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Originally Posted by pdurrant
Bujold doesn't seem to me to be racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist or ageist. I suppose you could consider it a prejudice that she thinks people are people.
And I completely disagree with the assessment of the first two books (Shards of Honor and Barrayar). I found them excellent.
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She has very specific political views and projects them onto all her characters, including the ones supposedly from different cultures. Makes her galaxy feel like a thought experiment instead of a genuine place. That combined with the stereotypes she pastes together means the series simply isn't as deep or interesting as it could be if she let different people be different and left her political views out of it.
And then there's the skin color of the cast - mostly various shades of pasty. Coming from mostly European cultures. In a galaxy supposedly colonized by the entire earth, where non-pasty outnumbers pasty by a significant amount? Right.
The plot of Cryoburn is 'Space!Asia drowns under the weight of tradition and secret corruption. Rich white hero parachutes into expose the corruption, rescue the damsel in distress and save the day!' And it gets better (or worse) - the whole reason Miles shows up is potentially disruptive trade. I'm not sure if Bujold realized she was hearkening back to British imperialism in Asia, but she sure did.
Kind of like Terry Pratchett - he plays up Wiccanism kind of hard in a few of his books and it gets to be a bit much, especially when he runs down organized religion elsewhere. Mercedes Lackey also does something similar - the Heralds are massively creepy but that doesn't fit into the fluffy-light-we're-great image she gives them and it's very jarring. I think Larry Correia does something similar on the opposite side of the political spectrum, although I haven't read any of his books and don't intend too.
People do this on all sides of the political spectrum - setting up books as thought experiments and letting the preaching get in the way of consistency - and I find it makes the books worse regardless of which specific ideology is being preached. It's why I view Bujold as a decent adventure midlister but not a great author.
EDIT: Basically, I
don't get the impression that Bujold thinks people are people. The Vorkosigan series very much gave me the impression that she thinks people who think like her are people. And the others just sort of don't exist. Or are crazy. It's actually a series that pegs a lot of people as 'other' very strongly. Which is fine for wacky fantasy hijinks adventure tales that aren't meant seriously, but does mean that I only recommend the series with caveats. And certainly don't consider it to have 'big ideas' or really deal with outsider characters.