Friday, July 12, 2013

Ethan of Athos

Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold

Summary (with spoilers):

This is a book of the Vorkosigan series, although where it falls in the series depends on whether you're reading them in chronological order (like me) or in publication order. This book doesn't include the star of the series, Miles Vorkosigan, although he's mentioned a few times.

The book begins on the planet of Athos, an all-male society which reproduces with the help of uterine replicators. Ethan is an obstetrician who is tasked with going off planet to obtain new cultures for the uterine replicators, as their original cultures are becoming non-viable. Although Athos ordered a shipment of new cultures, the shipment that arrived was full of unusable samples.

Ethan is worried about what he will find off-planet. (After all, there are women out there!) Before he leaves, his life partner crashes Ethan's hover car, causing damages that the partner has to pay off with his social credits, which the couple will need if they want to have children. (Ethan desperately wants to be a parent.)

Ethan arrives at Kline Station, where he abruptly gets lost. He asks for directions from a young man, too late realizing that "he" is actually a woman, Elli Quinn. Quinn is a member of the Dendarii mercenaries (who we're first introduced to in the book The Warrior's Apprentice), led by Commander Naismith (aka Miles Vorkosigan).

Ethan plans to find the best planet for ovarian samples and travel there. He leaves his hotel to search for some food, ends up in a shady bar (which he entered because it was the only woman-free place he could find), and gets into a fight. Quinn saves him from this predicament, but he's still too nervous around women to accept an invitation to dinner. While walking back to his hotel, Ethan is kidnapped and interrogated by Millisor and Rau. Seeing that his station map has traces of a bug, they believe Ethan is a spy, and keep questioning him about Terence Cee. The captors reveal a plan to destroy the reproduction centers on Athos and generally blow some stuff up. They send Ethan off with Okita, who has instructions to kill Ethan, but Quinn saves him once again (although she accidentally kills Okita in the process.) Ethan realizes that Quinn was the one who planted the bug on his station map. Also, she's got a contract out on Millisor and his conspirators from the Jackson's Hole house that Athos purchased the ovarian cultures from.

They dispose of Okita in a unit that breaks down organic matter to feed back into the food growing system. Here they meet Helda, a no-nonsense member of the bio-control unit responsible for making sure the space station is free of disease and other contamination.

Fearing for his life, Ethan occupies a new hotel room purchased by Quinn. However, when they get into an argument, he decides to leave. Ethan promptly runs into Rau, who shoots a neural disruptor at him. Ethan flees into a worker closet and dresses himself in a red Docks and Locks jumpsuit. After some more adventures (including a trip to the decontamination ward and a security officer who tries to flirt with him), he's approached by a man who turns out to be Terence Cee.

Cee reveals that he is a telepath, although his powers only work when he ingests a certain chemical. He was part of an experimental project on Cetaganda, along with Janine (his romantic partner and fellow telepath), who was killed after they escaped. He had an ovarian culture made from Janine and put in the Athos shipment, with the hope of immigrating to Athos.

Ethan and Cee meet up with Quinn. They decide to team up, since they all want to find the shipment and/or defeat Millisor and co. When Millisor kidnaps Quinn's cousin Teki (who they involved in a scheme earlier in the book), Quinn calls the bio-control unit, claiming that Millisor has given her an STD. Helda arrives at Millisor's room, along with another tech and a security guard. When Millisor won't open the door, she sucks all the air out of his room, forcing him to come out. Ethan realizes that Helda had to be the one to destroy the cultures, and she admits to the crime, stating that she's hated Athos ever since her son immigrated there.

Everyone gets carted off to decontamination/security, but Quinn disappears. Ethan talks to the captured Millisor, who tells him that Cee wanted to send the cultures to Athos because they contained the recessive gene for telepathy. Because of the unusual means of reproduction on Athos, the gene would have eventually invaded the entire planet.

Ethan gets a call from Cee, asking to meet at a docking area. On the way there, a man in a pink suit gives him a message device for Millisor. Once Ethan gets there, he realizes that Cee was forced to lure him into a trap. The escapee Millisor appears, pointing a neural disruptor at Quinn. Ethan mentions the message thing, which turns out to be a bomb. Quinn activates it. Then some dudes from the Jackson's Hole house show up and shoot Millisor/Rau. They also pop out Quinn's elbow for not completing her contract.

Ethan visits Quinn in the hospital. He asks her to donate an ovary to Athos, and she agrees. They all go to pick up some newts that Quinn stored in cold storage. She plans to use the shipment as a cover for the biological material Cee gave her (so that the Dendarii mercenaries can study telepathy). Ethan looks out into space and sees that the boxes housing the original ovarian cultures are floating there. (It turns out when you "throw things out" on a space station, they might just get chucked into space.) Cee and Ethan recover the cultures, without telling Quinn. Ethan tells Cee that they can bring the cultures back to Athos, therefore setting up a world of telepaths, because Ethan fears that Athos will not survive in the future without some edge.

Ethan and Cee arrive on Athos, where it's revealed that Ethan's life partner has run off. It's implied that Ethan and Cee may become a couple.

My Thoughts:
As always, McMaster Bujold delivers an exciting novel with a rip-roaring plot.

Pros:
*Fun and easy to read
*Funny in parts (especially Quinn's antics and Ethan's view of women)
*I like the idea of a world without women. (Usually the stories of single-gender planets and reproduction involve no men. This was a good twist on that idea.)
*Good depiction of life on a space station (including their obsession with contamination)

Cons:
*Strange to have a book without Miles as a character
*Some of the plot seems slapped together. Parts of it move so quickly that it's hard to keep up or really see if it makes sense.
*Having the Jackson's Hole people come in at the last minute seems too deus ex machina

Overall, this book was another great addition to the series. I feel it didn't move the series along much, except to introduce Quinn as a character. So far, Ethan hasn't come back in later books, so it's strange to know I've spent a whole book with a POV character that won't appear again.

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