Legacy (LM Bujold)

[cahn]

My homework for last weekend was reading Legacy. (Next weekend it will be to start looking up all these fabulous book recs I keep getting, yay, thanks!) I... didn't hate it. Probably from the Magic of Low Expectations-- I knew not to expect much, and, well, I wasn't disappointed.

It is a romance book. Fortunately, I was warned multiple times of this in advance. And seeing as how a) romance as a genre kind of bores me, and b) Bujold doing romance presses none of my adoration buttons and many of my rant buttons (more on this in a sec), well, there was a limit to much I'd like it, and I knew that going in.

I see (and I saw dimly after the first book) what Bujold is trying to do-- because she is a Real Writer, she can't stay in stasis doing the same thing forever; she needs to experiment. And I'm glad she does, because what she did in Chalion she could never have done on Barrayar, and in that case her experimentation was a grand success. However, her experiment with romance... well, now you've done the experiment, and now I hope you go on to experiment with something else. Please. Because romance is simply not Bujold's strength, though she may believe it is from the success of ACC. Although I loved ACC, the actual romances were not its strength; the comedy of errors and the tight plotting and the weaving of romance together with ruminations on biology and politics were its strengths.

What I liked: It was nice to get more backstory and more insight into the world, although... the mysteries set up were really relatively mild, and nothing really got resolved.

I quite liked the scene where Fawn gets totally whammed by Dag's mother, because I was so afraid that MarySue!Fawn would walk all over Dag's mother By Teh Power Of Her Rightness, and of course realistically that would never occur, because Dag's mom is older, has much more fighting experience, and can read Fawn like a book. I should have trusted Bujold more on that.

Stuff that didn't bother me as much as I expected it to: I liked Fawn much, much better in this book, actually. She did have some of a personality transplant-- somehow the girl who was immature enough to run away from home without actually telling anyone (I mean, hello, don't you think they might worry and think you had been kidnapped or something?) became all cool and mature once she got married. (The girl who had sex with Sunny so she would feel wanted and valid didn't once act unhealthily-clingy towards Dag? Um, from my limited understanding of human nature, I Don't Think So.) But since I hated Immature!Fawn, and couldn't see what Dag saw in her, I was more okay with that than I usually would be.

I'd also been told Fawn was aspiring to be a Totally!Smart!BujoldHeroine. I was okay with the way that was done-- she doesn't know much, and is not exactly totally introspective, but she's bright and curious, and sometimes has dizzying intuitive leaps. Coming at this right after Harry Potter, the king of intuitive leaps... I can't argue with that. Bujold was also at pains to point out that Intuitive Leap != Right Answer For Right Reasons, and that also reconciled me a huge amount.

I was rather more sympathetic towards Dag's dealings with his family than I was with Fawn's dealings with hers. Maybe because, you know, he didn't run away without telling anyone and then expect them to treat him as a mature adult. Also because Fawn's family seemed relatively normal (though with homicidally-stupid brothers, yes), and Dag's family seemed, well, to have deep-seated psychological Issues.

What I didn't like: The May-December romance thing really kept squicking me out, because it would not die-- characters kept commenting on it. Which on one hand is a testament to Bujold's careful writing craftsmanship, because in reality, yeah, everyone would be commenting on it. However, since I was kind of on everyone else's side and not on Fawn and Dag's side on this, it didn't really work.

What I hated so much that the margins of this post cannot contain it: Well, the ending. I was all, hey, this isn't so bad, and then the ending happened and if I had been reading my own copy I would have thrown it, well, across the bed. I have a whole other rant about Dag and responsibility and girls and Miles, but I'll post that later.

Comments

[ase.livejournal.com]

I am a fan of gods as plot device only when I get prophecy as plot device out of the deal, and I never get good prophecy plots. The narrative fails to do anything fun and devious with the Hallowed Prophecy of Old. "And oh, if you read the fine print, the common translation dropped a syllable, so it shouldn't read 'the Dark Lord is defeated by the first son of the kingdom', it should read, 'the Dark Lord is defeated by the first child of the kingdom' and by 'child' I think they meant your illegitimate daughter who just lopped off the Sauron analog's head. Sire. And perhaps Sire would see fit to decently funding the Chair of the Library of Ancient Knowledge so we can hire the good translators?"

This may be why I started actively avoiding fat fantasy epics a couple years back.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Huh. It's true, I can't think of any besides Chalion (which I don't know if you count, but like you said before, it's satisfying to see how it all works out (and, kind of, how it doesn't)) and LOTR, which didn't really focus on prophecies, really. (And didn't have any gods to speak of, I mean, sure, Manwe and all that, but they didn't really show up explicitly in LOTR... which I think was a good thing.) Ah well.

And HP, I guess, but I totally don't count that because even now that I know how it all turns out, I *still* can't parse the darn thing.

I started avoiding fat fantasy epics because... the fatter they are, the worse the writing tends to be.

[ase.livejournal.com]

I hadn't considered Chalion, but it's lurking in the background of the thought process, yes. An inexplicable prophecy turned explicable after the fact and on a technicality or two.

And HP, I guess, but I totally don't count that because even now that I know how it all turns out, I *still* can't parse the darn thing.

I, um, never really tried. HP is working off fantasy conventions, but with limited consideration of second-order effects.

I started avoiding fat fantasy epics because... the fatter they are, the worse the writing tends to be.

There's that aspect, too. I'm actively avoiding 1,000 page doorstops these days because the payoff is rarely worth the time investment.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

If you have the willpower to STOP after book three, and never know 'how it comes out', the Wheel of Time is actually pretty cool.

However, after book 3, he wrote an endlessly growing series of difficult middle books that cover less and less actual TIME per doorstop, with the viewpoint characters growing exponentially, and UCK. I gave up after a book that, in its Jordanesque Doorstopness, covered *six days* of time. Six days. Plus, there were so many sidelong references to plots five books ago (with very few incluing details; things like, "In the city of many bridges over glittering canals, a shadowy figure with many clinking braids organized in a way you ought to remember, smiles to himself and thinks, "Ahh, my plan is coming together." And then he cuts away) that it was hopeless to UNDERSTAND it unless you'd just read all of them back to back.

That said, the first three, though totally unresolved, have some neat worldbuilding and magic in them.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

I stopped after about book 5 or so. I remember the first three as being fairly cool, but I'm also allergic to not knowing how things come out, so if I'd known I would skid to a halt I wouldn't've begun in the first place.

There's also the Martin Song of Ice and Fire fat fantasy epic, which is the only fat fantasy epic (now that HP's ended) I'm following nowadays, if I can define "following" as "skimming very quickly in bookstore when it comes out." After the first couple, it broke my first cardinal rule of books, which is: I have to like at least one of the characters. Which is too bad, since the plotting and all is pretty good.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Aw. I stopped reading Fire and Ice after the second, when Martin broke the "he's dead - no, he's not!" rule a little too often. There's battlefield chaos, and then there's messing with your readers' heads because, ha ha ha, you're the author and you can.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think by that time I already didn't care enough about the characters to care if Martin had killed them off or not.

Guy Gavriel Kay is the one I always think of as being really annoying about the "he's dead - no he's not" rule. I'm in the process of writing up a rant about why GGK annoys me to the point I can barely read his books, even though everyone else seems to love him.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I can't read GGK because he's smug about being the author and knowing evvvvverything, and I don't, because I'm the iggerant reader.

Also, at least in Sarantium (which is all I've read), he keeps removing (or never giving them anything to do) the characters I like best, and taking the people I find boring and embroiling them in politics he gives me no reason to care about.

Totally not my kink.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

I can't read GGK because he's smug about being the author and knowing evvvvverything, and I don't, because I'm the iggerant reader.

Yes, exactly!

Hee, Sarantium was the one GGK I actually got through without hating too much... but mostly because I was all, "Hey, wait, that guy is Emperor Justinian!" and that interested me enough to get through it (and probably made me care about the politics much more than you did).

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Thank God it's not just me; all of my GGK-worshipping friends look at me funny when I articulate that dislike.

The only two things that kept me reading Sailing-to to the end were (a) all the mosaicsgeeking, and (b) the bird. Yes, I took four years of Latin in high school. No, I was not uber-enchanted by the fact that Justinian is a character.

If you took Latin, too, btw, I can highly recommend Somtow Sucharitkul (or SP Somtow, as he's now known)'s Aquiliad books as HILARIOUS alternate roman history. Head and shoulders above Sarantium, and not just because he has the sense of humor GGK was clearly born entirely lacking ...

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

ahaha. You have incited me a) to finish Arbonne, and b) write a rant about it (see my latest lj post). I actually didn't hate it, because it turned out not to have a lame plot. But I also skipped all the annoying teaser "ha, I know and you don't!" by reading only the last half-third.

oh, yeah, the mosaicsgeeking! I did like that. Someday I shall go visit Ravenna and Constantinople. Was not particularly entranced by the bird. I have had a Thing for Justinian and Theodora ever since reading The Dragon Waiting which led me to seduction by John Julius Norwich, so it *did*, in fact, uber-enchant me. What can I say? I'm easy to please if you punch the right buttons. (If the author shows me s/he's read The White Goddess or The Triads of the Island of Britain or the Mabinogion, I'll lap it up, even if it's complete drivel! )

I have not taken Latin, but actual history-based stuff is sufficiently interesting to me that I think I'd really like Somtow. Will make a note. Ah, it would be nice to read something with a sense of humor, now that I've gotten through more GGK.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

The Aquiliad is funny to most people, but hiLARious to anyone who had a latin teacher like mine ... and Mr. Somtow's, clearly. :->

I should note, it's 'alternate history' in big scare quotes: the what-if is "What if a time-travelling criminal gave Nero's empire the steam engine and Romans conquered North America?" ... for starters.

That said, all the American place-names (rivers, etc) that in our world were frenchified into English from Native words are Latinized, often hilariously. Our viewpoint character is a stuffy unreliable narrator Roman centurion; our protagonist is his sidekick, an American native named Aquila.

One of the things that corpsed me is that ... well. In the latter Roman empire, all educated high-class Romans spoke Greek fluently and casually, and spoke Latin for formal occasions and oratory. Therefore, in the Aquila books, whenever they'd be speaking Greek it's rendered as colloquial modern American English. Whenever they're speaking Latin, it's rendered as, "Oh, I say, old chap, pip pip!" stilted British Edwardian cant. :->

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

ha! that sounds hilarious! Hm, I didn't know that about the language; I expect that it won't be quite as funny to me... But I love books like that, that are funnier (or more meaningful or whatever) the more you know, because it gives room for rereading later.

(btw, speaking of books that are funnier when you know a bit of history, this reminds me very vaguely of the "textbook" Dave Barry Slept Here, which is hilarious after taking ordinary high-school american history (at least, if you like Dave Barry, which I totally do); my roommate and I used it in high school to study for the AP exam.)

I looked for Somtow unsuccessfully this weekend at the library but I am overdue for an amazon bookrun...

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Especially because he has two different names depending on when the edition was printed, some of his books are really hard to find.

Also, mostly they're in small editions. Mallworld is another of his that I really like, for very different reasons -- it's a bunch of interleaved stories (think Thieves' World, only all by one author) that take place on a space station that is basically one huge mall.

[ase.livejournal.com]

I stopped around the eighth, and wish I'd dropped it closer to the sixth. I wouldn't tell people to read the series now; I value narrative resolution too much.