Cryoburn, by Lois McMaster Bujold

With Cryoburn I come to the end of two quests for the year--one, to read all of the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominees for 2011 (see the list at Free SF Online, my all-time favorite website), and two, to read the entirety of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series (so as to be ready for number one).  As Bujold has now generously provided the world with free versions of the series (at the Cryoburn link above), with the curious exception of Memory, I was able to stick mostly to my goal of reading freely available SF, via the web or public library.

First, the final novel.  For most of it I thought that Miles was pretty much doing more of the same as Imperial Auditor--the wife he acquired in "Winterfair Gifts" now holding down the home front, a mere homesickness memory.  He gets into plenty of physical scrapes, but is now handling them with diplomacy befitting a family man.  He resolves the latest threat to the Empire with his usual savoir faire.  One doesn't find a whole lot new going on.  But the very ending changes things, so SPOILER ALERT.

We get just 500 words (exactly--five "doodles") on Miles' reaction to his father's death.  But with those 500, Bujold has changed Miles quite thoroughly, such that it would be near impossible for her to justify writing another Vorkosigan novel that simply follows Miles on an adventure.  He appears to have made a conscious decision (very nicely rendered in a paragraph) not to be that fellow anymore.  He is an accomplished politician now, and his next moves would likely be in some sort of royal political thriller.  Hard to say how interesting Bujold could make it.  Me, I think he's done.  Maybe the Wormhole Nexus continues, maybe not, but he's background now.  Miles will not die, he will just fade away.  I see by the latest update to Bujold's Wikipedia entry that Ivan Vorpatril is the focus.  He seems a reasonable heir apparent.

Am I glad to have spent the last four months reading 15 novels and a few short stories in the series?  On the whole, yes.  It's hard to find an ongoing series that has maintained such high quality throughout.  The plots are well-developed and the characters sympathetic.  Miles has been interesting to get to know.  But it's easy enough to put down.  The suspense is contained within each volume--it's not a monolith like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. There is a Vorkosigan Companion volume on the Cryoburn CD, but I can't say I'm that curious about it--the characters in the end are vehicles for making Bujold's moral points, with the exception of Miles himself, so I am not sure what others could unpack that they are not finding within themselves somehow.  Miles definitely has a dark side, and Bujold has never brought herself to explore it--perhaps she is a little too fond of him, or his image, to let him fall prey to mere human temptations of power. Here's hoping she gets up the nerve.  Give this book three stars, and the series four.

Diplomatic Immunity, by Lois McMaster Bujold

In Diplomatic Immunity, Miles is now firmly married and just coming back from his honeymoon in this one.  He returns to Quaddiespace to sort out what looks like a messy but limited diplomatic issue, and ends up saving a big chunk of the Cetagandan empire.  The adventure is a lot of fun, and worth the read.  What's more interesting is to think of where the series is going at this point.  Miles is a grown man now, and in a role he can continue in for the rest of his life.  Where does he go from here?  He is a father now, that has possibilities.  But about all that's really left to do with Miles Vorkosigan is to explore a dark side.  Bujold has certainly left room for this, Miles' ego is big enough to lead him into serious trouble.  Or more mundane humanity--just how disappointed would he be if his children are not as driven as himself?  Or if they are, would it drive him completely nuts?  Well, we have finally come to the book that started this for me--the last award nominee for me to read this year, Cryoburn.  Onward and upward.  3 stars for the current item.

Winterfair Gifts, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Winterfair Gifts tells the story of Miles Vorkosigan's wedding, but it's really centered around a couple of the minor characters in the series.  Taura has been around for awhile as one of Miles' string of lovers, and Bujold has a lot of fun portraying her.  I'd have fun writing about an 8-foot tall beautiful-scary soldier woman, anyway.  She's got possibilities as a superhero, but the series isn't going that direction.  In fact, more time is spent on Roic, Miles' newest Armsman and nOOb.  He gets to find out that he isn't such a rube after all, and of course he and Taura hook up.  No suspense there.  In fact, there isn't a ton of tension here even with an assassination subplot, so it's just a way station.  3 stars, for filler.

A Civil Campaign, by Lois McMaster Bujold

We are getting later in Miles' career, he has turned 30, and Bujold returns to the romance novel here.  Still plenty of action, but Miles is ready to settle down, and this is the story of his pursuit of the One, Ekaterin.  Particularly interesting here is that all the major characters get some attention and new strength--his clone brother Mark, the Koudelka clan, and most especially his cousin Ivan.  They all get pulled into Miles and Ekaterin's somewhat agonized and self-reflective courtship.  This installment has nicely woven plotlines, even working in a commercial thread.  The march has been well worth it so far, and I fully intend to continue to the end.  One gets the feeling Miles has to peak sometime in here--once he marries, he's already had such a career that one can't see much topping all this until he dies.  But we've got three more stories.  We shall see.  4 stars here.

Komarr, by Lois McMaster Bujold

I am now moving into the latter part of Miles Vorkosigan's career in Komarr, part of the omnibus volume Miles in Love.  And this one is all about Miles' love, Ekaterin Vorsoisson.  Her hapless husband ends up involved in a plot to attack Barrayar by closing its wormhole, but this is something of a sideshow.  In Komarr we return to the style of Shards of Honor--the galactic fantasy, a romance novel set in space.  Ekaterin and Miles have intense conversations laden with internal dialog.  Her failed marriage has caused her to harden her heart--can it be softened again?  An odd place for a hard SF fan, but not so odd for SF itself--Mercedes Lackey has written a lot in this space, and a very strong fraction of fantasy literature is romance-novel inspired.

Miles doesn't get as much development here, other than as possibly having found his love at last.  He's having a lot of fun on the Imperial Auditor gig, it's just what he needed, and lets Bujold go anywhere with him.  And we'll see where, there's only a few books left.  Onward...

Memory, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Continuing my reading of the Vorkosigan series, this week I picked up Memory.  I went ahead and paid for this at Baen Webscriptions for a Kindle version.  Oddly enough, it is the only one in the series not on the Cryoburn CD, kind of an odd omisson, but there it is.  I could have gotten it at my public library, though, and am sure you can too.

It's a worthwhile read, especially if you have read the others.  Bujold is really enjoying Miles as a character.  He's going through a lot of troubles in this one, most directly related to being killed and revived in the last one (Mirror Dance).  He's having seizures, making him unfit for combat or anything stressful (his denial of this is a big part of the plot).  Being an adrenaline junkie this is really painful.  It looks like he is going to have to let go of his pet project, the Dendarii Free Mercenaries and Admiral Naismith.

What follows is a very satisfying story of personal growth.  Miles finds a new dimension to his capabilities while investigating an attack on his supervisor.  Death smacks some of the megalomania out of him, even as he gets more opportunities to indulge it. 

This story very strongly indicates that Miles is heading in a different direction--adventuring days may or may not be done, but they don't define him anymore.  Am looking forward to the rest of these, it is a series worth revisiting.  The technical references are few and feel dated since they are from 15 years ago, but the characters are the point.  Four stars for this one.  Onward and upward

Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Coming off the disappointing Brothers in Arms, I approached the companion in Miles Errant with some trepidation.  Had read some reviews that it was better.  And those reviews were right.  This may be the best one in the series so far. 

Mark really comes into his own as a character here, differentiating himself in as many ways as he can from his brother.  He likes to eat more, does not like combat, and is much more analytic.  Being a clone, he defines himself in terms of his progenitor, but by the end of the book he has worked through all that.  Though he definitely seems to have more than his share of the bad luck between the two.

It will be interesting to see if Mark gets to play an ongoing role in the future books.  The synopses are still all about Miles.

And Miles himself goes through some changes here, having ended up dead trying to rescue his "brother" early in the book.  He comes back considerably weakened, but since he is pretty weak anyway this doesn't change his perspective much.  He's getting better all the time at seducing women--even manages it as a particularly nasty looking convalescent.

This is one to look forward to in the series.  I give it four stars, just because I don't hand out five stars easily.  Matter of fact, I haven't done it yet.

I've been reading all these on my Nook, and rate it a very pleasant way to read.  But I think we're going to get a Kindle Fire.  We'll see what we think of it.