New book announcement: Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen.

[lannamichaels]

NEW BOOK NEW BOOK NEW BOOK. Ahem. Um.

Upcoming Cordelia book! What are everyone's Thoughts?

Comments

[trobadora]

My main thought is that I want it NOW, dammit.

[lannamichaels]

ME TOOOO. :D

[melannen]

My thoughts: Jole and Cordelia? But what if it's not better than the fanfic? OH NO what if it is better than the fanfic, will we survive?

[lannamichaels]

How are we gonna cope if his name's not Arkady

We should clearly do a Jole and Cordelia fest between now and then so we can compare, and also see if anyone guesses the plot. It will be For Science.

[melannen]

We should! And we should have a rule that Jole's name is not allowed to be Arkady in it. Maybe if I learned to love some other versions too, dira's will stop feeling so much like 100% unbreakable canon....

[staranise]

I feel there is genius in this idea.

[beatrice_otter]

There is! I don't want to go into the new book going "but wait, Arkady's in love with Aral!"

And of course, new fic is always wonderful.

[melannen]

Well, that's four votes! Now who's going to volunteer to mod? :D

[kiezh]

Dread, unfortunately. Cryoburn and CVA were such terrible disappointments that I felt like Lois is no longer able/willing to write great books. I suppose she could surprise me and write a book in which the main character actually has a stake in the situation and has to grow and change to deal with it. I would love to see a Cordelia book, but not if it's like the Ivan book... :(

On the bright side, Dira Sudis is super excited and talking about writing lots of Arkady Jole before the book hits. That I'm looking forward to with no reservations. :D

[lannamichaels]

I really hope Cordelia has an actual stake in the events, also. And if we go to Komarr, we get Komarran characters.

[beatrice_otter]

Well, with the Ivan book, Ivan has made a lifetime out of staying on the fringes if he possibly can, and purposefully keeping himself out of the way by preventing himself from having a stake in things. So of course that would have an effect on his book.

Cordelia is different. She has lots of stake in lots of things, though not always obviously.

[lannamichaels]

So what's Miles's excuse?

[beatrice_otter]

There is no excuse for Miles.

He's just a nosy busybody who can't keep his hands to himself. If there is anything interesting going on within a wormhole's jump of him, and he catches even a whiff of it, he's going to stick his nose in and try and fix things or at least arrange them to his satisfaction. That's always been him. That's the whole plot of Warrior's Apprentice, Cetaganda, and Cryoburn in a nutshell.

[beatrice_otter]

Huh. Cryoburn wasn't my favorite, but I loved CVA. And I'm curious as to why you think Ivan had no stake in the situation and didn't have to grow and change to deal with it. His stake was Tej, whom he was falling in love with and didn't want to lose, and he definitely grew and matured emotionally through that--I don't think at the beginning of the book he'd have been willing to actually let himself love her, so much. Fun, yes. Commitment, no--he'd grown so stuck in his commitment-phobic ways. He was stuck in a lot of ways at the beginning of the book. Not unpleasantly stuck, just ... sort of existing in a nice pleasant life with a nice pleasant job and nothing to either tie him down or challenge him or ever make anything different, and very alone in that. Stuck in a rut. And at the end, he's still got a pleasant job and a pleasant life, but someone who gets him and has the same lack of ambition. He's not alone anymore, and he's not stuck in a rut anymore.

True, he was adjacent to the main action rather than driving it, but this is Ivan. He's not Miles! He's made a lifetime out of staying out of the action! It would have been wildly out of character for him to be the center of events.

[princessofgeeks]

I am super excited!

[malnpudl]

I'm 90 percent OMG MORE CORDELIA *shiny shiny hearts* !!!

And about 10 percent heartfelt prayers that it won't be a romance. /o\

[archangelbeth]

*runs around in circles and can't wait*

[beatrice_otter]

I would note that Bujold said on the LMB mailing list that the book didn't really fit any genre tropes and she'd tried to shoehorn some in when she was writing and it didn't work. So the book will probably be quite ... unusual. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know.