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jeriendhalSummary: Dispatched to the world of Kibui-Dani, who's government revolves around the votes held by their frozen dead, administered by the cryo-corps who responsible for them, Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan, as usual, oversteps his emperor's mandate and quickly goes from being wooed at a corporate conference to being kidnapped to unraveling a thirty year old case of mass medical malpractice.
After a seven year wait (perhaps longer if like most readers I wanted to forget Diplomatic Immunity) Miles is back and having Adventures. Or more accurately, forcing the poor sods around him to have adventures while he cheerfully pulls strings.
In fact, what's notable about this book is how emotionally distant Miles is from the plot. Aside from an off-screen kidnapping which draws him into the world of an illegal cyro-preservation run by a group of squatters, Miles isn't even in any real physical danger during this story. He ends up turning a planet's government upside down, but that's mostly a byproduct of his curiosity and indignation of the treatment of Jin Sato's mother. The intense emotional involvement I had with Miles running from LMB's tour-de-force internal quadrilogy of Mirror Dance, Memory, Komaar and A Civil Campaign was absent. This is a Miles Vorkosigan story, but it isn't about Miles. At first I thought it was about how people react to Miles, especially in his persona as a near all powerful outsider in the form of Emperor Gregor's Imperial Auditor.
That is of course, until the absolute last line of the novel proper, which even when I was thoroughly spoiled for it hit like a brick. Three little words, “Count Vorkosigan, sir?” put the rest of the novel in perspective. The story wasn't about Miles, or Jin, or Jin's mother. It's about Death. How we react to it. How we fight it, with Mark's Durona Group medical miracles. How we cheat it, with cyronic preservation schemes that are done with the hope of a better future. How it's used, in the case of the cryo-preservation corporations that rule Kibui-Dani. Or how someone fails to cheat it, and turns out to be mortal, despite all of his family's hopes that he might be otherwise.
The hammer blow of Aral's death, which long time readers of the Vorkosigan series have been dreading for sixteen years, has finally happened. And now Lord Miles Vorkosigan is Count Vorkosigan, with all the implies. And I think, if Lois ends the series now, she couldn't ask for a better place. She has other worlds to explore. Though the main story of The Sharing Knife is over, there's still plenty of room there to look around, and even more in Chalion. Miles is well overdue for retirement.
Because frankly, she makes no bones about the fact that Miles is getting older too. He's just shy of forty (two years younger than me!) is going gray, and walks with a cane. His character has been living on borrowed time as well, ever since Mirror Dance, ever since Barrayar, and may not have much time left. Certainly nowhere near as much as his Da did, unless the Durona Group's life-extension experiment proves truly extraordinary.
But the Nexus is a big place, and there are other adventures to be had. Perhaps not with Miles, now that he's a count, a husband and a father. But Ellie Quinn and her Dendarii are out there (alas, without poor Sgt. Taura) and perhaps in ten or fifteen years Miles' children will be ready to give him a heart attack.
After a seven year wait (perhaps longer if like most readers I wanted to forget Diplomatic Immunity) Miles is back and having Adventures. Or more accurately, forcing the poor sods around him to have adventures while he cheerfully pulls strings.
In fact, what's notable about this book is how emotionally distant Miles is from the plot. Aside from an off-screen kidnapping which draws him into the world of an illegal cyro-preservation run by a group of squatters, Miles isn't even in any real physical danger during this story. He ends up turning a planet's government upside down, but that's mostly a byproduct of his curiosity and indignation of the treatment of Jin Sato's mother. The intense emotional involvement I had with Miles running from LMB's tour-de-force internal quadrilogy of Mirror Dance, Memory, Komaar and A Civil Campaign was absent. This is a Miles Vorkosigan story, but it isn't about Miles. At first I thought it was about how people react to Miles, especially in his persona as a near all powerful outsider in the form of Emperor Gregor's Imperial Auditor.
That is of course, until the absolute last line of the novel proper, which even when I was thoroughly spoiled for it hit like a brick. Three little words, “Count Vorkosigan, sir?” put the rest of the novel in perspective. The story wasn't about Miles, or Jin, or Jin's mother. It's about Death. How we react to it. How we fight it, with Mark's Durona Group medical miracles. How we cheat it, with cyronic preservation schemes that are done with the hope of a better future. How it's used, in the case of the cryo-preservation corporations that rule Kibui-Dani. Or how someone fails to cheat it, and turns out to be mortal, despite all of his family's hopes that he might be otherwise.
The hammer blow of Aral's death, which long time readers of the Vorkosigan series have been dreading for sixteen years, has finally happened. And now Lord Miles Vorkosigan is Count Vorkosigan, with all the implies. And I think, if Lois ends the series now, she couldn't ask for a better place. She has other worlds to explore. Though the main story of The Sharing Knife is over, there's still plenty of room there to look around, and even more in Chalion. Miles is well overdue for retirement.
Because frankly, she makes no bones about the fact that Miles is getting older too. He's just shy of forty (two years younger than me!) is going gray, and walks with a cane. His character has been living on borrowed time as well, ever since Mirror Dance, ever since Barrayar, and may not have much time left. Certainly nowhere near as much as his Da did, unless the Durona Group's life-extension experiment proves truly extraordinary.
But the Nexus is a big place, and there are other adventures to be had. Perhaps not with Miles, now that he's a count, a husband and a father. But Ellie Quinn and her Dendarii are out there (alas, without poor Sgt. Taura) and perhaps in ten or fifteen years Miles' children will be ready to give him a heart attack.
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Date: 2010-10-25 05:58 am (UTC)If you want to know what we heard at her signing Friday night in Seattle...
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Date: 2010-10-25 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-25 06:42 pm (UTC)And I would only prefer this slightly over an Ivan book. It's as if she chose the one thing that would reconcile the fans to the last book [wry g].
I wasn't spoiled for the ending so my reaction went more like:
Date: 2010-10-31 04:51 pm (UTC)What was your beef with Diplomatic Immunity? It isn't necessarily as good as say, Komarr (not enough Ekatrin-but then there's never enough Ekaterin), but I thought it was pretty enjoyable nonetheless.
Re: I wasn't spoiled for the ending so my reaction went more like:
Date: 2010-10-31 07:03 pm (UTC)Perhaps I should read it again. It's the only Miles book I haven't reread since it was published.