“Falling Free” by Lois McMaster Bujold (BR)

[Anthony]

Please use chapter numbers and spoiler tags in discussing this book. Enjoy!

[David]

Whenever there's talk about a Bujold book, you can count on me to show up and be as obnoxious as possible!

Content warning (spoiler, Ch. 3 and later): This book contains (view spoiler)[sexual exploitation of teenagers (hide spoiler)].

I'm glad to see people here finally reading a "Vorkosigan" book, but a little ambivalent that it's the one book that doesn't actually feature any Vorkosigans at all. It's set centuries before the rest of the series. This book isn't how people are normally introduced to this universe, though I see no reason why that should be a problem.

[Soo]

Ch.1 (view spoiler)[Just met Tony. I like Leo and loved his reaction to Tony. (hide spoiler)]

Thoughts?

@ David - I agree that this is an odd book to get into the Vorkosigan world but the intro feels just like what I would expect from a book in the series.

[Soo]

Ch. 3 Tony, Claire & Dr Yei (view spoiler)[I saw this coming but kind of horrified now that it's here. The whole procedure of sex schedules, rotations, etc. Treating the Quads like they're not people. (hide spoiler)]

[David]

Gah, I hadn't actually planned on re-reading this, but now I'm on Chapter 9.

(view spoiler)[Graf is said to be inspired by the author's famous father... but I wonder if Robert Charles McMaster went around punching his bosses and hijacking ships?

I'm reading from the Miles, Mutants, and Microbes omnibus so I keep getting distracted and skipping ahead to Diplomatic Immunity. Falling Free just feels like the appetizer. (hide spoiler)]

[Soo]

I'll finish this up today. Talk about a lot happening in the book! Only up to Ch.7 now. I'll come back once I get to 9. =)

[Kaa]

I'm listening to this on audiobook. It's my first audiobook in a while and also only my second Vorkosigan book - I read Shards of Honor several years ago.

Ch. 1: (view spoiler)[Like Soo, I am liking Leo. I found his interaction with Tony and his thoughts during this chapter often pretty funny. [edit:Van Atta, obviously], on the other hand, made me kind of nauseous, especially listening to him talk about the project. (hide spoiler)]

[Soo]

David - (view spoiler)[Are ya trying to take the fun out of fiction with too much reality? lol

Based on her father is pretty cool.

Plus, you need to think of time tables. 50+ years ago (even today depending on where you grow up), throwing a punch is not that uncommon. You know it will get you in trouble but that doesn't necessarily stops a person from doing it.

I liked that scene. (hide spoiler)]

I'm done! I really liked the book. It was a bit less complicated in some ways than other books in this series but that's alright. It still held great characters, a solid story, really likable characters, fun topics to think about and a satisfying end.

Yay!

[Karin]

I liked this book--it was the first one I read, because I thought I'd start with the prequel before the series. However, it meant that Shards of Honor was quite a shock compared to this one. But, yes, there were things like mentioned in the spoiler which, while I didn't like them, really did seem like (view spoiler)[realistic exploitation, which is sad, but true. (hide spoiler)]

[Soo]

I loved how seamlessly the environment was written into the story without an info dump. One of the parts I like about the Expanse series is how the authors wrote about living in space/spaceship. Yet, here, Bujold does it without me having to note that she did it.

I really like it when a story makes me think. This one definitely had it's hooks into many different topics. I'll be curious to see what you guys get out of it. =)

[Anthony]

I’m in the midst of chapter 3. I assiduously avoid any spoilers or blurbs so I can go into books as blindly as possible. There’s a very disturbing core issue in this plot that is surprisingly rich, and I am looking forward to seeing how it continues to be explored.

[Soo]

What was your response to Tony?

[Jemppu]

Anthony wrote: "....I assiduously avoid any spoilers or blurbs..."
Always a wise move. I made the mistake of peeking at the blurb on this and have spent the first half of the book expecting for the story to 'catch up' with the blurb.

Now at chapter 13 and just about clear of it, it feels.

[Anthony]

Soo wrote: "What was your response to Tony?"

In what sense?

[Soo]

I tend to be as immersive as possible when I read a story. If possible, I try to visualize and insert other sense qualities where I can. Like sound, smell, touch, taste, etc.

Tony is brought into the story right at the start. What did you think or feel when you read that part?

I (view spoiler)[thought Tony was a regular person and then had to reshuffle my mental image to someone with 4 arm parts. That lead to thinking about how handy (haha) that would be in space. Then bunch of how this will impact the story ideas/tangents. I definitely spent a few minutes trying to visualize people with four arms and how movement would look. It was fun and weird. (hide spoiler)]

[Anthony]

I thought it was very interesting for sure. And yes it does make sense relative to the efficacy of such a design in zero-g environments.

[Wen]

I am in chapter four and wow, it’s a very interesting story. Thank you for suggesting it:)

[Anthony]

Just finished chapter 9. This is only my second Bujold book (The Curse of Chalion” was the first) and I find it interesting and a little concerning that in both novels (view spoiler)[a much older man develops strong romantic feelings for a much younger woman to whom he is a mentor. (hide spoiler)] Does this cause anyone else a bit of concern?

[Jemppu]

Anthony wrote: "Just finished chapter 9. This is only my second Bujold book (The Curse of Chalion” was the first) and I find it interesting and a little concerning that in both novels [spoilers removed] Does this ..."

(view spoiler)[Concern in which regard? Of author's possible own experiences? Or of possibly advocating such behaviour?

In Chalion I put it on account of the 'era'. But it might be the author just enjoys exploring the controversy of such a set up. (hide spoiler)]

[Wen]

I am so eager to click on all the spoilers but I cannot. I am still at chapter 6. *Patience Patience*(sigh)

[David]

Anthony wrote: "Just finished chapter 9. This is only my second Bujold book (The Curse of Chalion” was the first) and I find it interesting and a little concerning that in both novels [spoilers removed] Does this ..."

(view spoiler)[Allison brought this up talking about Chalion. It's hard to comment without spoiling other random books, but these are not the only two examples, or the worst examples (in fact I'd forgotten about this book in that discussion because it's only a couple passages in this book). I'm pretty sure the author has a different worldview on this.

To a certain extent it might be a zeitgeist thing: this book was written in 1987, and the author is 68 years old, and the public dialog was a bit different in 1987... but Chalion came out in 2001, and her most egregious example came out in 2006, so that doesn't really explain it.

I've read 30 of her books (holy crap). On the whole, Bujold's attitude today seems to be "people can and will be attracted to whomever, and consenting adults can do whatever they want." Her handling of the subject is more nuanced in her later books and I suspect she wouldn't write this quite the same way today, but it's also pretty clear that she isn't that creeped out by very large age differences. (hide spoiler)]

[Anthony]

@Jemppu it just starts to feel a bit icky to me when she writes about this more than once and it goes mostly unacknowledged that there’s a disparity not just of age but of status...

[Karin]

Anthony wrote: "@Jemppu it just starts to feel a bit icky to me when she writes about this more than once and it goes mostly unacknowledged that there’s a disparity not just of age but of status..."

Yes, but I think the entire book (view spoiler)[shows that this is a system of abuse and of making people less than human. It is very common in this situation to see sexual exploitation--ugly as that is. I hated that part of the book. (hide spoiler)]

[Anthony]

@karin I wasn’t speaking about the (view spoiler)[sexual exploitation, which I believe Bujold did a good job of making horrific. I was speaking about Graf’s attraction to/romantic feelings for Silver, which echoed a similar dynamic in The Curse of Chalion. The presence of that sort of dynamic in two of her books without any sense of appreciation of the difference in power dynamics between the participants gives me a little pause. (hide spoiler)]

[Karin]

Anthony wrote: "@karin I wasn’t speaking about the [spoilers removed]"

Okay, that makes sense! BUT (view spoiler)[this isn't completely unrealistic either--life is messy and complicated as are emotions, etc. Since I have only read 3 of her books, I hadn't realized that dynamic was in more than one of her novels. (hide spoiler)]

[Anthony]

@Karin (view spoiler)[I agree that life is messy and complicated. It just raises a little bit of a flag for me that it recurs in her work and it’s not depicted as being as complicated as it could be. When it’s the older, wiser male mentor falling in love with a naive young woman in his charge, and she reciprocates the feelings with no qualms, nor any acknowledgement that there is a status difference, it feels like a trope to me to some degree, and I’m not sure how much Bujold has examined this tendency of hers to include such dynamics. (hide spoiler)]

[Karin]

Anthony wrote: "@Karin [spoilers removed]"

@ Anthony Yes, I agree with you, although (view spoiler)[in the three books I read by her, she doesn't strike me as a writer who would go into that much depth. Also, given that she was writing space opera back when she did I wouldn't expect it. It's one of the big weaknesses in a lot of scifi, I think, although there may well be books (and I've read at least a few) that break that, particularly more contemporary ones. (hide spoiler)]

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I felt my name being mentioned! (view spoiler)[Yeah, I think Bujold herself just has a different outlook on this. I don't truck with it in modern books. TBH I react pretty viscerally to earlier works--we know they knew this was not okay (see: the social interdiction all the way back in the feudal eras on marrying your ward/squire) so it's not like authors as part of society didn't have reason to think about this. And around the same time as Bujold began publishing, similar authors were telling similar stories but while making it clear that the two characters come together as equals for whatever reason (or, at least attempting!) So I don't buy the "it's the genre" or "it was the era" arguments. It's the author. And it's fine if you have trust in the author enough to get past that, or if it's not a trigger for you. I'm not here to say get on my purity bandwagon or you're evil. But I do think it's worth exploring why the author felt compelled to include this element, and what it means when we read it. (hide spoiler)]

[Jemppu]

Anthony wrote: "@Jemppu it just starts to feel a bit icky to me when she writes about this more than once and it goes mostly unacknowledged that there’s a disparity not just of age but of status..."

(view spoiler)[The difference in status is certainly something I'd be more worried about, than age by itself - if either of the parties would hold certain authority over the other.

I must admit, I had to go back a bit and look for some cues that would've registered as romantic interest on Leo's part. Where were those? Might I have just complete skipped past them?

Because, how I've read Leo's attitude towards Silver or Claire or any of the quaddies so far is more "guardian-esque", protective. Adoptive caretaker. (hide spoiler)]

[Karin]

Allison wrote: "I felt my name being mentioned! [spoilers removed]"

Okay, but I was thinking of a lot of older authors in my generalization and if there are classic scifi novels that deal with this, I'd love to know the titles--from the 1970s and earlier ideally. I could have forgotten or missed them.

[David]

Allison wrote: "I felt my name being mentioned! [spoilers removed]"

I didn't realize you could be summoned on command :)

(view spoiler)[For what it's worth, in at least one of her other books she does call it out as wrong, though that character is younger and more vulnerable and in a more complicated SFnal situation. That seems to be the exception rather than the rule, though. Off the top of my head I can think of at least two other relationships in this series that we haven't met where the man is almost twice the age of the young woman, one of which is presented totally uncritically.

Falling Free might actually be the most extreme example, since the age/experience gap between Leo and Silver is huge, and Leo is a pretty black-and-white good-guy father figure.

Strangely, she never actually develops any of those imbalanced relationships. The relationships that are actually seriously developed in this series are all closer in age and experience (Aral+Cordelia, Miles+Ekaterin, Ivan+Tej, [spoilers]...). Leo+Silver is pretty much a footnote. That might be part of why us Bujold fans seem not to have been too bothered: she never actually spends very much time on them. (hide spoiler)]

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Karin wrote: "Allison wrote: "I felt my name being mentioned! [spoilers removed]"

Okay, but I was thinking of a lot of older authors in my generalization and if there are classic scifi novels that deal with thi..."

Ursula Le Guin tackles it in Dispossessed, though not head on. Ditto Zelazny in Lord of Light. Catch-22 makes a whole section of the book about power in relationships. Flatland comes to a disgusting conclusion after the concept of power differentials, but it was written in 1884 and still has that notion in there. Dune, of course. Stranger in a Strange Land contemplates the power differential between the women and the main character (before he becomes powerful). And that's Heinlein!

[David]

Jemppu wrote: "Anthony wrote: "@Jemppu it just starts to feel a bit icky to me when she writes about this more than once and it goes mostly unacknowledged that there’s a disparity not just of age but of status......"

(view spoiler)[For what it's worth, I've read this book like four times now, and I completely glossed over it the first three times. Having had this conversation here is probably the only reason I noticed it now. It's only a couple sentences. I don't think you've reached one of them yet. (hide spoiler)]

[Soo]

(view spoiler)[I felt that both story lines were well within the story setting and they did not trigger the response in me that you two had.

It's weird to read "exploring why the author felt compelled to include this element" because we can't actually discuss how the author felt/thought about the part we are discussing.

We are not the author. We can make hypothetical assumptions. We can chat forever about maybe and what if. But that's not an answer to "why did the author use this topic in their book."

We can talk about how that aspect made us think & feel. We can talk about whether or not that is something we would want to read about. We can sally forth on what it means when we read it. That's great.

I definitely personify the author in my book reviews. I hope that everyone realizes that it is me talking from my viewpoint and guessing at the author's. I don't actually know if my guesses are correct or not. I just talk about how I thought & felt in response to the story.

When controversial topics come up in Bujold's work, I feel like they are done in a manner to be a part of the story and, hopefully, to encourage the reader to have sparks of ideas/thoughts/feelings that will lead to more of the same in different ways.

Within Falling Free, I felt that the age difference and power dynamics is actually addressed & handled in a satisfying manner.

In the Curse of Chalion, I thought the attraction Caz & Iselle felt had more to do with the desire for love & intimacy. It did not come across as either of them being totally in love with the other person and willing to do epic trials to be together. That wasn't it.

Caz was a man who lost everything & slowly regaining his sense of self & life. It's not strange that he would feel attracted to Iselle because she is a good person with a keen mind & kind heart.

Iselle is a young noblewoman who has been surrounded by court intrigue. Here comes this battered man who values intelligence regardless of gender. He also happens to be loyal, resilient & honorable. She's a young woman. Of course she ends up having a crush on Caz. I totally believe they had a crush on each other but it wasn't about age differences & power dynamics. Those situations were well established in other parts of the story.

I've read a good chunk of Bujold's work and I believe she's a gifted author that creates stories for readers to enjoy. It's a bonus if they also make readers think.

Here we are thinking and feeling because of her book. That's pretty great in my opinion. (hide spoiler)]

[David]

We could just ask her. She's very active on Goodreads and often responds to reader questions. You might not like the answer though :)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Soo, agreed! We can't know! (view spoiler)[ Well, unless they say somewhere :) But we can still think about it. I do this all the time with authors. Why did they make this choice? What does it add? Could it have been done another way that would have been more socially conscious? For me, it's not about disagreeing wholesale with the author or anything, it's about doing a pulse check on my own emotional space and why we accept, as social creatures, the things we do. (hide spoiler)]

But it's also totally possible that my joy largely comes from taking things apart and figuring out how they go. I'm that person who eats food wondering about what spices in which quantities were added and when, and wonders about the use of one technique over another. ;-)

[Soo]

@Jemppu (view spoiler)[It's in the story but towards the end. It was not emphasized a whole bunch or a focus but definitely one of the little story plot lines. (hide spoiler)]

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

David wrote: "We could just ask her. She's very active on Goodreads and often responds to reader questions. You might not like the answer though :)"

1...2...3 NOT IT!

ETA: You're right it's very possible it's so far removed from the A plot to her that it's just a neat package rather than a social message. I haven't read this one so I trust your vastly superior knowledge. And again, don't mean to suggest she's not talented and likely a wonderful person worthy of admiration. I just can't stop playing with why certain decisions get made and what sort of alternate reality we create for ourselves when we accept those decisions without question.

[Jemppu]

David wrote: "...It's only a couple sentences. I don't think you've reached one of them yet..."

I'm in chapter 13 - please spoil me.

[David]

Jemppu wrote: "David wrote: "...It's only a couple sentences. I don't think you've reached one of them yet..."

I'm in chapter 13 - please spoil me."

(view spoiler)[It's the second-to-the-last paragraph in the book. (hide spoiler)]

[Soo]

Ditto, Allison. I also take things apart. I love how people can have the same qualities and yet go about it in very different manners. =D

LoL - I think the person who actually wants to ask the question should ask her. Bujold is active on GR & her answers are always to the point.

Food - If I like it, I can usually recreate it. If my first try is off, I'll go look for a recipe but at this point, I can cook just about anything. Baking can be iffy but cooking is usually not that hard.

Falling Free (Anyone who read half the book.) (view spoiler)[I thought we would be talking about the idea of genetic tampering. The way the Quadies turned out due to bio & social engineering. There are some really cool aspects about that in made me think of lots of things.

Like, it would be weird to think about the Quadies as just children because they are not treated as children beyond a certain age point. Isn't it interesting how everything is related by what/how we (as the reader) thinks? How it is totally normal to take something that is not normal and try to understand it by defining it with ideas and terms we do know?

Anyways, that's just a drop of the stuff that goes in my head. (hide spoiler)]

[David]

Allison wrote: "David wrote: "We could just ask her. She's very active on Goodreads and often responds to reader questions. You might not like the answer though :)"

1...2...3 NOT IT!

ETA: You're right it's very ..."

Oh, I don't disagree with you at all. It's certainly not my model of a relationship. I think I'm just a little more detached from the issue, and since I'm not a writer, I don't think about why writers do things nearly as much as you might :)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

So, I did go looking for her thoughts on age gaps, and it's not very encouraging to me.

(view spoiler)[ Question:

Another theme I notice in your books is age differences between lovers or in relationships. Sharing knife featured a young woman, Dawn, and Dag, the old Patroller. In the Vorkosigan series, you have some major age differences between Gentleman Jolie and Ceclia. Have you personally experienced such wide differences in age in your own relationships, or those of your friends or family?

Answer:"For some reason, you seem to be noticing the few wider-age-differences couples preferentially. Miles and Ekaterin, Simon and Alys, Ingrey and Ijada, Ista and Illvin, Kou and Drou, Fiametta and Thur, Tony and Claire, Whit and Berry, Iselle and Bergon, and on and on, are all very close in age. Anyone's guess on Aral and Cordelia, given the different expected lifespans. And a sprinkling of others in that decade-ish range -- Gregor and Laisa, Ivan and Tej, Alys and Padma for that matter.

It's a figure-ground effect. I suppose. The figure always seems to stand out from the ground, even or especially when the ground is larger. (She then corrects him on the names.) (hide spoiler)]

She says the same thing here: https://leaflemming.wordpress.com/201...

Not 100% on the topic, but closely related. I will leave y'all to interpret as you will.

ETA the link is exactly on topic though. Hmm.

[Jemppu]

Soo wrote: "@Jemppu [spoilers removed]"

(view spoiler)[I feel I will be disappointed then - there has been situations where there's been some questionable tension that could've been registered as having faint undertones beyond 'guardianship', if one chose to see them as such, but which could just as well have been read as fatherly care. I certainly didn't wish to think Leo would be picking up on those that way. Just that they were for the reader to register, mostly from the fact that Silver gets treated the most 'grown up' of all the kids. (hide spoiler)]

@David. well, then, I'll wade :D

@Anthony, I'd still be interested what were the instances you picked this up from?

[David]

Allison wrote: "So, I did go looking for her thoughts on age gaps, and it's not very encouraging to me.

Question:

Another theme I notice in your books is age differences between lovers or in relationships. Shar..."

While those answers don't really answer your question (or the questioners' questions either), they do sort of imply that she just doesn't consider it a big deal. Or maybe that she's sick of being asked this question :)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

David wrote: "Allison wrote: "So, I did go looking for her thoughts on age gaps, and it's not very encouraging to me.

Question:

Another theme I notice in your books is age differences between lovers or in rel..."

Yeah...I have thoughts on that but I think I've stirred the pot plenty on this! I shall leave this now to those of you actually buddy reading and maybe to answer Soo's questions which sound very interesting!

[Jemppu]

Well, just got Silver's side of the equation, (view spoiler)[which makes what ever Leo thinks of her seem rather irrelevant: she'd welcomed him, so that removes all the "unwanted advances from a mentor" from the picture. Because, I don't think the age restrictions regulated on our modern day should be expected to necessarily apply in this imagined universe. (hide spoiler)]

[David]

Soo wrote: "Isn't it interesting how everything is related by what/how we (as the reader) thinks? How it is totally normal to take something that is not normal and try to understand it by defining it with ideas and terms we do know?"

I actually have no idea how old the main cast of Quaddies are. Does it ever say? I had just sort of assumed they were late teens based on how the downsiders treat them. They're doing all sorts of adult work and learning trades, so they couldn't be much younger but could be older. (Really I wouldn't trust a 22-year-old to weld stuff on a space habitat...) Their occasional naivete due to what they clearly haven't been taught makes them seem younger.

Sidelines: Talks and Essays has an essay called "The Unsung Collaborator" where she writes about the reader as a participant in the creation of the story: the story that the reader experiences is not the same story the writer imagines or writes; it's some hybrid of the writer's words and the reader's thoughts and experiences, that grows a life of its own constructed in the reader's mind.

I first had this blinding insight while watching a Star Trek rerun a while back. Now, you must understand, I was an ST fan back before Trekkies were ever invented, when it was all brand new and nothing like it had ever been on TV before. I was in hich school, the perfect age for a strong emotional response to escape literature. (I used to read a lot of history about WWII prison camps about that time, too, as I recall.) So anyway, I and about six of my girlfriends would gather every Thursday evening for what my parents called "the prayer meeting," and we would enjoy the show vociferously. My parents were baffled, and it was only lately, watching the show in very cold blood, that I realized why. They thought that what they were seeing on the screen, the plot and effects and dialogue, was all there was. They had no conception of how much work our willing brains were doing on the initial stimulus after our senses took it all in. We took in the show and fixed it, and it was to this fixed-up version that we gave our passionate response.

Another comments on how some readers, when confronted with something that doesn't conform to their understanding, will mentally edit the story so that it does, even resulting in a mental edit that contradicts the original text.

[Jemppu]

David wrote: "...Does it ever say? I had just sort of assumed they were late teens based on how the downsiders treat them ..."

In chapter 13 and 16 (view spoiler)[one of the young ones just got guesstimated to be max 14 by Leo. While chapter 16 tells: "half of them are children under 12".

I've been imagining Silver around 17 to 19. (hide spoiler)]

[Jemppu]

Okay, finished.

(view spoiler)[I think that was totally sweet. Completely consensual.

In fact, what mention of "predatory glitter" of eyes there is, refers to her. I have no worries over this dynamic, and even if I had it'd be for him (hide spoiler)].