Cons: Prefers to look at Athosian society through a rose-tinted lens.
The Bottom Line: You'll have to forgive me. I wrote this with Joplin's "The Entertainer" running through my head. If Robert Redford was gay and Paul Newman a woman . .
panguitch's Full Review: Lois McMaster Bujold - Ethan of Athos: Library Edi...
The Set-up
Ethan's isolated home planet of Athos is dying and it's up to him to go out into the galaxy and bring back a cure. On an exotic spaceport he finds himself enmeshed in an interstellar web of politics, espionage, and murder. The only one who can keep him one step ahead of the bad guys is the gorgeous freelancing spy Elli Quinn. He's not sure he can trust her, but fate seems determined to throw them together.
The Hook
It sounds like a standard potboiling space opera. But there's a difference: Ethan is gay. His entire planet is gay. In fact, Athos is a female-free world. And the sexual tension between Ethan and Elli has less to do with attraction than it does with repulsion. Because not only is Ethos female-free, but even Ethan, a reproductive biologist, needs special permission to view medical journals that might contain something as disturbing as the image of a female.
The Problem
The obvious question is just how can a society exist for longer than one generation without any females. That's where Ethan comes in. He and his fellow scientists breed babies in test-tubes for the lucky fathers and their partners who have saved up enough social credits. But the ovarian cultures they use for this purpose are old and failing. Ethan is sent into the wider galaxy to procure new ones. And that's where he runs into Elli.
The Pickup
Elli is the first woman Ethan has ever seen. The reaction her good looks earn her from other men is merely puzzling to him. In any case, he's most certain he wants to keep a comfortable distance from her. So he turns down her offer of assistance and instead walks right into the arms of some very masculine Cetagandan agents. It seems the Cetagandan Empire has misplaced some of its own experimental genetic material, and these toughs are convinced Ethan knows something about it. Their interviewing methods are very intimate, but something less than pleasurable. Luckily for Ethan, Elli has been keeping tabs on him. With the Cetagandans the only alternative, Ethan finds himself doing the unthinkable: throwing his lot in with Elli. Together they have to find what the Cetagandans are looking for before the Cetagandans find them.
The Players
Ethan is an earnest protagonist. He's not a flashy character, but tempering his naivety is a nice intelligence, a healthy sense of humor, and a surprising adaptability. But more than anything, his personal motivations are sympathetic and his emotions understandable, even if you don't share his Athosian persuasions. Elli provides the glitter Ethan lacks, but more than her gadgetry, her confidence, or even her pretty face she is made attractive by her cleverness and easy sprezzatura. These two highly likable characters are much better defined than any others. The Cetagandans are flat villains, and the space station inhabitants feature minorly. Terrence Cee, a third character, held some promise with an intriguing backstory, but he fails to engage like Ethan and Elli do, and his motivations too often seem either mechanical or arbitrary.
The Score
What Lois McMaster Bujold has in Ethan of Athos is a spy thriller with a science fictional backdrop and the out-of-the-blue concept of an all-male planet. It's a bite-sized treat that left me contented. Together with Shards of Honor and The Warrior's Apprentice it rounds out an interesting trio of novels, the first that Bujold published. They share a universe but only the barest of connections in character and story. Shards is romance, Apprentice is military SF, and Ethan is SpyFi. Each has a different flavor, but each has a definite Bujold twist to it—these blithe genre classifications are stretched to fit her mold.
The Payoff
Ethan of Athos is a tasty treat and promises the potential Bujold has since developed. It's often disregarded as a sideline in her Vorkosigan saga, but it's well-worth it to see how Bujold takes a peripheral character who had her face blown off in The Warrior's Apprentice and turns her into the charismatic Elli Quinn. At the same time, the earnest Ethan holds his own charm, and Athos, with it's regulation homosexuality, is a delightful twist, although Bujold does not make of it what a more thematically-oriented author, such as Ursula K. Le Guin, might. Her focus is on the story at hand and her highly sympathetic characters. In some ways this is disappointing, as the idea is so interesting and so thorny. The fact that Athos is presented to us through the highly sympathetic lens of Ethan very much creates a normalizing effect for Athos's peculiar society. A fuller extrapolation of the concept would more likely be dystopian, with the censorship and gynophobia suggesting a uniquely oppressive society, albeit one whose members seem content. Despite these unanswered questions, Ethan of Athos is a quick, entertaining read, and I recommend it on that basis.
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