Cryoburn

[raven]

I have just finished Cryoburn a mere several months after everyone else. This was mostly because I hadn't read Diplomatic Immunity - I read it in a few days, and enjoyed it fine, but I can see how it might be a comedown after A Civil Campaign. Anyway, it had one of those dense space opera plots that I'm never really on board with (and, also, a Cetagandan-themed one, which just bothers me, because, hi, they're boring, they require tonnes of backstory none of which is interesting and then they don't go forwards to anything interesting (although - and I'm aware this is getting multi-parenthetical - I read this amazing short fic the other day, in which a Cetagandan haut-poet writes RPF poetry about Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan, and was completely charmed)). I did like that it had lots of Bel Thorne, who is amazing and I love how snarkly it is, and how the novel also acts as a very clever, hundreds-of-years-later sequel to Falling Free, showing how the earlier events become part of mythology and culture over generations.

Anyway! I read it, and then I moved on to Cryoburn, and, well, so I was about a hundred pages in and kept thinking to myself, this reminds me of something, this reminds me of something, and then finally I figured it out. Cryoburn has the same basic plot as nearly every episode of Doctor Who. No, bear with me. So, there are these two guys, who, for sins unspecified, have been assigned to the Barryaran consulate on Khibou-Daini, a planet very far from anywhere else, and they potter along, occasionally countersigning passports and investigating very small cases of fraud. Johannes stands around looking stoic; Vorlynkin broods over his divorce.

Then an unstoppable force of nature arrives in the shape of the Eleventh Doctor the Tenth Doctor Miles Vorkosigan, and they have to step up to the plate or else be trampled by aforementioned unstoppable force. (Hello, mixed metaphors!) And they do - and I especially love Vorlynkin, who gets snarkier and snarkier with each successive appearance. ("My case budget allows for a lot of discretion, you know." / "Then I wish you'd buy some.")

It's good fun, mostly. Nothing deep and profound, but a lot more good-natured and charming than a lot of the others. And then the ending, oh my. I totally love that gambit, and I was actually saying it to Shim the other day - remember how during one of the Little Women books, I dunno which one, Meg wakes up Demi in the middle of the night and calls him "John", and he knows straightaway that his father is dead?

So. "Count Vorkosigan, sir?" - it kills me. It really does. And it's such a great throwback to The Warrior's Apprentice, when they wake Miles up and call him "Lord Vorkosigan", because his grandfather's dead.

And I really liked the very fannish thing of finishing up with five drabbles, named as such and everything. My suspicion, reading them, is that this is the last Vorkosigan book. Anyone know if that's actually the case? It read to me that way because of all the throwbacks to the beginning of the series: the one I just mentioned, and also, Cordelia mentions Ensign Dubauer, the man who gets shot at the very beginning of Shards of Honour and then we don't hear about again for twenty years. (I thought the random guy called Dubauer in Diplomatic Immunity was a relation, but that turns out to be a mistake or red herring.)

And then Gregor's last line: "This man has carried me since I was five years old." Oh, Gregor. He and Cordelia are my favourites.

I still think there needs to be a book, set while Miles is off doing the galactic mercenary thing, where Cordelia and Alys save the world around diplomatic functions and balls. They totally could, and be awesomely-dressed and very snarky doing it.

Comments

[fyrdrakken]

Chronological order is good. Start with Shards of Honor and Barrayar (published together as Cordelia's Honor).