Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold

[lightreads]

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold

4/5. ARC. I don't have an overarching summation, so here, have some bullet point thoughts:

• This is A Civil Campaign level plotless social drama. By which I mean the social drama is the plot. This book has a climactic picnic scene, okay. Not nearly as funny as ACC, though.

• Portions of this book are set inside a futuristic fertility clinic, and it made me smile, because yeah. Fertility clinics are fuckin' weird, and conceiving by science is fuckin' weird, and this book had a finger nicely on that.

• Lois McMaster Bujold learned the word 'monosexual,' you guys! *wipes tear*. She still, unfortunately, has not quite grasped that one's sexuality in re the genders one is attracted to is an entirely separate facet from one's sexuality in re how many partners one wishes to have. Which is weird, considering just how many people have taken her to task over the year's for Cordelia's infamous summation of Aral: "He used to be bisexual, now he's monogamous." (Hint: bisexual doesn't actually mean simultaneously banging people of two different genders. A bisexual person doesn't become straight by marrying someone of another gender, or queer by marrying smoene of the same gender. No really, my extended family, I still get to be bisexual, fuck right off). Aaaaanyway, despite having apparently regreted the prior Cordelia observation, LMB still doesn't seem to quite get it. And more fundamentally . . . for anyone who doesn't know, I guess this is a spoiler? Though I'd assume everyone knows by now – this book is about what happens when there is a long-term V relationship with occasional jaunts into triangle, and then the point of the V dies, and how the two left come back to each other, eventually. And this book is . . . very concerned with people's queerness, and like, negative a million percent concerned with polyamory. I exaggerate there are a few throwaway comments on that aspect, but by and large, this book just doesn't . . . notice? It's like, the queerness of the queerness all but swallows the queerness of the poly, which are two very different things, thankyouverymuch. And that disappointed me.

• I said it before on twitter when the spoilers first broke, and I'll say it again: Miles spending decades of adolescent and adult life oblivious to his parents's queerness and polyamory is A++++++. Because yep. He would

• Things I quite liked: this is a book about single parenting by choice, and non-traditional families, and gamete donation, and yeah, that was really good for me.

• Less good. Everyone must have babies. Everyone. Everyone. Babies are not optional. If you are in this verse and you think you do not want babies, well, that's just because you didn't think about it right, and as soon as a real possibility is presented to you, babies you will want and babies you will have. Babies babies babies.

• Another thing I liked: Cordelia is living a long, varied life. She is in her seventies here, embarking on the fourth or fifth major life change. There is a lovely and subversive sense of her as a woman in her prime, in the middle of it all. And also a lovely evocation of how an ideal long-lived future might be, where you could have multiple successive phases of family-building and work, and family-building again, on the scale of decades, without being rushed by biology. Being rushed by loss and grief, though, of course.

• I miss Gregor. I have always, always wanted the Gregor book that Vor Game was actually not.

• This book feels like an end, in a way none of the prior books that were maybe sorta an end did. I don't know why, it just does. I'd be okay with that, actually.

Comments

[neotoma]

I'm glad it was so good, after being kind of disappointed by the Ivan book. Of course, that's not helping me resist the temptation to buy the E-ARC, but I keep telling myself I need to wait. The first four chapters up on the Baen website are damned intriguing, though.

[kate_nepveu]

This is useful, thank you. I still don't know if I want to read it, but it's a more informed uncertainty.

[readerjane]

"... where you could have multiple successive phases of family-building and work, and family-building again, on the scale of decades..."

That was one of the things I liked about Bujold's Sharing Knife series, though I thought the series was a failed experiment overall.

The extended lives of her Lakewalkers meant that Lakewalkers could spend what would be, for a Farmer, a lifespan raising a family, and then have another lifespan as a soldier -- and, if they survived that, go on to another phase afterwards. Not "what do you want to be when you grow up," but "what do you want to be *this phase*?"

I admit, I like Cordelia's "now he's monogamous" retort. I didn't see it as her confusing the spectrums of gender sexuality and mono/poly sexuality.

When I first read Barrayar, I understood her retort as Cordelia turning the tables on Vordarian. Vordarian thought he was striking a blow against his political opponent by driving a wedge between Aral and his wife: shock the little woman while she's pregnant and vulnerable, make her doubt her husband, sow contention in the Vorkosigan camp. Completely forgetting that as a Betan Cordelia was, on any scale Vordarian understood, un-shockable.

At the time, I took "now he's monogamous" to mean that Cordelia was unconcerned whether Aral was tempted to be unfaithful with men or with women: the point was that he chose to be faithful.

In light of new events, I'm wondering whether "now he's monogamous" might have meant, "for this phase." During those years there would have been room for nothing more than regency and raising Miles and Gregor. But Cordelia, who was used to the Betan idea of multiple life phases, could have recognized that in another phase that might not be the case. And still turned the tables on Vordarian, denying him his contention within the Vorkosigan camp, and also withholding information that Vordarian could use for similar attacks.

[lightreads]

I don't buy it. Well, I buy her intention was something close to what you outline – demonstrate sexual unshockability – but I simply do not believe a sentence that starts, "he used to be bisexual, now he's—" isn't coming from a place of bi-phobia. I mean, the shape of the sentence is inexplicable, otherwise. LMB has said something of the sort, or so I heard secondhand. Not sure exactly what, but something to the effect that she would never write such a thing now.

The whole thing only makes sense if you realize there is a particular flavor of bi-phobia which is actually pretty independent from homophobia. Case in point: a seminar class in 2009 at my extremely liberal law school. We had an extended discussion of various gay rights issues in a small group setting, in which it became clear that, of the ten people present, none were particularly homophobic, and if they were, they were keeping their mouths shut. One guy, in particular, was vocally pro gay marriage, pro gay adoption, etc. …Until a topic specific to bisexuality arose, and this very pro-gay guy said dismissively, "yeah, but bisexuality doesn't really exist anyway. I mean, come on, it's just an immature failure to choose."

Yeah. There's a reason the term bi-erasure gets thrown out a lot, but you don't hear gay-erasure that much. The "he used to be bisexual" thing is one of the most classic statements of bi-erasure you can get. And sure, they were monogamous at the time for obvious reasons, and became polyamorous later, but that has nothing to do with Aral's bisexuality. Monogamy doesn't erase that.

[readerjane]

I was confused by your reply because I remembered the conversation as Vordarian saying "[Aral]'s bisexual, you know," and Cordelia replying "Now he's monogamous." I took that to mean, what mattered to her was the monogamy, and that she accepted Aral's bisexuality.

But I went back to the book, and you're right: Cordelia's reply does begin with "Was bisexual." I'd misremembered the text. I'm sure I wouldn't have been alert to bi-erasure back when I read Barrayar, so I guess I erased the erasure.

Headcanon readjusted.

[lightreads]

I didn't notice it either the first time through. You just don't expect Cordelia to frame thoughts that way.

[karanguni]

The babies and polyamory thing so much yes, but I'm glad for the romping parts as well. But so much yes re: Gregor. So much.