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

[ecaterin]

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.

Bwaa - too true :D And definitely some of my favorite bits of previous books, how people just get sucked along by the vacuum behind Miles as he flows past. If you're caught up in a fast running river, better start swimming or you'll go down! Here we have almost a whole book of it. It's kind of like the mature-Miles version of Warriors Apprentice - he can delegate the heavy lifting, but he's just as unpredictably brilliant :D

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).

OMG SO TRUE. I was positively wincing at her description, far too close to home there, Lois :P

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?”

Still laughing from reading this before :D

Ahem. The point. This book is not a disappointment. It is fun and hilarious and chewy.

Indeed. The light heartedness of this story made it feel less present in the series to me...but that all changes by the end. By the end you realize what this is - this is Miles's last romp, cause he's someone new now. Good thing it was a first class caper then, eh?

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.

When I read this description from you the other day I may have actually squeaked. I love extremely-short form when its done well. Those drabbles are absolutely perfect. Those drabbles tell us as much as another half a book about the rest of that arc. Deep in our back-brain, they manifest a bunch of story-not-written, the bits below the water line. That's always magic to me. Ursula K. LeGuin is my favorite author for several reasons (her complete economy of language - prose that reads like poetry being a huge one) but largely for that ability to give you back story or culture or tone...without ever writing it down! You just look in your brain and go, 'wait, there isn't anything actually IN the book about that, but I can see it clearly.' LMB goes there sometimes, too, and it's fantastic :)

[lightreads]

Indeed. The light heartedness of this story made it feel less present in the series to me...but that all changes by the end. By the end you realize what this is - this is Miles's last romp, cause he's someone new now. Good thing it was a first class caper then, eh?


Yes, less present. Less connected. In that way where everything back home is just on pause while Miles is off doing other things. Except of course this time, it wasn't. Which we knew was coming, but still.

Someone recently critted the book for the structure, pointing out that usually in a Bujold book, the effects of Aral's death would be the book, not an epilogue. I think this is completely true, but not writing that book was clearly important to her writing a new miles book at all. It raises the question of whether another book will follow on from this one, or whether this really is an organic endpoint.

...Catching up belatedly, with fingers falling off from writing.