Memory

Thing I have just learned from the internet: Simon Illyan was named for Illya Kuryakin.

This makes me happy on so, so many levels. So many levels.

Anyway! I have finally finished Memory, again. Y'all might have guessed I'm on a bit of a Vorkosigan kick, but really, if it weren't for this book in particular, they'd just be a series I quite like, rather than one I handflap about.

I mean, Memory. How much do I love it This is only the second time I've read it, but that's because the first time, I picked it up to read the first chapter before bed and looked up blearily from the last page to the sunrise. I love this book so much. [Note - the real spoilers in this are behind the cuts - out of them there's nothing you wouldn't get from the back cover.]

I love how it's, first and foremost, a character piece. I love how the blurbs and the awful covers try and make out it's Dead Excitin', but the plot of the book, such as it is, doesn't kick until around page 200. Instead, it's Miles taking apart his whole life, inch by inch, moment by moment, and trying to make something new of it. And somehow it's not depressing, although a little saddening: it manages to include all sorts of delicious human drama, small things that the big space opera novels didn't have time for. There's Duv Galeni and his new romance; Gregor, who's startled his entire family by suddenly acquiring a new interest in life (oh, Gregor! His depression, and how it's dealt with in the books, are something else I love - but there's a whole post in that); and Miles's hilarious discovery that food and clothes and transport are not things that just happen by osmosis. And for the first time, you get to see Miles, Ivan and Gregor interacting as adults, and I love that: I love how these three, who have had novels about them when they were aged five and one, and later when twenty and sixteen, are now, finally adults, except so recognisably themselves. I really do agree that there's an art to writing a series: not a trilogy in however many parts, but a series, so each novel makes sense but is somehow richer for all the others.

(Speaking of the covers, they really are a classic example of the contemptible covers trope - the Vorkosigan books were sitting on Shim's shelves for years before I ever picked one up, and that's entirely because of the horrible, inappropriate Baen covers and blurbs. That said I don't know why I thought Shim would have a taste for space opera of the buxom & manly sort, but I suppose we didn't know each other so well back then.)

And there's the way this whole novel is, in a way, a set-up for A Civil Campaign - and that may be the one that's dedicated to "Jane, Charlotte, Georgette and Dorothy", but you can see echoes of them here. There's this lovely bit from Sayers about Lord Peter Wimsey:

( Lord Peter's large income... - cut because it's long, not becase it's a spoiler! )

And so Miles, for the first time in his life, calls the Vorkosigan family accountant and asks him things. Tsipsis answers questions about household expenses, about stocks, shares and entailments, and then, light dawning, asks, "My lord, do you need money?"

Because Miles, bless him, has never questioned the fact that his family have a townhouse and a summer place and a staff of dozens and a wine cellar, that his parents are Viceroy and Vicereine of a colony world and that his foster-brother is the Emperor. Miles is a Vor aristocrat and that's just how life is, for him. There are lots of echoes of Wimsey, especially in the later books where Miles is more in the way of playing detective. Pym, certainly, has a lot in him owed to Bunter.

Then, the actual plot, which is itself driven mostly by character. It's about Illyan, of all people, and I love that too. It's so unexpected, and it ends up making so much sense.

So. Simon Illyan is a walking, talking plot device. He first appears in Shards of Honor, way back when, in that horrifying scene with Cordelia and Vorrutyer which I would have to seriously trigger-warn if I wanted to discuss in any detail, so perhaps I just won't. That's when he first appears - so naturally, your attention is on other things. And then he crops up here and there in the books following, mostly to dispense exposition, unremarkably. Almost literally, he's a human computer.

And then twenty years pass, both in-universe and since the series was first published - and the author takes a step back, and actually thinks, what would it really mean to be that person, to bear that responsibility, that memory? And she takes this mostly minor character from years before and deconstructs him - and lIlyan's breakdown is so well-rendered, so horrible and carefully drawn. And, I don't necessarily think Bujold is a very good writer - like JK Rowling, she's a very good storyteller and writes decent, unremarkable prose - but she's good at the sucker punch. There's this bit, when ( spoiler )

And that it can be this serious-business book, and also have bits like this: ( spoiler )

So much love. In conclusion: I have given up apologising for my tastes. I love this book and think everyone else should.

(Releatedly, I'm reading a fic at the moment by philomytha, Aral Vorkosigan's Dog - and a couple of my friends have recced it recently but I just want to add my little bit of a voice, it's really good. It has a central dynamic that I totally love, in fiction, that so often comes up under this name. Sam Vimes describes himself as "Vetinari's terrier" and Simon Illyan describes himself as "Aral Vorkosigan's dog" - and it's not romantic, but it tracks like romantic love, a person defined by another through loyalty and submission, but there's willingness there, and trust, and oh, so interesting. In Illyan's case, it has a disturbing flipside: in Memory, when he ( does something both disturbing and spoilery )

It's very well-done.)

Also, Illya Kuryakin! Why did no one ever tell me.