Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
Ethan of Athos may be part of the "Vorkosigan saga" in that it connects to other books in the same milieu but it is not a "Vorkosigan novel" in that Miles Vorkosigan does not actually appear in it—and nor does any other member of the Vorkosigan family. The biggest link to the other novels is that Elli Quinn, a member of the Dendarii Free Mercenaries from The Warrior's Apprentice, is a central character; otherwise, the novel draws on some of the same broad background as the other Vorkosigan novels, especially the influence of the planet Cetaganda, which we saw in the novel of the same name.
In some ways, I think Ethan of Athos is a victim of Bujold's success. In chronological order, this is the seventh Vorkosigan novel; in my hybrid order, it's the sixth. Either way, as a reader, you are probably hoping for more Vorkosigan. That's why you are reading these books, but you'll get none of it here. My friend who has pushed the Vorkosigan novels on me has never actually read this one!
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Originally published: 1986 Acquired: May 2024 Read: July 2024 |
Prior to 1989, you just have four novels set in the same general cosmic background. Like a lot of science fiction writers, Bujold prefers to not have to reinvent a universe everytime she writes a new book; see for example Ursula K. Le Guin, Iain M. Banks, and Becky Chambers. Ethan of Athos feels like an outlier now, but in 1986, she clearly wasn't thinking of this as a series of books about one person or family. Imagine if, in the mid-1970s, Le Guin had decided to write a bunch more Genly Ai novels following on from The Left Hand of Darkness, and then someone handed you 1974's The Dispossessed telling you it was part of the "Genly Ai saga." Even though it takes place in the same universe, and even fills in an important piece of backstory, you would probably feel alienated when it turned out to be about some guy named Shevek, not Genly Ai at all. Thinking of Ethan as a Vorkosigan novel does it a disservice—but unlike the Hainish novels, or the Culture novels, or the Galactic Commons novels, Bujold's science fiction milieu doesn't have a designation derived from the setting, just one derived from the characters... and they are totally absent here. (Miles is actually mentioned a lot, but by Elli, who doesn't know is real name, and thus not even called "Vorkosigan.")
Okay, so if we're not taking Ethan of Athos as a Vorkosigan novel, how should we take it? Well, there are two ways we can take it, I think. The first is as a novel about gender. The Athos of the title is something I don't remember seeing very much in science fiction before: an all-male society. (Just Manjula Padmanabhan's Escape. Wait, isn't there a Cordwainer Smith story with a premise like this? But certainly, it's much less common than the all-female society.) The people of Athos reproduce by combining their DNA with ova acquired from off-planet. Everyone is a man, homosexual relationships are completely normal, the people of Athos have a deep fear of women inculcated by generations of misogynistic stories about a kind of human being they've never actually met. What reproduction might be like in the future is something Bujold has been interested in throughout her novels in this setting; see also the uterine replicator that's central to Barrayar.
The book has some fun stuff that derives from this premise, and I appreciate that it doesn't do what might have seemed an obvious thing in the 1980s, end with Ethan realizing women aren't so bad after all and that he's actually a heterosexual; it ends with him affirming his homosexuality, actually. But while Barrayar leveraged the uterine replicator as part of a complex exploration of various aspects of motherhood, I don't think Ethan has much to say about masculinity. Imagine if (to bring up Le Guin again) Left Hand of Darkness had been about someone from Gethen going to another Hainish world, and that they just spent most of the book going, "Wow, two genders!" Like, you might have gotten some interesting worldbuilding, but it also would have been a novel with much less to say. I wish we'd gotten to see more of Athos, and I wish we'd gotten more of a sense of why this planet is like this. Sure, I get misogyny... but it's a weird breed of misogyny that would reach the conclusion of having a planet with no women. Misogyny is usually about putting women in a particular societal place, not about getting rid of them altogether!
What all the gender stuff ultimately is, is a background to an espionage thriller. When the new egg cultures sent to Athos are sabotaged, one of their physicians, Ethan, has to travel into the outside universe to acquire some new ones—one of the first Athosians to do that in generations. In classic Bujold fashion, he quickly finds himself ensnared in a complex plot he doesn't totally understand; the fact that he comes from a planet with literally no women mostly serves to heighten his confusion. Without doing the book too much of a disservice, I would say that ultimately it's fun and well done, but that's about it. Like most Vorkosigan books, you're swept up in it and you have a good time.
It would be possible to understate the importance of that; there are many sf novels out there where that never happens! There are good characters and good comedy and good twists. I was happy to see Elli again (and I gather she will pop up in future Vorkosigan books), and I liked getting to know Ethan (and am sorry to gather he never pops up again). But other than Cetaganda, this is the least enjoyable Vorkosigan novel I've read thus far. Admittedly, this is damning with faint praise, because other than Cetaganda, I've enjoyed them all!
Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Brothers in Arms
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