So, I read The Curse of Chalion pretty close to once a year, and I read it again this year. In the late winter, actually; it seems I usually read it in the summer.
I was noticing something, this time through, that the thing that I noticed about Menolly in Dragonsinger, that everybody who is good likes her personally and immediately, and everyone who does not immediately like her turns out to be a Bad Guy, that thing, which I found in an awful lot of books once I was looking for it, not so much in Ms. Bujold’s.
OK, this is complicated. Because to a certain extent, the reader should expect that the Hero will make friends among the good guys and not so much among the bad guys. And if the Hero meets people who seem to like him but then turn out to be bad guys, that’s a major plot point, which is a different thing altogether. And then sometimes there’s the thing where the Hero and the Other Fellow have a bickering kind of relationship where they manage to work together and come to a mutual respect; that happens a lot, too. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the thing where you can instantly tell whether a minor character is Good or Bad based on that character’s instant reaction to meeting the Hero. And also, as a separate but related issue, the total unanimity of all the Good Guys on everything (with a trifle of tactics-related jawboning for good measure).
As far as Ms. Bujold’s stuff is concerned, the Vorkosigan books avoid the problem mostly by having Miles be incredibly annoying. He generally has some well-meaning superior officer who can’t stand him; that’s part of the whole trope of the books. Sometimes that superior officer turns out to actually be a Baddie, but not always, and not on the basis of that dislike. Sometimes the dislike is overcome in the resolution of the plot, and sometimes it isn’t. I think Duv Galeni is an excellent example here: while he does come to respect Miles, and their relationship eventually becomes social (or social enough for Miles to invite Duv to a smallish dinner party), it’s not clear that they become friends, exactly.
And in this book, while Caz is an instant hit with the Provincara, Iselle and Betriz, neither Teidez nor Ser dy Sanda get along well with him at all, and at least the latter is clearly a Good Guy. It’s clear that Orico doesn’t like Caz at all—while Orico is not really a Goodie, he’s not a Baddie, which in a different book he might be. Ista, as well, doesn’t seem to get on well with Caz, although that’s a trifle complicated by her madness, at least up until he is touched as well.
One of the things about my habit of rereading certain books a zillion times is that in between readings, I do change. Sometimes the changes are big, as when I read something as a father rather than a son, or having experienced the bodily betrayals of middle age. But sometimes the changes are just this sort of thing, a kind of connection made in my mind, now for the first time, between two books that are old friends.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.