Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold

[lightreads]

CryoBurn by Lois McMaster Bujold

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ah. I got an ARC of this two weeks ago, and it’s a mark of just how fucked in the head I was by the bar exam that I couldn’t even crack it open until now. But I did at last, and ah, it was good.

This is a romp. In fact I’d go so far as to say in some places it’s a caper. Basically, it’s a hundred thousand words of Miles repeatedly happening to people. These people generally start out unsuspecting, but by the end are learning to brace for impact, even if they’re curled up in the fetal position and whimpering on the inside.

Except be careful for the corners and edges on this caper, because some of them will cut you. Like most of this series, this book contemplates a bit of speculative technology – cryo freezing and reviving, here – and asks a lot of penetrating questions about the sociopolitical fallout. Without, thank God, being didactic or prescriptive or blankly alarmist or utopian. This is a book about the institutions of death when death is temporary. Except – and I’m paraphrasing Miles here, because he sums this up nicely for us at one point – institutions and corporations and political machines are just big groups of people mostly moving in the same direction. They might feel like they’ll live forever, but they’re just us, too, and we certainly don’t.

Except when we kind of do, and how voting power would be allocated to frozen people, not to mention the economics of it (I slapped a hand over my face and laugh-groaned a lot over the commodified cryo corpse contract swaps, because ahaha, yes, that is so fucking trufax). Then again, I clearly still am fucked in the head by the bar exam, because I also thought in a frantic gabble at one point, “does this planet have an inherited Rule Against Perpetuities? Because if the voting interests don’t vest within 21 years of the end of a life in being – and technically they’re not lives in being – then the conveyances are void oh my God what is wrong with me?”

To everyone who actually understood that: I am so, so sorry.

Ahem. The point. This book is not a disappointment. It is fun and hilarious and chewy. It is also a lot more conscious of Miles’s privilege than previous volumes, in ways I appreciated. Really, one of the best things that happened to this series was the introduction of roving point-of-view, because there are so very many things that Miles does not know about himself; his quite literal entitlement is often one of them.

And then it ends with a quintet of drabbles. Really good drabbles, the kind that feel like really good haiku, where saying the perfect thing in the perfect, tiny package makes writing like origami or something else beautiful and precise and intense. Ouch.

The title isn't any better after reading, though.

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Comments

[lightreads]

The drabbles do have me a tiny bit concerned because of their focus on how the old Miles is gone. And if she wanted a capstone on the series, there's one. Still, they were lovely.

[sibylle]

Hmm, that is a good point indeed. Also all the Vorkosiagan universe books that take place on Barrayar or mostly on Barrayar are set within Aral's lifetime, so there's another capstone right there. (And we never ever got anything from his point of view *pouts*) (Nor, I think, Gregor's, until the final drabble?)

[lightreads]

Nope, no Gregor. Which is a thing relevant to my interests!

[sibylle]

Mine too!

The two men in the book cycle I am most fond of remain silent throughout, only ever seen and interpreted for us by other people.

(Which might in some parts explain my fascination with them, but still ...).

[ecaterin]

That was definitely my sense, starting about the second mention of Mark having A Talk with the-count-their-father about....things. That one event has been hanging over the books since Shards, because it takes us full cycle through Barayaran male adulthood. We meet Aral about to find love and family, we hear bits about his crazy hot headed youth, we get to see Miles have crazy hot headed youth & cycle right on back to mature adulthood. We know what Miles's maturity will look like as Count because we've seen it on the sidelines, for certain she won't write that story again, you know?

It's certainly a well made stopping point if she feels there's no more Miles in her. Though considering her Miles book patterns, they've fairly closely paralleled her own life stages. She may find there's a whole book about, for example, Cordelia's next life on Beta, Ecaterin's life as Countess & mother after Miles's death and Laisa's life as empress with a brain. That would certainly make a fantastic addition to the series, giving us POV from the women, from 2 other cultures & from later in life (which, frankly, is anything but boring!). I'm not holding my breath though :(

The fanfic possibilities, however, are endless and wealthy :D

[lightreads]

Oh, man, what I wouldn't give for a future Ekaterin book. One all about her ridiculously insane life at home while Miles is off being Auditorial somewhere. *dreamy*

[ecaterin]

I KNOW IT! I would be so very very thrilled if she wrote the final story from the point of view of all the women, and even more the POV of the women after our primary male characters have died and they all move forward. Cause you know Cordelia doesn't go back to Beta, raise her/Aral's daughter and retire in obscurity! She's got hell to raise her usual impact on the greater structures of relationship & culture! And you know that Ekaterin doesn't vanish into Vorkosigan House to raise her/Miles's 4 children and be a homebody! She's got a district to run, a culture to continue to drag into the egalitarian present, and a cast of amazing relations to relate with! And you know that Laisa isn't a shy, retiring empress! Goodness knows what she & Gregor are quietly doing to kick Barrayar into the modern age >:D I want to hear more about 'Hellion,' I want to hear more about Laisa & Gregor's 'scarily smart' children, I want to hear more about Ivan growing up (if that ever happens in canon :P).

Very much sigh.

[lightreads]

I was very interested to see the reference in Cryoburn to Cordelia being Vicereine in her own right, not just by consort status. I feel like we didn't know that before? A possible future, perhaps?

And Ekaterin, I love that she belongs to the district in a way that Miles doesn't.