:D :D :D In some comment somewhere, Lois explicitly calls this book 'a bon bon for the fans,' which made me ROFL....because if she wrote it as a bon bon, you know she did it entirely for her own delicious self indulgence in the Vorkosiverse :D ITA with your write-up, it was delightful and I was perfectly giddy to fling myself onto the puppy pile of adorable Vorkosiverse-isms and roll around giggling.

Can't say as I have a problem with this book written in this way at this time :)

I, too, hope she decides to scare up some more Problems with a capital P though - it's not like she doesn't have enough prequal material or new generations growing into adulthood, yk? There's ALWAYS problems. I just get the sense that she's written what she has to write in this 'verse, at least until she herself is in a new period of her own life and that suggests new points of view to her writing.