Regelence vs. Barrayar and Cetaganda

While updating LibraryThing last night**, I looked at the month's reading, and had an epiphany about why one particular book did not work for me.

Here are my private comments for JL Langley's My Fair Captain, a m/m space regency that got rave reviews from some readers:

Not bad, hot/sweet romance but generally forgetable. Space regency -- hard to measure up to the template, which is LMB for me, A Civil Campaign. Part of the lack of world building (or explanation, at least): foundation for male chastity on Regelence. In M/F cultures, could argue double standard for modern society, and reproductive issues/control for older, especially if patriarchal rather than matriarchal. Neither works here because M/M and because reproduction is entirely asexual. Also, does it apply to everyone or just to potential "consorts"? (As in, if you are higher on the social scale, is it less strictly enforced?) And why do consorts get nuptial preparation -- not everyone? Cony v. Da. So premarital sexual experience was okay for Da but not Cony? Or is that an assumption about roles that will be taken in terms of their sexual behavior? Top v. bottom as a function of social role?

The more I think about the book, which had slipped from my mind after reading until I skimmed my notes last night, the more I compare it to Bujold's Vorkosigan world...and the worse it fares in comparison, at least in terms of the underpinings of the fictional universe. Frankly, the more I think about it, the uglier it gets.

( More here. Not completely coherent. )