Irresistible Forces was cruelly described as “Winterfair Gifts and 5 other stories you won’t read”
I’ll admit I’m not really familiar with the romance genre. But I feel “Winterfair Gifts” barely qualifies as a romance story.
The central story line was Roic getting past his self-doubts and accepting that he deserved his place as a Vorkosigan armsman. His relationship with Taura was secondary to this; neither of them saw this as the start of a long-term relationship.
Sadly, Taura doesn’t see a long-term anything. But given that, her attitude of taking each day as it is is probably about the healthiest she can get.
Ekatarin is indeed true Vor.
And for some reason, despite all three being published in the same volume, the copyediting for “Winterfair Gifts” in Miles in Love is terrible. There were typos practically in every paragraph.
I can’t remember anything about Winterfair gifts. I don’t think I liked it very much.
I am very much a fan of romance. In lieu of Happily Ever After there always is Happy for Now, which is probably as good as it gets for Taura. However my definition of a romance is pretty narrow. Certain Things Must Happen, or else it is a love story. (A romantic subplot can play it more loose.)
Squished together, Komarr and A Civil Campaign make one romance. By themselves they are each love stories. Love stories may concern love and even romance, but if they don’t deliver the HEA or HFN they are not romances.
By which I’m really saying they cannot be marketed as romances because if they fail to meet those requirements, romance readers will rise as one in open revolt. We take this stuff very seriously.
And obviously I had no problem with Bujold pairing everyone up. That’s very common in the romance genre. Introduce a bunch of characters and by the end of book 7, everyone’s happy!
I mean, in real life, most people do end up paired up. I’m not sure how valid that is, as a criticism of a book. Though of course there will be some variation in the extent to which the process of those pairings is shown (like, very little is seen of the details for the three elder Koudelka sisters).
Well, A Civil Campaign, of course, does include the Happily Ever After. But it doesn’t include the first meeting and the first party originally falling in love, which I suppose must be one of your other Certain Things that Must Happen.
And even aside from the editing, I think I also found “Winterfair Gifts” a bit subpar. My biggest complaint is that it has three or four B plots, without any A plot to support it. Roic gaining confidence, Roic having a fling with Taura, the poisoned necklace, and the wedding were none of them really developed enough to hang a story on, even a short story.
I don’t usually like things that are labeled as “romances”, that is, stories where the romance is the primary plot, but I do like it as a secondary plot. Komarr had the broken mirror and associated ne’er-do-well-ing. In A Civil Campaign, though, the love story was definitely the main plot, and I still enjoyed it greatly. I think because I already knew the characters so well from other stories? I dunno.
By the way, just yes or no, no other spoilers, but a couple of questions: Do we ever see another book about the Dendarii Mercenaries? And do we ever see a book set on Sergyar? Also less spoiler potential, but does Barrayar have any native fauna? We see a lot of the native flora (which nobody but Ekatarin seems to be very fond of), but I don’t think any non-Earthly animals have been mentioned.
And in real life, some people don’t; at least, unless the society flat out requires it and arranges to match people up, like it or not. It’s in my opinion a very valid criticism of a work with a whole lot of people if everybody has to wind up paired off.
If nobody does, barring some sort of unusual circumstances , that would be equally odd. I like a good love story mixed into the plot just fine. But everybody-must-be-paired starts to grate on me, after a while; and some of the pairings start to seem strained.
But of course, it’s not literally everyone who gets paired up in the Vorkosigan books, either (unless you use a very broad definition of “paired up”), just most of them. Off the top of my head, Bothari and Quinn never ended up in a stable mutual relationship with anyone; Ethan ended up in a stable relationship of sorts, but not a romantic one; Taura can’t really get a stable relationship, and I don’t think Roic ever has one with anyone else; and of course there are a bunch of background characters whose relationship status is never mentioned. For that matter, you could also argue, for instance, that a disproportionately-large fraction of the main characters are military (even by Barraryaran demographics): It’s not that the non-military folks don’t exist; they’re just not the ones who get written about. In the same way, why couldn’t the lifelong singles exist, and just not be the ones that get a lot of ink?
I think it’s probably safe to say that some of the pairings aren’t for love (at least not at first; love may develop later). Olivia and Dono, for instance, paired up much too quickly for a proper love story. But Dono had strong political reasons to wish to marry quickly, and Olivia probably considered a count to be a good catch, and they did have the adventure with those thugs to draw them together.
A Civil Campaign was a comedy of manners. It was enjoyable just for that. CoMs are fairly rare in SF. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is one and perhaps the Anthony Villers stories. I can’t think fo any others.
No
Yes.
Way back in the 90s, I was subscribed to the Bujold mailing list. Lois occasionally contributed. One of those contributions was that Barrayar has some smallish native fauna (I forget what animal the largest one was compared to), but no large ones. They never appear in any story, unless they show up in “The Flowers of Vashnoi”, which I haven’t read yet. (It’s on order.)
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but this mini-documentary about Judy-Lynn Del Rey includes a discussion of Miles and disability with Lois
Huh, I’ve heard about Judy-Lynn Del Rey for years, but never picked up that she had dwarfism before.
Yeah, I was well aware of her, but had not picked up on that either.
IIRC Roic was engaged to Pym’s daughter in Cryoburn.
Great. The Vorkosigans are creating a family of super-Armsmen
They have to keep up with the Atreides.
Koudelka’s Commandos weren’t enough for them?
I’m reading the Penric novellas in order. Wow, this is different from reading them as they came out. It’s mostly been one continuing story. (I just finished Mira’s last dance, and read Penric’s Fox in chronological order.)
Is that what’s it’s like reading the Miles stories one right after the other? I read them as they were published, too.
(I reread the ones about Cordelia, which are weirdly some of the earliest and latest books Bujold wrote, and also appreciated the emotional continuity.)