Threerings Reads The Vorkosigan Saga: "Labyrinth" and "Borders of Infinity"
Labyrinth
- So Thorne has been coming on to Miles. You know, I personally would probably find it difficult to turn down a hermaphrodite, just for the sake of the experience. But on the other hand, it would be a massively bad idea to have a one night stand with someone under your command.
-So they're at Jackson's Whole to pick up a geneticist under cover of weapons buying. Simple....for now.
-They visit Baron Fell, the weapon's guy, who has a quaddie woman playing music in his lounge. A quaddie is apparently a genetically bred being with four arms and no legs, made for gravity-free environments. It's pretty adorable that Thorne immediately falls for her, but she's under contract. Baron Ryoval wants to buy her from Fell for his prostitution business. Fell won't sell.
-And naturally, she visits Miles' ship to ask for their help breaking her contract and getting away from these guys. And Miles agrees to let Thorne help her, so long as they can do it secretly. Oh this won't be trouble at all....
-And the guy they are there to pick up contacts them and he has a problem: he won't leave without some very valuable genetic material, that he placed in a monster he created, who was then taken by Baron Ryoval. So Miles has to somehow kill the monster and take the material before this guy will leave.
-Ryoval wants tissue samples of Miles, Thorne, and the quaddie woman in exchange for the monster. To make clones of them to be his slaves, which obviously Thorne isn't going for.
-OMG. WTF? So Miles breaks into Ryoval's place to find and kill the monster, gets caught and is thrown into a dungeon with the monster, who he then discovers can talk. AND THEN SHE ASKS HIM TO HAVE SEX WITH HER. AND THEN HE DOES. I need capslock on my capslock. Like, WHO DOES THAT? 8 foot tall female with fangs and...other animal parts? And he basically is just like, "Oh well, it will be an experience!"
-Anyway he and Taura (he gave her a name) escape and manage to destroy most of the genetic samples stored in the vault. They then run into a bunch of guards and their own people and even though they are outnumbered 13-3 Miles orders the attack and they overpower everyone and escape
-He later talks to the Barons and essentially sets them at each others throats through a series of lies and truths.
-And he tells Taura the truth about everything and the samples are removed from her and she agrees to join the mercenaries, but before that he has lots of sex with her again. Seriously these books are impossible to predict. Romantic interest=8 foot tall wolf girl with fangs and claws.....sure why not.
Borders of Infinity
-So Miles is in hell. He says so at the beginning and I agree with him. He's in a POW camp that consists of a bunch of dirt under a force shield and 10000 people with no governance, oversite, or rules. He's immediately attacked and his clothing and mat taken. So it's frequently disconcerting to think that he's totally naked the whole time.
-So yeah I am completely horrified by the situation. Not only have these people broken down into total anarchy and cruelty, but it's part of the design of the system. Twice a day ration bars are dropped, all in a big pile, so everyone has to fight for them if they want to eat. Even more horrifying is when Miles mentally runs through the POW laws and realizes that technically none of them are being broken. Prisoners are being tortured, murdered, raped, but they are doing it to themselves so it's not actually illegal.
-This all reminds me of a book I read when I was a pre-teen called "House of Stairs" by William Slater. It's about a group of teens who are kidnapped and put in an infinite space of white stairs, at the center of which is a machine that gives them food if they do what it wants. At first it's really harmless gestures, but eventually they are only given food for being cruel to each other. Yeah, this is a YA book, by the way. And very fucked up.
-Anyway, I eventually am realizing what this story is setting up. Miles is setting out to convince people to follow him, using nothing but his trademark force of personality. He's using religious trappings because of one guy he's met who believes in his "scripture" but this is totally going to be amazing isn't it?
-So far he's told one guy to get him 20 followers by the next food drop. He plans to have 500 people by then to take the food and then fairly distribute it.
-So he manages to get the women's camp, who have been protecting themselves on his side and they take control of the food and hand it out. Days and days go by and nothing happens and Miles doesn't have anything else to do. Eventually he and his friend get attacked by a gang and his friend is near death.
-But I want to comment on this quote: "Repeated pain, as he had reason to know, made one more afraid of injury, not less, a growing, gut-wrenching dread." - This is actually something that's been bothering me a bit in these books, is the casual attitude Miles seems to have to breaking bones. Because I have personal reason to know that this quote is true. Living with chronic pain, with acute periods which could be set off by anything DOES lead to a deep fear. I compare it to PTSD a bit, the trauma accrues over time as your instincts tell you to avoid more things that might cause you to experience your worst pain again. Just suffice to say living with pain is fucked up in a psychological sense. So in a sense Miles' seeming lack of fear of breaking bones hasn't felt accurate to me. On the other hand it is surprising what you can get used to. For example, for me a flare of pain that keeps me in bed for 2 weeks isn't that big a deal, so long as I'm not in agony the whole time and I can still move enough to feed myself. So I don't know. I'm glad this was expressed, and I kinda wish we got to see that side of Miles more often.
-HOLY CRAP there are 14 shuttles there to pick everyone up, Miles' shuttles and he's been DRILLING everyone to get in the shuttles in an orderly fashion through the food drills.
-So Elli and Elena were posing as monitors so they were picking up everything he said and using it to plan this whole thing ON THE FLY. Now I want to reread to see what his hints were.
-Holy Fuck, so this was the incident with the shuttle door malfunction from "Brothers in Arms." Beatrice! NO! I was getting attached to her on Miles' behalf.
- So that's it. I've connected my weird reading order to itself and am back on track. Both these stories were really good, in entirely different ways.
- So Thorne has been coming on to Miles. You know, I personally would probably find it difficult to turn down a hermaphrodite, just for the sake of the experience. But on the other hand, it would be a massively bad idea to have a one night stand with someone under your command.
-So they're at Jackson's Whole to pick up a geneticist under cover of weapons buying. Simple....for now.
-They visit Baron Fell, the weapon's guy, who has a quaddie woman playing music in his lounge. A quaddie is apparently a genetically bred being with four arms and no legs, made for gravity-free environments. It's pretty adorable that Thorne immediately falls for her, but she's under contract. Baron Ryoval wants to buy her from Fell for his prostitution business. Fell won't sell.
-And naturally, she visits Miles' ship to ask for their help breaking her contract and getting away from these guys. And Miles agrees to let Thorne help her, so long as they can do it secretly. Oh this won't be trouble at all....
-And the guy they are there to pick up contacts them and he has a problem: he won't leave without some very valuable genetic material, that he placed in a monster he created, who was then taken by Baron Ryoval. So Miles has to somehow kill the monster and take the material before this guy will leave.
-Ryoval wants tissue samples of Miles, Thorne, and the quaddie woman in exchange for the monster. To make clones of them to be his slaves, which obviously Thorne isn't going for.
-OMG. WTF? So Miles breaks into Ryoval's place to find and kill the monster, gets caught and is thrown into a dungeon with the monster, who he then discovers can talk. AND THEN SHE ASKS HIM TO HAVE SEX WITH HER. AND THEN HE DOES. I need capslock on my capslock. Like, WHO DOES THAT? 8 foot tall female with fangs and...other animal parts? And he basically is just like, "Oh well, it will be an experience!"
-Anyway he and Taura (he gave her a name) escape and manage to destroy most of the genetic samples stored in the vault. They then run into a bunch of guards and their own people and even though they are outnumbered 13-3 Miles orders the attack and they overpower everyone and escape
-He later talks to the Barons and essentially sets them at each others throats through a series of lies and truths.
-And he tells Taura the truth about everything and the samples are removed from her and she agrees to join the mercenaries, but before that he has lots of sex with her again. Seriously these books are impossible to predict. Romantic interest=8 foot tall wolf girl with fangs and claws.....sure why not.
Borders of Infinity
-So Miles is in hell. He says so at the beginning and I agree with him. He's in a POW camp that consists of a bunch of dirt under a force shield and 10000 people with no governance, oversite, or rules. He's immediately attacked and his clothing and mat taken. So it's frequently disconcerting to think that he's totally naked the whole time.
-So yeah I am completely horrified by the situation. Not only have these people broken down into total anarchy and cruelty, but it's part of the design of the system. Twice a day ration bars are dropped, all in a big pile, so everyone has to fight for them if they want to eat. Even more horrifying is when Miles mentally runs through the POW laws and realizes that technically none of them are being broken. Prisoners are being tortured, murdered, raped, but they are doing it to themselves so it's not actually illegal.
-This all reminds me of a book I read when I was a pre-teen called "House of Stairs" by William Slater. It's about a group of teens who are kidnapped and put in an infinite space of white stairs, at the center of which is a machine that gives them food if they do what it wants. At first it's really harmless gestures, but eventually they are only given food for being cruel to each other. Yeah, this is a YA book, by the way. And very fucked up.
-Anyway, I eventually am realizing what this story is setting up. Miles is setting out to convince people to follow him, using nothing but his trademark force of personality. He's using religious trappings because of one guy he's met who believes in his "scripture" but this is totally going to be amazing isn't it?
-So far he's told one guy to get him 20 followers by the next food drop. He plans to have 500 people by then to take the food and then fairly distribute it.
-So he manages to get the women's camp, who have been protecting themselves on his side and they take control of the food and hand it out. Days and days go by and nothing happens and Miles doesn't have anything else to do. Eventually he and his friend get attacked by a gang and his friend is near death.
-But I want to comment on this quote: "Repeated pain, as he had reason to know, made one more afraid of injury, not less, a growing, gut-wrenching dread." - This is actually something that's been bothering me a bit in these books, is the casual attitude Miles seems to have to breaking bones. Because I have personal reason to know that this quote is true. Living with chronic pain, with acute periods which could be set off by anything DOES lead to a deep fear. I compare it to PTSD a bit, the trauma accrues over time as your instincts tell you to avoid more things that might cause you to experience your worst pain again. Just suffice to say living with pain is fucked up in a psychological sense. So in a sense Miles' seeming lack of fear of breaking bones hasn't felt accurate to me. On the other hand it is surprising what you can get used to. For example, for me a flare of pain that keeps me in bed for 2 weeks isn't that big a deal, so long as I'm not in agony the whole time and I can still move enough to feed myself. So I don't know. I'm glad this was expressed, and I kinda wish we got to see that side of Miles more often.
-HOLY CRAP there are 14 shuttles there to pick everyone up, Miles' shuttles and he's been DRILLING everyone to get in the shuttles in an orderly fashion through the food drills.
-So Elli and Elena were posing as monitors so they were picking up everything he said and using it to plan this whole thing ON THE FLY. Now I want to reread to see what his hints were.
-Holy Fuck, so this was the incident with the shuttle door malfunction from "Brothers in Arms." Beatrice! NO! I was getting attached to her on Miles' behalf.
- So that's it. I've connected my weird reading order to itself and am back on track. Both these stories were really good, in entirely different ways.