Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

I was torn between three and four stars. Finally ended up giving four, since I honestly enjoyed the book so much three would have just been being a sourpuss. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance is a lot of fun.

It has its problems - the middle part sags, and I'd rather have been spared the Vorkosigan's Greatest Hits section, where characters from previous books are paraded out just so that the present protagonists can gawk at the awesome stuff they've done. Problem is, the reader already knows all this, so the whole section comes off a bit as "you thought this was great the first time, so let's go over it again". Which is really unnecessary. As much as I love Miles Vorkosigan - particularily the young, over-energetic, forward-momentum-and-damn-the-consequences Miles, his cameo here doesn't add anything to the book.

But enough grumbling. Ivan Vorpatril makes a nice protagonist, and the twin plots held my interest better than, say, Diplomatic Immunity or Cryoburn. The beginning is good, the ending is good and the character dynamics worked. This is essentially a caper novel, and being that, doesn't take itself too seriously, nor let things get too dark.

"I, Ivan Xav Vorpatril, ..., do take thee, uh ... what did you say your name was, again?"

If I had to rank books in this series by their comedy, this book would be up there right behind A Civil Campaign. Ivan Vorpatril has always had a long series of girlfriends but has dodged marriage as much as he's dodged extra work. The plot hook here is that in an attempt to save two women who are on the run from bounty hunters, immigration, and the local police, Ivan comes up with the idea to marry one of them in a rush (temporarily, of course!). Comedy ensues.

I love that there's a lot of ambiguity about how everybody else reacts to this "temporary" marriage. You get the feeling that everyone is sort of raising their eyebrow at Ivan, but also taking it seriously and are waiting for Ivan to come around to realize he's actually married and it's not just a temporary deal.

There's a lot of good parallels in this book. I liked getting to see Alys Vorpatril whose husband had been killed get to talk about loss and rememberances with Tej, who also has lost her entire immediate family. I like Shiv and Simon both being father-in-laws betting and dealing with each other (and how seeing Simon in this role makes Ivan realize that maybe Simon wants a different relationship with him). I love that Tej and Ivan can connect over how overbearing their families are, and how both of them just involve them in their plans without asking their permission or what they want. I love that both Tej and Ivan alternately both take and don't take their marriage seriously.

Thematically, I also appreciate that we get to see Ivan's reasons for being deliberately "middling" laid out here. In previous books, there's an increasing assumption that he's smarter than he looks but that he just chooses not to apply himself. However, this book really gets into the crux of the issue; because he's always been hyper aware that he's in the line of imperial succession (although not without a few murders and a civil war that he was born into), he has always applied himself to be conspicuously middling at all times. He also talks about being in the shadow of Miles, whose whole family overdoes everything. And truly, he's also just lazy and would rather not be handed work he doesn't need.

I think there are a few minor things that mar this book for me, and both are largely functions of this book being near the tail end of a long series with many characters, being set on a planet where all those characters reside, and also being one of the last books published. One thing this causes is that there is a lot of info dumping here. It needs to explain Ivan's family tree. It needs to retell the story of Vordarian's pretendership. It needs to explain titles of counts and and their heirs. These are all important to the story, but I think none of these things are delivered gently and are also all things previous readers know very well. This also suffers from some Marvel Cinematic Universe effect, where every character in an increasingly large roster needs to have some screen time. I think on the unnecessary end, there's a luncheon with Miles and Ekaterin and their kids, and their parents. Duv and Delia have to show up to. I think all of these folks could have been off planet (to Ivan's relief) without making the books worse. At least the book sends Miles and Ekaterin off to Sergyar pretty quickly so they can't steal the spotlight.