Reviews for A Civil Campaign (Vorkosigan Saga)

The average rating for A Civil Campaign (Vorkosigan Saga) based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-04-29 00:00:00 Hirohide Miki A buddy read with Choko and Maria. Dear book it is not you, it is me. You are great and I sincerely wish you more new satisfied readers in the future. I just had different expectations, sorry. I expected you to be dashing, daring, take the risk and hell with the consequences type. Instead I got a romance. A well-written, entertaining, mostly funny, but still romance. A series which started as an excellent space opera became (you guessed it) a romance with the only relation to space being word "planet" used twice in the book. The last book ended with Miles falling head over heels in love - with a woman completely mismatched for him I might add. Because she was still damaged from her previous bad marriage a new one was the last thing on her mind. Miles who used to command a mercenary fleet and overcome greatest odds against him devised a similar approach to his courtship. His brother Mark finally decided to make an appearance being promptly absent in the last several books. He fell head over hills in love and had a problem somewhat similar to Miles'. He also decided to make some money on side by engaging in some very... interesting(?) business. I am not spoiling this one. Miles cousin Ivan... not, he had not fallen head over hills in love. He took much more pragmatic approach to wooing women and in this case he decided to go for somebody much older than him. To make a long story short he got such a nasty shock that I really felt pity for him. As you can figure out from the last paragraphs everybody fell in love with everybody - I do mean practically all named characters with exceptions of the ones being already happily married. This is just one reason why this book firmly qualifies as romance. Let the mention other present tropes of the genre. 1. Adults old enough to have grandchildren act like 14-year-old teenagers with hormone overload. 2. People in love with each other themselves create countless obstacles not to be together. 3. People behaving out of character - this can actually follow from #1 and #2. 4. A huge crowd on men falling all over each other to propose marriage to a beautiful, but poor woman. Just to illustrate some points: imagine the following. Your sister is in love with a son of the second most powerful man of the Empire. The said son also happened to be none other than a foster brother of the Emperor himself and is the first in line for the throne in case the Emperor dies without any children. You hear some nasty rumor about your sister's suitor. What would you do? For the answer look at out own history: you remove anything and anybody who happens to be in your sister's way and yes, an assassination is a fair game here. Do I need to say this is exactly what NOT happened here? My buddy readers always say they would like to be Cordelia when they grow up. I could not - being of the wrong sex, but I agreed. I was completely disappointed in her here. She turns out to be a bad mother for Miles. What happened to a woman who practically suppressed a rebellion by her lonely self to save her son? Her own son and Mark had almost the same problem. Her actions? She went out of her way to use her authority on Mark's sweetheart parents to bully them into accepting their future son-in-law. Miles got scolding for his actions and was left to deal with his problem himself with not even "you have my support son". Miles could had gotten this much help and possibly even more from a perfect stranger on the street. Let me use this occasion and say the following to my own mother, "Mom, you are the greatest. No matter how bad things are I always know you will always support me". Ekaterin is exactly not the woman for Miles. Please do not get me wrong she is realistic and I can feel all her pain she endured, but Miles needs something less timid. He does not need to be domesticated; he needs somebody who can shoot and hit the target: his life is often in danger. I can practically see the direction it goes: overweight Miles laying on a sofa switching TV channels with a remote (or whatever they use in place of TV in the future) and Ekatherin nagging at him for not taking out the trash. Sounds exciting, is not it? Once again I need to emphasize the only real failing the book had is my expectations. It was an easy read, never boring and often funny. So it is all my fault. Really. 3 stars is still a good rating, honest.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-02-27 00:00:00 Patrick Roan Alternate titles for this book: -Let's Get All the Koudelka Girls Married -Everyone is Very Excited about Bug Vomit -Ivan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day -Seriously How Has a Patriarchal Society with Men Like THIS in Charge Survived So Long? -Oh Right it's Because the Women Actually Control Everything -Miles You Dweeb I think I'm going to reread this book whenever I get sad and my life will improve 5000%