Reviews for Ethan de Athos (Vorkosigan Saga)

The average rating for Ethan de Athos (Vorkosigan Saga) based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-04-11 00:00:00 Arik Williams Rating: 4* of five The Publisher Says: The familiar old SF "planet of women" chestnut is reversed in the planet of Athos ' an all-male planet made possible by the invention of the uterine replicator. Ethan, drawn out of his beloved Athos by a quest, finds himself an alien in more mainstream human society, and cannot help but find women disturbing aliens as well, especially the ultra-competent, ultra-beautiful Elli. Ethan of Athos is Lois McMaster Bujold's third novel. It departs from the concerns of the Vorkosigan family to explore the ramifications of advanced biotechnology, turning many a cliché on its head along the way. My Review: Athos is a terraformed planet settled about 200 years before this book takes place by a rigidly religious sect of men who refused to have any females on their planet, as they'd only cause trouble and lead men astray. To replace and grow the population, they do the job of birth the hard way, using uterine replicators to grow and birth their sons. Only sons, of course, and all bred from the ovarian cultures brought by the Founders to Athos. Which are, unsurprisingly, wearing out after 200 years. After some bad experiences with Galactic mail order brides/cultures, the Population Council decides to send an Ambassador out among Them, the scary galactics, to get new ovarian cultures. Ethan CJB-8 Urquhart, Ambassador-at-Large of Athos, is in a pickle. He's never been off his home world before, and here he is on Kline Station (a space station within a reasonable sub-light boost of several lucrative trading routes) trying to navigate a Universe where The Sink of Sin (that's girls to thee and me), in the person of Commander Elli Quinn, Kline Station native and Free Dendarii mercenary, appears to be trying to get him killed by Cetagandan crazies (Colonel Luyst Millisor and company) so the Cetagandans can retrieve something they want and Ethan has. But he doesn't know what it is. It's the process of finding out what it is that the Cetagandans want, the Dendarii need, and the Athosians have that powers this retelling of North by Northwest in space. Ethan must, for the first time in his thirty-plus years, cope with the presence of women in his personal world...an alien species to him...while learning about how the rough-and-tumble of the Galaxy's business is accomplished, deal with the end of his partnership with Janos back on Athos, find himself falling in love with the most alien possible alien man, and return to Athos with what sent him out into the Galaxy in the first place: More ovarian cultures for the Athosian Reproduction Centers. Then he can go home and return to his first love. Populating his beloved home world with new life and new possibilities. How he accomplishes these things is, well, it's fraught with danger, it's quite surprisingly open-minded of Ethan, and it's just not what this famous mil-SF series is famous for. I first read this in 1986. I was married, I had stepsons in the house, I was sure that my relationship with their mother was solid (oh boy was *I* ever wrong!), and yet the premise of a planet made up of men and only men had a lot of appeal. I was led from here to the rest of the Vorkosigan Saga, including: Barrayar, Cetaganda, Komarr, Sergyar, Beta Colony, Jackson's Whole, Lois Mcmaster Bujold, Ethan Of Athos, Miles Vorkosigan, Ivan Vorpatril, Falling Free, Aral Vorkosigan, Simon Illyan, Vorbarra, Barrayaran Imperial Auditor, and was equally pleased with the next few books I read, all listed here. I have never been more amused at a line than at "Ethan would cheerfully have decked any Athosian fundamentalist who insisted that {his new love}'s love for his 'wife' could have no honor in it." Bujold clearly wanted to say something stern about the prevailing attitude towards gay men and their relationships. Keep in mind it was 1986...mid-AIDS crisis...and there was a lot, a very great deal, an enormous amount of hatred and fear floating around. Even more so than there is today. It was even braver of Bujold to set this story in the SFnal community's playground, since there was an almost complete silence from that fandom on any subject remotely gay male in nature. So this book, over the past 25 years, has symbolized the generosity of straight allies of the gay male community. I admire Bujold as much today as I did then for telling this story. I loved the images of Athosian society, as brief as they were, and fell to contemplating what it would take to make such a culture work, what would be the pitfalls of it, and so on. Nowadays, with the manipulation of the human genome that's headed our unprepared society's way, I think the book is even more relevant and should have an even wider audience. But hey...it's in print and selling 25 years later! Not that many books can make that claim. And for me, that's a really nice thing. A book about a subject that makes a lot of people squirm has that kind of staying power. There just might be hope for humankind after all.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-07 00:00:00 Stacy Wilt A buddy read with Choko and Maria. A group of guys from Miles Vorkosigan universe decided it was a good idea to create a man-only planet. The technology at the moment was good enough for such project and thus Athos was born. The biggest and the most obvious problem was procreation. The locals had to get some fresh female eggs from time to time, but it was not a problem and the men lived in practically complete isolation without seeing a single woman all their lives and thinking it was the way it should be. However a huge interplanetary crisis was coming and the governing committee of the planet "volunteered" a guy named Ethan to go outside for help. The poor guy had bad luck all around: the very first person he met outside of his planet happened to be a dreaded woman. As soon as his shock passed Ethan ended up right in the middle of intergalactic conspiracy. Needless to say his life became very cheap as a result. I need to get the following off my chest right away: I think this is the weakest book of the series so far; let me count the reasons. I consider Miles, Cordelia, and Ivan to be the best characters of the series - in that order. Well, none of them are here. On a relative note I did not feel any of the characters presented had any depth. The main villain looked outright wimpy and non-threatening compared to some people Miles encountered. The complete inability of local security forces to keep him isolated became a bad joke by the end of the book. This in my opinion was his only strength. The novel tried hard to show Ethan's culture shock; this shock can carry the plot only so far. Once again by the end this became old. On the positive side I learned that a lot of apparently delicious dishes (some of them sounded like outright delicacy) can be cooked from newts. This made me glad I was not living in that world. The plot is fast-moving and one familiar face appear (actually disregard this: no familiar faces appear; read The Warrior's Apprentice to learn the reason for the paradox). Lois McMaster Bujold is a skillful writer to make even her minor efforts worth reading; 3 stars.