Reading through the winter storm

I was just out walking around the melting snow from our winter storm here in southeast Texas. It's been years since I've seen so much snow - even when visiting family up north. Family and friends who live in snow country have a hard time understanding how everything shuts down here with snow or ice storms. We don't have the infrastructure to deal with it, especially with the roads.

So with the Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday on Monday, I've been off work for five days. I spent some of that time getting my house as ready as I could (my pipes are pretty much mummified), and some of the time worrying. The last time we had a bad winter storm, in 2021, I lost power for four freezing days and nights. Thankfully, this time we had no issues with power in my area of the city.

I am still reading primarily fantasy and science fiction, though I have some interesting non-fiction books that will be due soon at the library. I did try one history of the Titanic disaster, a recommendation from Crimes and Survivors, but it was an indictment of Bruce Ismay, and I found that less than compelling.

Among the books I did finish:

Navigational Entanglements, Aliette de Bodard (library book). One of Tor's short books, a story of four young space navigators sent to represent their clans in the struggle to contain a deadly force threatening their systems (a Tangler). There are clashes between the clans - and so the women - tangled up in politics and trade. This is the first of Aliette de Bodard's books that I have read in print, and I enjoyed it very much. It led me to look for others of her work in print, because I've found ebooks of her stories hard to follow for some reason.

Falling Free, Lois McMaster Bujold (TBR, 2024). I recently re-read Diplomatic Immunity, where Miles and Ekaterin Vorkosigan are diverted from their delayed honeymoon to resolve a situation in Quaddie Space. I didn't like the book the first time I read it - I can't remember why now - and somehow I'm surprised by how good it is. "Quaddie space" is the homeworld for a gene-engineered people with four arms (and no legs) who live in free-fall environments. I was inspired this time to finally read their origin story, one of LM Bujold's earlier works. It's set 200 years before the Vorkosigan saga begins. It was interesting to read, if a little less polished than her later works.

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (re-read). This is one of my comfort reads, so I picked it up as an antidote to storm anxiety. I will also be re-reading the two novellas that follow one of the characters in his work as a Witness for the Dead, before a third one comes out later this year. There is also another short novella set in this world coming out later this month, and both will be on my "52 books for 2025" list.

Point of Sighs, Melissa Scott (re-read). I love this fantasy series set in the city of Astrient, where one of the main characters, Nico Rathe, works as a pointsman (a city police officer). His lover Philip Eslingen, a former soldier, has held various jobs in the city and is now part of the new City Guard, resented by the points. There is a sixth book in this series coming out in March, which I need to pre-order. Melissa Scott has become one of my favorite fantasy authors, and I am still working my way through her back catalogue.

Grave Importance, Vivian Shaw (library book). This is the third book in her "Dr. Greta Helsing" series, where the main character is a doctor for creatures that most of the world doesn't believe are real. I actually started the series with this book, but I felt like I was missing too much backstory, so I went to read the others first. This one is set mainly at a clinic and spa for mummies, "Oasis Natrum," in the hills above Marseille. I loved all the Egyptology and mummy-ology in the story. But that's really a sideline to the main story, about an invasion from another dimension. There's a fourth and final book in the series coming later this year, which I'm also looking foward to.

I will probably have to go back to work tomorrow, which will cut into my reading time again. But at least the libraries should be open again too.

Two novellas, continuing favorite series

I had the great pleasure of reading two novellas this week, both fantasy stories, and both continuations of series I really enjoy. 

The first is The Brides of High Hill, by Nghi Vo, from my 2024 TBR stack. This is the fifth book in the "Singing Hills Cycle," about clerics who travel around telling and collecting stories. The new stories they hear are brought back to archive at the Singing Hills abbey. Clerics are aided in their work by neixin, spirits that take the form of a hoopoe and help the clerics remember. The main character in these stories, which can be read in any order, is Cleric Chih, who travels with their companion Almost Brilliant.

In The Brides of High Hill, Chih is traveling with the Pham family but without Almost Brilliant, to bring their daughter Nhung to her wedding. Her future husband, Lord Guo, is the master of a fortress-like estate, Doi Cao. When they arrive, Chih finds that Lord Guo is at least thirty years older than his bride, and his estate is crumbling around him. The servants are nervous, his son is unstable, and no one wants to talk about any previous wives. Nhung asks Chih to help her explore the many buildings scattered around the grounds, to try to figure out what's going on. I honestly thought I knew what was going on, but then there was a major twist to the story that came as a complete surprise. It is really cleverly done, with both the set-up and the denouement. This is a great addition to the series.

The second book is Penric and the Bandit, by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is part of her "Five Gods Universe," which started with three novels set in a medieval-Renaissance world with echoes of our own, and a remarkable theology. The first of these, The Curse of Chalion, is one of my desert-island books. I had hoped for more books in that series, but instead Lois Bujold began writing novellas about a young man named Penric, who inherits a demon from a dying sorcerer. In this world, there is a Holy Family of five gods. The Bastard, my favorite, is a god of chaos and untimely events, and of demons. Demons can only exist in the world of matter if they attach themselves to a person or animal. If the demon has control, then it can do a lot of damage in its physical form. But it can be mastered, and then its powers can be used for good. One who possesses and controls a demon is a sorcerer, and usually a divine of the Bastard. Penric's demon, Desdemona, has had twelve previous "riders," all women, and so she is a demon of great age and power. The story of her partnership begins with Penric's Demon, and the books should be read in order. They are a delight.

Lois Bujold describes herself as retired from traditional publishing. The Penric books are self-published, and she writes when she has a story to tell, never on a schedule. So it was a lovely surprise to find her posting on Goodreads last month about a new Penric & Desdemona story. Penric and the Bandit opens with Penric sitting in a roadside inn, with a map. Roz, who needs money and to get far away, picks him out as a likely mark and starts chatting him up. He thinks Pen is a treasure-hunter who might be relieved of his treasure, but he has a lot to learn about the man he labels "Goldie." This was another great adventure, with a surprising treasure to be found (Roz is certainly surprised). I admit to a slight disappointment that the Bastard didn't make an appearance this time. As I said before though, he does tend to take over the story a bit when he appears, much like DEATH in Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, by Lois McMaster Bujold

This is the 15th book in Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan saga. From the title, I had an idea of what might happen in this book - and it did. But alongside the expected plot development came a revelation, slipped quietly into the story, which knocked me sideways.** I don't think I have ever read a book, coming so late in a series, that changed so completely my understanding of what came before. It took me a little while to adjust, and to pick up the threads of the story again. In the end I enjoyed this book, though I definitely would not recommend it as an introduction to the series.

It is set on Sergyar, the third planet of Barrayar's empire (with the homeworld and Komarr). It opens three years after the death of Aral, Count Vorkosigan, for many years the regent of Sergyar. His wife Cordelia, now the Dowager Countess Vorkosigan, has carried on as Vicereine in her own right. Because I read the series in story order (rather than publication order), I met Cordelia first, when she was surveying what became Sergyar, for her home planet of Beta. There she met Aral Vorkosigan, serving in Barrayar's space fleet. After some adventures together, she went home to Beta but later came to Barrayar to marry him. They became the parents of Miles, who suffered severe physical damage in utero from a chemical -weapons attack while Cordelia was pregnant. Neither he nor his parents let his physical frailty define or limit him. After the first two books, the story shifted from Cordelia and Aral to follow Miles. I'm always sorry to see them exit center stage, and their cameo appearances in later books are never enough.

It was fascinating to be back on Sergyar, to see how the planet and the Barrayaran colony has developed since the first book. As Vicereine, Cordelia still faces formidable challenges governing what's known as "Chaos Colony." She works closely with Admiral Oliver Jole, Aral's former military secretary, who commands the troops and ships guarding the wormhole jumps around Sergyar that make inter-planetary travel possible. I was interested to see that these troops now include women, in the Imperial Service Women's Auxiliary, primarily it seems as support staff rather than as combat troops. Still, that's a huge step for Barrayar, whose military-based society kept women firmly in the home and denied them equal rights.

**Okay, major spoilers follow from here.


I figured that Cordelia, three years after losing Aral, would have recovered enough to be open to a new relationship. From the title, I considered Jole the likely candidate. I thought this book would be about the development of that relationship, and I expected that her son Miles would have some issues with it. Yes, and yes - but oh is that only the top level of complications. I've read most of the books in this series two or three times. Granted, they focus mostly on Miles, but I can't remember Oliver Jole playing a part in any of the books. For obvious reasons, people are now trawling the books looking for him. I'd noted that he is one of Aral's pallbearers (in Cryoburn), and there are apparently some references to him in the last book before this one, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. Nothing of that prepared me for the revelation that Oliver and Aral were lovers, in a long-term relationship for more than twenty years. Cordelia, from liberal Beta, accepted this as she had always accepted Aral's bisexuality (which we the readers did know about from the beginning). She more than accepted it: when Oliver joined them on Sergyar, their marriage became three-sided - in every way. Cordelia is one of my favorite characters, a ship's captain who leaves her world behind for love, and then proceeds - with Aral's willing help - to subvert the limited "female" role available to her on Barrayar, and encourage other women and men to do the same. She and Aral make such a great team, partners in every way, as lovers, then parents, and as political figures. Again, the main saga shifted from them to their older son Miles, but it was still a shock to find out that their story was so very different than what their appearances over the years suggested. It is some consolation that Miles is just as blindsided by this revelation as I was. I did feel for poor Oliver, who got to explain it all to him.

The story opens with Cordelia returning to Sergyar from a visit to Barrayar. She brings with her another bombshell. Cordelia always wanted more children, but for medical and family reasons, Miles was their only child (until Mark showed up, a clone of Miles created in a byzantine political plot against the Empire, but deflected from that and absorbed into the clan). She and Aral had prepared for more children by storing eggs and sperm. More than forty years later, Cordelia is ready to use these to create six daughters for herself. (Barrayar has long used uterine replicators, which free women from carrying children, and it's catching up on more advanced reproductive technology.) She offers some genetic material to Oliver, to create his own children, who would share some of Aral's genes. In the course deciding whether to accept this offer, and working out the complications, Oliver and Cordelia resume their relationship, or rather build a new one around their mutual loss. Cordelia is 76, and though as a Betan she can expect to live to 120 or more, it is still an unexpected age to start a family. And when her relationship becomes public, people can't help but note that Oliver is twenty-five years her junior. Nor can her son Miles, arriving unexpectedly with his wife and six children in tow, to find out what the hell his mother is up to. Now that's a fraught reunion - something the Vorkosigans specialize in. I was sorry that his clone-brother Mark didn't get to visit as well, but I was happy to see that he gets to shine for a change, by getting his mother what she really needs: an industrial construction company for her growing colony.

Once I caught my breath from these bombshells, I did enjoy this book, particularly its focus on Cordelia and its exploration of Sergyar. I'm wondering now if we can expect stories of the next generation of Vorkosigans - Cordelia's daughters or Miles's children. Cordelia carefully gives her daughters her own name of Naismith, though; she wants Barrayar to have no claim on them.

Sunday miscellany: bookish connections, new books, books delayed

Good morning!  It is another hot summer day here in Houston, perfect for staying inside to read - but then most days are, for one reason or another.  We're supposed to top 95 degrees today, with no break in sight for a while, but at least the tropics are quiet.  We've had enough storms to last us!

I am still working my way through Richard III.  With Shakespeare I often end up reading scenes aloud, which helps me follow the language.  That means that I generally only read Shakespeare at home!  Yesterday evening I finished re-reading Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings, the first of the Lymond Chronicles.  Usually as I turn the last page I am already reaching for the second, Queens' Play, but I put it off for a while to read some other things.  I pulled this book off the TBR shelves, only to realize how it connects my recent reading.

Princess Alice was born Alice Christabel Montagu Douglas Scott, the granddaughter of the Duke of Buccleuch.  The Douglases and the Scotts are major characters in the Lymond Chronicles, particularly Wat Scott of Buccleuch and his son Will Scott of Kincurd in The Game of Kings. This book is filled with late Victorian and early Edwardian photos of the Scott family, and homes that I associate from the Chronicles with the Douglases, like Drumlanrig and Dalkeith.  In fact, I bought this at Half Price Books many years ago primarily for the pictures, and the Scott connection.  I had never made the connection with Richard III's title of Duke of Gloucester, however.  I don't know much yet about this Duke and Duchess, but I'm sure they were happier than Shakespeare's Richard and Anne. I've only read a few pages of the book, the first chapters of which describe a charming Edwardian childhood in a close-knit family, growing up between London and Scotland (Princess Alice was born in 1901).  It's funny (and sad) that I've had this book unread for so many years, but it does fit my theory that books unread "ripen" on the shelves until the right time.  And while I have been toying with the idea of a trip to Ireland next year, after following Somerville and Ross around Connemara, now I'm thinking of the Highlands and the Hebrides.

I don't follow Lois McMaster Bujold on social media, but I belong to an on-line reading group focused on her books.  For some time I've heard via the group that she has had a serious case of writer's block, with nothing published since the latest in the Vorkosigan saga, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, in late 2012.  Then came the exciting news of a new Vorkosigan book to be published next year - and focused on Cordelia, mother of the manic Miles and one of my favorite heroines.  The news of a novella set in her Five Gods series was a complete and happy surprise.  The three books of this series are set in an AU late-medieval Europe, with a Holy Family of Five Gods that frequently intervene in human events.  I love this series almost as much as the Vorkosigan books, and I have long been hoping for more.  The first, The Curse of Chalion, focused on the Daughter of Spring, and the third, The Hallowed Hunt, on her brother, The Son of Autumn.  The second book belongs to the Bastard, son of the Mother of Sumner, who also plays a big part in the other stories.  I was hoping for a book on the Mother, as well as the Father of Winter, but from this title of this novella, I knew we would be seeing more of the Bastard.

The Bastard, lord of demons and of untimely events, is such fun to read about, and I imagine to write about!  He does tend to take over the story a bit, when he appears, much like DEATH in Terry Pratchett's Discworld.  This novella is only available as an e-book, so I have made just my third purchase, and all novellas (I generally download free older books from Gutenberg and Google Books).  It's lovely to be back in this world, and I can already feel the pull to return to Chalion as well.

With so many good books to read, it feels churlish to whine about books that I can't have (yet).  But Hayley's review of one of the new British Library Crime Classics, Alan Melville's Quick Curtain, gave me that "I want to read this right now" feeling.  Unfortunately, there is a delay with their U.S. release.  I will be good and wait, but it does remind me again how spoiled I have become, with books so easily available.

And finally, our JASNA Houston group met yesterday, to watch Amy Heckerling's "Clueless," which some of our members had never seen.  I did, when it was first released, and I still remember when it burst upon me in the theater that I was watching a very clever adaptation of Emma.  Not having seen it in several years, I enjoyed seeing it again very much.  It certainly has some dated elements, like the massive cell phones the characters carry around, but overall we agreed the story itself doesn't feel too dated.  We were talking afterwards about how the bones of the story are there, even if the details don't always match up. Christian won't end up with a Jane Fairfax, but he turns out to be a much better friend to Cher than Frank to Emma.  And Cher has the kind of friend in Dionne that Emma herself lacks.  We may watch the Bollywood "Bride and Prejudice" another time. This was the first film viewing that I've been to, since I boycott the actual adaptations!

I hope that everyone has a lovely week!

Sharing knives and lives

The Sharing Knife, Passage (Vol. 3) and Horizon (Vol. 4), Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois Bujold may be best known for her multi-book Vorkosigan saga, but she has also written several alternate-universe fantasy novels.  There are the Chalion novels, two of which are set in a series of small kingdoms reminiscent of Spain in the 15th century, and the third in a version of the Holy Roman Empire.  These books have a very interesting theology, centered in an unusual Holy Family that includes the Mother's Bastard.  Interactions with the five gods drive the plots of these books, particularly the Bastard, a trickster with a wicked sense of humor.

The Sharing Knife series, on the other hand, is set in an AU North America.  In that world, the land erupts from time to time in malices, entities that suck the life-force from everything around them to create themselves and armies of creatures like them.  Humans who come in contact with the malices, also known as blights and bogles, end up etther as food or mind-controlled slaves.  For generations the Lakewalker people have dedicated themselves to fighting malices.  Lakewalkers can sense the life-force in everything, which they call ground, and this "ground-sense" enables them to detect malices.  They spend their time patrolling the land for emerging malices, who can only be killed with a special sharing knife.  Lakewalkers facing death can "share" that death through ritual means, binding it to the knife, their last contribution to the war on these evils.

This constant struggle is made more complicated by "farmers," non-Lakewalkers who are constantly pushing the boundaries of their settlements in search of new lands (the parallels between Native Americans and European settlers are obvious, malices aside).  Farmers don't have ground-sense, which makes them vulnerable to malices.  Those who have never experienced a malice directly, or seen the blight they leave behind, resent the Lakewalkers.  They also tell strange stories about Lakewalker sorcery, particularly the creation of the sharing knives, which are made of human bone.

(Spoilers for all the Sharing Knife books follow.)

In the first book of this series, we meet Fawn, a young woman running away from home, pregnant by a neighboring farmer who won't marry her and unwilling to face her family.  She is caught by a new malice's creatures (called mud-men), and rescued by Dag, an older Lakewalker.  In the course of this, she kills the malice with his sharing knife and miscarries her child.  She and Dag quickly fall into mutual lust and later into bed, despite the strong prohibitions against such liaisons in both farmer and Lakewalker societies.  Eventually they return to Fawn's home, where over the objections of her family they are married ("string-bound" in Lakewalker terms).  In the second book, they travel up to Dag's family encampment, where his relatives refuse to accept his farmer bride (and where we learn more about Lakewalker life).

I think Lois Bujold has created an interesting world with this series.  There is something of "Little House on the Prairie" about the farmer sections, and the parallels with Native Americans in the Lakewalker sections are intriguing.  The malices are fascinating villains, in a nauseating way, and Bujold manages to evoke sympathy for their creatures, particularly animals caught in their making spells.  But with all due respect to one of my favorite authors, the first two books really don't work for me, in large part because of the two main characters. I like them in and of themselves, but I find their romance tiresome and not particularly credible.  Fawn is eighteen, a small-town girl, very bright and adventurous, who makes friends easily.  Dag is a morose fifty-five, a veteran of many years fighting malices, who lost his first wife in battle.  Though we are told constantly that Lakewalkers don't look their age, we are also reminded constantly of the big gap in age between these two, and I find it a bit creepy (like Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon).  I certainly get why Dag is attracted to Fawn, but I can't quite figure out what she sees in him.  I have something of the same problem with the age gap between Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell in Laurie King's series, but those stories build up a relationship before the romance, and then build on their partnership, professional and romantic.  With this series, the couple fall into lust hardly knowing each other, and while Fawn is still recovering from her miscarriage.  In the later books, we're frequently told they are deeply in love with each other, and I have to take the author's word on that.

This was my second time reading the last two books in the series, Passage and Horizon, and I do enjoy them, because they are less focused on Dag and Fawn's relationship, more on exploring the world Bujold has created here.  In the third book, Passage, they have left Dag's camp because the Lakewalkers won't accept his marriage to Fawn.  Nor is his farmer marriage his only renegade idea.  He is coming to see that farmers can be allies in the fight against the malices, particularly as they push new settlements into malice-ridden territories, but they must be trained, and that means sharing Lakewalker knowledge with them.  And he is learning that he may have undiscovered talents as a healer, but he wants to use those talents on farmers as well as his own people. Lakewalkers use their ground-sense in healing, which can seem like more sorcery to farmers - reason enough for Lakewalkers to refuse to treat them.

Dag and Fawn decide to take a delayed wedding trip to the southern coast, in part because Fawn like Emma Woodhouse has never seen the sea.  Traveling with one of Fawn's brothers, they earn their passage on a flatboat heading down a series of rivers leading to the great Gray (standing in for the Mississippi), ending up in Greymouth (not quite colorful enough to be New Orleans).  On their journey, they collect around them an unlikely surrogate family - or perhaps a Lakewalker patrol - including the boat's young boss Berry, two equally young Lakewalkers in need of training, and Hod, a lost soul whom Dag heals in more than body,   They meet other boat crews, and a fearsome set of river bandits.  Through it all, Dag tries to bridge the gap between Lakewalker and farmer (or boater), translating each to the other and learning how to heal farmers.  The fourth book, Horizon, covers their return journey north, by horseback along a great trail called the Trace, traveling with much of the company from the previous book, as well as more farmers and Lakewalkers encountered along the way.

These two stories are fun adventures, with danger in the form of bandits and malices balanced with the excitement of seeing new places and encountering new people. Dag and Fawn create an extended family, drawn to their very different personalities, despite the uneasiness that farmers feel around Lakewalkers and vice versa.  This aren't my favorite among Lois Bujold's books, but I do enjoy these last two.  Anyone interested in the series, though, should probably start with the first two, just for the background on Lakewalkers, farmers and malices - and may well enjoy them more than I do.  Lots of other readers have.

Back to books and blogs

One of the worst parts of my recent move was that it left me disconnected from reading - and with the early cancellation of my internet service, also disconnected from my own and others' blogs.  I had no attention for reading, no concentration, which is why the same books have been listed as "What I'm reading now" for weeks.  When books have always been a distraction and a comfort, it was the strangest, most unsettling feeling, to sit down with a book and find myself unable to connect with it, almost as though it was in a foreign language.  And I have to say, it was also a bit depressing to pack and unpack all the TBR books, though in the process I was able to let quite a few go.

Speaking of TBR books, I have to confess that I cheated on the TBR Double Dog Dare with the first chapters of Les Misérables.  I'm trying to decide if that disqualifies me - and if I'm thinking that because I want to give in and read the rest of the book - or if I just count it as a first strike and carry on.  I think since I only got 32 pages into an 1231-page book, I may give myself an exemption.  After all, I'm not even counting those chapters in old favorites that I re-read here and there as I was packing them away into boxes.

But I did manage to finish an actual entire new book this week - only the second in the whole month, and I can't tell you the last time that happened.  The book is Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold.  I have been a fan of her books ever since I discovered them through a Dorothy Dunnett listserv.  Her main series has revolved around the planet Barrayar, colonized from Earth centuries ago, whose semi-feudal society is dominated by the Vor aristocracy.  Among the highest of high Vor are the Vorkosigans, a collateral branch of the imperial family, staunchly loyal servants of the Emperor and Barrayar itself.  The central character in most of the 14-book series has been Miles Vorkosigan, who had a varied career in imperial service and as a space mercenary before settling down again on Barrayar.

Miles' mother Cordelia survived a chemical weapons attack during her pregnancy, which left the fetal-Miles severely damaged.  He and his parents worked very hard to compensate for his disabilities, against strong social prejudices.  One side benefit of Miles's very obvious physical issues was that despite his impeccable imperial bloodline, they apparently disqualified him from the imperial throne (coups and palace revolutions were a regular feature in Barrayar's history).  With House Vorkosigan eliminated, the next candidate in line, for ambitious kingmakers, was Miles's cousin Lord Ivan Vorpatril.  Ivan's father was killed in a civil war the day that his son was born, and his mother in her anxiety to protect and shield him nearly smothered him.  At age 18, Ivan escaped to the imperial Service Academy and then into a career in the military.

Though tall, dark and handsome, Ivan always suffered in comparison to his brilliant, mercurial, wildly successful cousin Miles.  He did not choose to compete, just the opposite in fact.  To avoid both the political intrigues and his mother's plans for him, he built up the persona of a good-natured, rather indolent, rakish young man about town, rather like one of Georgette Heyer's younger brothers.  He is a very competent officer but in a very quiet way, careful not to attract too much notice.  He has played this part so successfully that he is routinely addressed as "Ivan, you idiot!"  It has become clear over the course of the later stories, though, how much of a façade this is - and not just to the reader.  On the Heyer listserv I belong to, we like to speculate about which minor characters deserve their own book.  Many of Lois Bujold's readers have long wanted to see Ivan play more of a central part in the series.  Here she gives us the "Ivan book," and great fun it is too.

In this book, Ivan is on Komarr, one of the Empire's subject planets, on assignment with his boss Admiral Desplains.  Late one night he receives a visit from a contact in Imperial Security (the dreaded ImpSec), who asks him to help track a mysterious young woman, who may be connected with smugglers that ImpSec is trying to nab.  Though he is intrigued by her beauty, he agrees only after some pressure.  His first attempt to make contact with her ends with him stunned and tied to a chair in her living room, as she and her companion, who think him a kidnapper or worse, debate what to do with him.  Despite this inauspicious beginning, Ivan ends up helping the two, who are fleeing an attack that destroyed their family back on their homeworld, the complications of which will eventually follow them to Barrayar.  Along the way, Ivan gets his chance to shine, and also at long last to find love.  Heyer readers might find echoes of Cotillion, The Unknown Ajax, and Friday's Child here, no surprise since Lois Bujold is a fan as well.

We were introduced to Barrayar in the first books, when Cordelia arrived from her very different home plant to marry Aral Vorkosigan.  I wouldn't want to live there, it's still a bit too feudal for my tastes, but I do love to visit.  Here again we get to see Barrayar through an outsider's eyes, and to note the changes over the 38 years that the series has covered (this story takes place before Cryoburn, which was published in 2010).  When the action shifts back to Barrayar, we also get to meet old friends again, including Ivan's formidable dowager mother Alys and Ivan's equally formidable unofficial stepfather Simon Illyan (once the head of ImpSec).  Though it comes so late in the series, this book might be a good introduction to the series, for anyone who doesn't mind a few spoilers, since Ivan is constantly explaining his family and his world to the non-Barrayarans (I finally learned from this book why Ivan has the title "Lord Vorpatril" though he isn't a Count's heir).

Lois Bujold has apparently let it be known that this will be the last Vorkosigan book for a good long while, if not forever.  Though I've enjoyed her other series, and I will certainly read whatever she writes next, I won't give up hope that one day she will bring us back to Barrayar again.

Cheating death

Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold

This is the 13th book in Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan saga, which I've seen referred to as "space opera." Set in the future, the books are centered on the Earth-settled world of Barrayar, where the great families of the Vor class have ruled for centuries in a medieval-style hierarchy headed by the Emperor. The Vorkosigans are the highest of high Vor, so closely related to the imperial Vorbarra family in this generation that its sons stand next in line for the throne. But the youngest member of the family, Miles, is far from a typical Vor lordling. His mother Cordelia (an immigrant from a very different world called Beta and a clear-eyed critic of Barrayar) suffered a chemical warfare attack while she was carrying him, and Miles was born with physical deformities that on Barrayar, even in this modern day, lead to infanticide. He eventually left the constrictions of his home planet for a wild career as a space mercenary, while working undercover to protect its interest through Imperial Security (the dreaded ImpSec). In the later books, Miles returned to Barrayar, to his role as heir to his father Aral, Count Vorkosigan, and to make his own place in his home world.

Lois Bujold dedicated one of the later Miles books to "Jane, Charlotte, Georgette, and Dorothy" - as in Austen, Bronte, Heyer, and Sayers - and their influence is clear in her writing. She creates indelible characters, people with emotional and psychological complexity, and embroils them in multi-layered stories, some set on space stations, others on worlds with echoes of our own. She writes marvelous dialogue that can dance like the best screwball comedies, or lay bare someone's soul. Miles, and even more his parents Cordelia and Aral, are among my absolute favorite literary characters, on a par with Elizabeth Bennet and Peter Wimsey, Francis Crawford of Lymond and Freddy Standen.

Normally, I buy Lois Bujold's books in hardback, as soon as they come out (this fall we will finally get a book about Miles' cousin Ivan Vorpatril, who like a secondary Heyer hero has played the carefree aristocratic bachelor for many years, hiding his lights under the proverbial basket for too long). But Cryoburn came out in 2010. I finally bought a copy last year, and have only now read it for the first time. I put off reading this book, I confess, because it brings the death of one character in the saga, whose end has been foreshadowed but to which I was not resigned. What finally motivated me to read it is the Dorothy Dunnett-Lois Bujold crossover listserv I belong to, which has been reading through the saga for the past several months. Now I can follow the discussions without fear of further spoilers.

Cryoburn is set on the planet Kibou-daini, whose main industry is cryonics. The technical problems of freezing and reviving people have largely been solved by the research & development departments of the large corporations, or "cryocorps," which dominate this world. Most of its population chooses to become cryocorpses themselves, hoping for revival in a future where whatever medical condition they face, even old age, will have been resolved. Miles Vorkosigan has been sent to a cryonics conference on Kibou because one of the corporations is planning an expansion on Komarr, the second planet in the Barrayaran empire. Miles is now an Imperial Auditor, one of a select group assigned by the Emperor to investigate or trouble-shoot across the Empire, acting in his name and with imperial authority - a position tailor-made for Miles, who shares with Peter Wimsey an insatiable curiosity.

When he is kidnapped from the conference, and then meets a young boy whose mother, an activist working against the corps, has been frozen against her will, Miles follows the trail into the depths of the cryocombs. What he discovers there resonates on some level with the corporations of today. And as he investigates the different cryo-corporations, and meets their future customers, Bujold explores what it means to face the end of life, with the option to cheat death. What would it be like to return to life 80 or 100 years later, physically healed but out of your own time? She has a lot of fun with the cryocorps, each striving to attract more customers than their rivals, through marketing and branding. My favorite is NewEgypt, where the frozen customers pass through gates guarded by giant statues of Anubis, to rest in pyramids.

Though this book is about death, or about a frozen state of almost-death, it is never morbid. It couldn't be, with Miles in full Auditor mode. There is also an excellent supporting cast, some old friends from previous books. It is always great fun watching people meet Miles for the first time, particularly his fellow Barrayarans. Lois Bujold has gone on to write two other series, the Chalion books, set in a medieval-Renaissance world with echoes of our own, and a remarkable theology; and the "Sharing Knife" series, set in a world that resembles North America, peopled with Lakewalkers, who have mystic powers and Farmers, who don't and who distrust those who do. I love the Chalion books, and I enjoyed the later Knife books, but I would trade them all for more Vorkosigan stories. At least I only have to wait til November for Ivan's adventures.