also much better than Shards, and has one of my favorite scenes in all fiction ("I went shopping." "How much did you pay?" "Too much." [or WTTE]).

I dunno. If the narrative drive of Bujold doesn't capture you (although I wouldn't have thought Komarr was a good place to start, for a multitude of reasons anyway), it doesn't catch you. I'm just not convinced you got the right examples. *grin*

Anyway, Bujold's characters usually start off relatively well-adjusted, have a bad spot, and end up a little better off, and understanding more about themselves. (Even Memory fits this template, and that's about as low as Miles falls.) Also, she doesn't dwell on the angst, it's there in the plot but the characters don't generally spent a lot of time thinking mournful thoughts. They're too busy being shot at or making pithy one-liners.

I'm sorry Bujold doesn't work for you: she's one of my favorite writers, although I'm less enchanted by the fantasies than by the Vorkosigan novels, and I was sorely disappointed in the last Miles novel. I'm waiting on tenterhooks for a novel about Ivan, who really really deserves one. Damnit. But it's okay if Bujold is Not Your Beautiful Cake.

[kate_nepveu]

I never felt that she or any of the other characters were really in any danger

Chad has pretty much this reaction to Bujold too, so you're not alone.

I have a split mind when it comes to narrative expectations & characters in danger: I don't really expect that the protagonists are going to die horribly, because that's not what usually happens in fiction except in certain kinds of genres that I don't read much of [*]; but I still get really tense on their behalfs anyway because I get sucked in. So I don't even know if I have this feeling about Bujold's plots; but if I did, I don't think it would matter.

[*] Though I will note that I give it even odds that Harry Potter dies at the end of the last book. And I'm okay with that, at least in theory.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

I loathed the second Chalion book, and I like Bujold. So, it's not just you.

The reason I like the Vorkosigan novels is that they're complex and plotty; the characterization tends to be their weak note, for me. When that series veered into romantic comedy, it lost me instantly (and the regained me with the next complex plot).

[chomiji]

Wow, what a variety of reactions people have had here. I'm going to make it even more so. I really can't deal with Bujold's science fiction. My brain goes blank when I read it - I'm not interested in any of the characters at all.

But I liked Curse of Chalion pretty well, and I really liked Paladin of Souls and the third book, The Hallowed Hunt. I like the idea that some unromantic, un-gorgeous people are ending up as human channels for godhead, and that the people themselves aren't particularly thrilled about it. I'm not as attached to the characters in these books as I am to the characters in some of my favorites, but at least I care about them, which is more than I can say about Miles and Cordelia.

The are some nice little details along the way too - people in these books eat real food, ride real horses (and suffer real saddlesores), wear real clothes. The religion's a little too pat in some ways, but it's intertwined in daily life in a reasonable fashion. I like the idea of the two related forms of the religion, each considered a heresy by the other. The process of discovering how to deal with demons was interesting to me, too.

There really is something anti-angsty about Bujold, though. I can't put my finger on why, either.

- Cho

[snarp]

I never felt that she or any of the other characters were really in any danger.

I'm not sure if I can articulate this sensibly, but I see Bujold's main weakness being a fetish for symmetry or uniformity - she has this kind of compulsion to demonstrate that the women are just as strong as the men, the poor are just as smart as the rich, and that power and politics are exactly the same for every social class everywhere in the universe. She's constantly having her characters make comparisons like that - everything's value-laden and it all weighs the same. She wants everything to balance out, and that means that nothing unredeemable can ever happen. I feel I can safely predict that Bujold will never write a book about the Holocaust.

This is problematic because her main strength is in building characters, and if nothing really bad can ever happen to this larger-than-life military genius you've got set up, we start wondering why we should care. And if you repeatedly insist that his relationship with his wife - who just may - someday - (like when she graduates college and things) - be the best gardener in the world! - is a perfectly symmetrically equal one, then it's going to fall pretty flat.

(I declare this day to be International Dubiousness About Ekaterin Day. Or maybe it's just in general Dubiousness About Bujold's Female Romantic Leads (Except Let's Say Cordelia And Ista To Be Safe) Day, because this is a common problem. It's pretty painful in The Sharing Knife. "This young girl is the one who deserves your praise for slaying the monster!" "She was there by accident. She stabbed it because it was going to eat her." "The look in her eyes tells me she has the spirit of a true warrior!" "She's five years old and she can't tie her shoes! She just dribbled on the floor." *inappropriate romance* "OH MY GOD"

...yes.)

I could obviously go on about this stuff for many pages, because it drives my insane, but I probably shouldn't, as you haven't read the Vorkosigan books and I'm technically supposed to have left five minutes ago.

[tatterpunk.livejournal.com]

Um, hello, I lurk around your journal for the book/manga/anime/tv reviews and such. ;)

By crazy coincidence, I just finished reading this book for the first time myself. I was kind of... ambivalent about it as well. On the one hand, it opened beautifully and was written with enough skill to fully distract me on an overnight train ride (on a hard sleeper, no less). But I didn't emerge from it feeling exhilarated and energized, the way you do with the best books; just a general sort of "well, that was nice."

There were some fantastic elements in this story that made me very excited when I picked it up, but I felt like they never really came together... You definitely nailed it with the lack of danger -- and for me, Ista seemed remarkably secure and self-assured for someone who spent so many years steeped in madness. It wasn't ignored -- Bujold's too good to do that -- but her worries about lapsing back into old ways seemed more habit than a real conflict, and of course once she left the estate there wasn't anyone around her questioning her sanity. I guess I would have liked to see her struggle more... I would have liked to see a lot of the characters struggle, since there seemed to be a lot of potential for conflict set up but only touched on briefly before the plot whisked you along.

I'm still tempted to try her scifi, though. Someone described them as "Regency romances in space" to me, and that actually tickles my interest.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I used to adore Bujold, but as time passed, I liked the books less and less and now find them unreadable. I have....issues with her politics. I think she rigs her worlds to work a certain way to make a certain political point and thus betrays the way story works.

If you'll pardon a little cold-med induced artistic emo, there is nothing that pushes my buttons quite like a storyteller who manipulates the story for the wrong reasons.

She reminds me a lot of Crusie in that way. On the surface, things seem good, but below that is a miasma of political ickiness.

Also, I find her fantasies completely unreadable period. Dull as dirt.