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

[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.

[oyceter]

"She's five years old and she can't tie her shoes! She just dribbled on the floor." *inappropriate romance* "OH MY GOD"

Bwah!

The thing about symmetry makes sense to me, even though I can't articulate why either, and I obviously haven't read that many of her books. Or... hrm. I think I never quite felt that the world in Paladin of Souls was an alien world, and ditto with the little I read of the Vorkosigan books. I mean, clearly Bujold doesn't have straight-up 21st-century minds implanted in her characters, but some of them feel like 21st-century analogues, particularly the Betans.