Komarr again
I found Komarr remaindered at Buck-a-Book - they seem to get a lot of Tor and Baen hardcovers. All my unsuccessful experiments with Catherine Asaro have been $2 deals at Buck-a-Book. Komarr wasn’t a buck, but it was cheaper than A Civil Campaign, which was also there and going for $6.99. I couldn’t really front $7 for a book I’ve read twice already - my company could go out of business any month now - but I couldn’t pass up my favorite LMB book, even in space-wasting hardcover format.
I was immediately faced with the problem of stopping myself from rereading Komarr over the weekend. There aren’t many books I’ve reread; A Civil Campaign got its second go-around because I hoped to get more out of it with a stronger background in Miles Vorkosigan. The Martian Chronicles was more of a study of the short story format than a return to a beloved tome.
If I do get into a rereading relationship with a book, it quickly spirals out of control. There was a point in my life when I had to stop reading LotR because I knew what the next sentence would be. For a number of years now, I’ve read Pride and Prejudice whenever I’ve been hard up for a book, and once purely out of technical interest in the third person omniscient POV. I was a long-time rereader of the Martian tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, until I started writing myself and couldn’t take the pulps anymore. Along with the occasional revisit of Watership Down and Jane Eyre, that about covers my adult rereading.
Sometimes I wonder whether children’s books are better than adult books. My memory is fuzzy, but it seems to me that rereading was the rule rather than the exception when I was a child. Charlotte’s Web was no one-time deal, and my Little House books show a great deal of wear, and not just from Veronica dropping them in the bathtub. I had a very strange experience with The Last Battle (the final Chronicle of Narnia), probably the only time I’ve reread a book end-on, though I almost did with Komarr the first time.
Which brings me back to the topic - I resolved my Komarr problem by giving in ten minutes later and starting it on the T. It’s still a good book, though it surprised me this time how very much it was about Ekaterin - more characterization than I remembered and proportionally less busy-ness. Even Miles wasn’t as frantic as usual. I’m not complaining, but there is a part of me that still hasn’t adjusted to characterization in scifi.
On the technical side, I noticed the POV shifting back and forth between Ekaterin and Miles every chapter or so, and not a few spots where the mental commentary was very heavily interspersed with the dialogue. Somehow this didn’t throw off the pacing. I wonder whether it’s trying to break myself of the same habit that made me notice in the first place, whether I picked it up from her, and, therefore, whether I should stop trying to break a habit that hasn’t done LMB any harm. Probably not, eh?
I’ve mentioned Komarr a few other times: in comparison to Memory and regarding decking the shark. Since my favorite line was in the latter, here’s my second-favorite: “The next number up,” he breathed, “is ‘one.’”
Komarr is an allegedly dark book, at least when looking back from A Civil Campaign, but I like it that way. Miles outdoes even himself in misdirected love, Ekaterin is too burned to be afraid, and both of them are well acquainted with the evil still residing in Pandora’s box. It’s not angst, though; it’s plot - an impossible situation, but one that comes from the outside. SF is not a genre for inner flailing.
Is it, though, a genre for rereading? I’ll have to see how long Komarr manages to sit on the shelf.
A quote from Larry Wall:
How long till Bujold becomes required reading in high school? Far too long, in my opinion. Horrors. We wouldn’t want our students actually enjoying what they read. It’s not–it’s not Real Life.
As if the Lord of the Flies is real life. Feh.