Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
Premise: "Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprove—he’s been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorp—an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future—attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter Miles to check it out.
On Kibou-daini, Miles discovers generational conflict over money and resources is heating up, even as refugees displaced in time skew the meaning of generation past repair. Here he finds a young boy with a passion for pets and a dangerous secret, a Snow White trapped in an icy coffin who burns to re-write her own tale, and a mysterious crone who is the very embodiment of the warning 'Don’t mess with the secretary.' Bribery, corruption, conspiracy, kidnapping—something is rotten on Kibou-daini, and it isn’t due to power outages in the Cryocombs. And Miles is in the middle—of trouble!" - from the Baen website.
Steph's Comments: If you've been reading this blog over the long term, then you know that I've generally adored my forays into the "Vorkosiverse". Bujold's style is extraordinarily witty and accessible, and her characters are terrific in their realization. Take Miles, for example. God, but I love that little semi-maniac. I love that he once assembled an entire mercenary force by accident. (Oops!) I love his knack for sniffing out and foiling conspiracies. And basically? I love that his out-sized personality and keen intelligence completely overshadow the fact that he's small and sickly. Miles' mere existence in Bujold's created world boldly challenges the view that the disabled cannot have lives worth living.
That being said, do I think Cryoburn rises to the level of, say, Barrayar? No. To be sure, it's a solidly enjoyable novel; Miles is still his inimitable self on every page, and the reactions of the people around him are still amusing. But there's something missing. Though the humane ethical sensibilities one finds in many of Bujold's earlier works are certainly present, they don't come through with quite the same force. And the profound insight into the human condition that gave us Bothari or Ma Mattulich is also a bit blunted. Overall, one gets the sense that Bujold forced herself to write Cryoburn in order to bridge a gap and get to the next really big tale she wants to tell. That authorial equivalent of a nuclear bomb that she drops at the very end of the book (which I will not spoil here) would seem to suggest a motivation of this nature. But perhaps I'm wrong.
Steph's Rating: 7.5
I liked it, but I didn't love it.
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