Passage (Bujold)
Jul. 9th, 2008 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnOk, here's hoping the hands stay stable! Anyway.
Now that Dag and Fawn are thoroughly married, I don't find them nearly so irritating, basically because I am far more sympathetic to the "We're doing things together as partners" concept than the "We're doing this for looooove!" one. However, I still think he was completely running away from his responsibilities, as evidenced by the part where he wanders around not knowing what to do. Usually, people figure that out first and then start doing it. I'm just sayin'.
This is also to say that I am now clearly seeing that this was all intended as one book - and - I know LMB has said this from the beginning, but it's a little different when you're reading it piecemeal. I really, really wish it had been one book; I would unsay a lot of the mean things I said about the first couple of books. I'm also now, for the first time, planning on buying this sequence, but NOT until it's all released as a single volume. (Hear that, publishers? You could have gotten my money up front, but noooo, you had to try to be all clever!)
Because now I see what LMB is trying to do - she's trying to trace a romance, not just through the easy infatuation stages, but also through the much more difficult stages of trying to do something with all that energy. I don't always buy it, but I can get behind it the way I couldn't get behind the love story of book 1.
This book also plays to LMB's strengths more - a strong diverse cast of characters, the unintentional humor of life, romance in the background and not at the forefront (Whit is really cute!), partnership, a plot twist (the outcome of Berry's quest) I was certainly not really expecting. So, yeah. I liked it. A lot.
Other random thoughts:
-Speaking of hating the publishers, I really kind of hate and despise the cover. Aw, plucky Fawn, protected by her brave tall (old!) man. To be fair, I would have hated it pretty equally as much if he were leaning on her, so I think I might just be grumpy. (But! I'd just like to point out that Aral and Cordelia wouldn't be caught dead either way. They'd be both standing tall. Actually, Cordelia would probably be in the middle of taming lions or rescuing hostages while Aral was coordinating military campaigns.)
-Boy, Dag and Fawn sure do agree on everything pretty quick. I mean, it's not like I fight with my husband all the time either, but we come from basically the same sort of cultural background. And we do occasionally get snippy, with less provocation than Dag and Fawn sometimes have.
-The Dag-Fawn age thing still squicks me out. Usually I can ignore it, but when he says "Behave, child," as, basically, part of foreplay, it completely overwhelms my squick-sense.
-Fawn is growing on me (the sheep-rescuing thing was excellent), and her spunkiness is being turned to good use instead of stupid use (e.g., watching the knife ceremony). Although I love Dag's POV, I'm worried Dag is turning into a Gary Stu. I mean, patrol leader, okay, makes sense. Medicine man too? Er. And a knife-maker? Kind of skeptical.
-Major, major points for Fawn and Dag admitting their trek might be a stupid one. I'm sure it won't be, but major points for their being okay with that.
-Now that I'm done... I really enjoyed reading it... but... did anything actually happen in this book? Is this going to be a Cherryh-style sequence? Nothing wrong with that, I'd just like to know.
Now that Dag and Fawn are thoroughly married, I don't find them nearly so irritating, basically because I am far more sympathetic to the "We're doing things together as partners" concept than the "We're doing this for looooove!" one. However, I still think he was completely running away from his responsibilities, as evidenced by the part where he wanders around not knowing what to do. Usually, people figure that out first and then start doing it. I'm just sayin'.
This is also to say that I am now clearly seeing that this was all intended as one book - and - I know LMB has said this from the beginning, but it's a little different when you're reading it piecemeal. I really, really wish it had been one book; I would unsay a lot of the mean things I said about the first couple of books. I'm also now, for the first time, planning on buying this sequence, but NOT until it's all released as a single volume. (Hear that, publishers? You could have gotten my money up front, but noooo, you had to try to be all clever!)
Because now I see what LMB is trying to do - she's trying to trace a romance, not just through the easy infatuation stages, but also through the much more difficult stages of trying to do something with all that energy. I don't always buy it, but I can get behind it the way I couldn't get behind the love story of book 1.
This book also plays to LMB's strengths more - a strong diverse cast of characters, the unintentional humor of life, romance in the background and not at the forefront (Whit is really cute!), partnership, a plot twist (the outcome of Berry's quest) I was certainly not really expecting. So, yeah. I liked it. A lot.
Other random thoughts:
-Speaking of hating the publishers, I really kind of hate and despise the cover. Aw, plucky Fawn, protected by her brave tall (old!) man. To be fair, I would have hated it pretty equally as much if he were leaning on her, so I think I might just be grumpy. (But! I'd just like to point out that Aral and Cordelia wouldn't be caught dead either way. They'd be both standing tall. Actually, Cordelia would probably be in the middle of taming lions or rescuing hostages while Aral was coordinating military campaigns.)
-Boy, Dag and Fawn sure do agree on everything pretty quick. I mean, it's not like I fight with my husband all the time either, but we come from basically the same sort of cultural background. And we do occasionally get snippy, with less provocation than Dag and Fawn sometimes have.
-The Dag-Fawn age thing still squicks me out. Usually I can ignore it, but when he says "Behave, child," as, basically, part of foreplay, it completely overwhelms my squick-sense.
-Fawn is growing on me (the sheep-rescuing thing was excellent), and her spunkiness is being turned to good use instead of stupid use (e.g., watching the knife ceremony). Although I love Dag's POV, I'm worried Dag is turning into a Gary Stu. I mean, patrol leader, okay, makes sense. Medicine man too? Er. And a knife-maker? Kind of skeptical.
-Major, major points for Fawn and Dag admitting their trek might be a stupid one. I'm sure it won't be, but major points for their being okay with that.
-Now that I'm done... I really enjoyed reading it... but... did anything actually happen in this book? Is this going to be a Cherryh-style sequence? Nothing wrong with that, I'd just like to know.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 01:08 am (UTC)Hee! Well... I'm definitely more clueful now than I was as an adolescent, so less likely to wander about in a miserable haze of not understanding anything. Now, this developed theoretical knowledge, alas, is not always useful in practical situations...
I want the SK universe to be about the way social systems are imperfect, especially when they divide people into binary groups
Ah, ok. I think I see, and I agree this is unlikely to develop to the extent you want.
Information doesn't want to be free;
Okay, this sentence made me laugh out loud.
My real problem with Dag is not his reformer tendencies, because reformers in the right place at the right time really can change the world sometimes (though, I admit, rarely). My problem is that in my experience doing world-changing stuff without thinking it through beforehand and really figuring out the consequences (which Dag demonstrably doesn't do; I forget where but somewhere in Passage someone calls him on some half-baked idea) is liable to get you a whole lot of usually negative consequences you didn't plan for.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 04:04 am (UTC)Oh, good. :-)
My problem is that in my experience doing world-changing stuff without thinking it through beforehand and really figuring out the consequences . . . is liable to get you a whole lot of usually negative consequences you didn't plan for.
Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Sometimes you get good unintended consequences, but much more often it's bad consequences that you see.