85 of 92 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Oh..., October 15, 2010
This review is from: Cryoburn (Vorkosigan Saga) (Hardcover)
I've waited for this book for eight years, and just finished reading it, and... For readers of the entire series, it feels like the lightest book of the Vorkosigan universe. Funny, enjoyable, lots of chicanery and a heap of trouble with a squiggly-minded little man on top. But then you hit the end, and you realize that reading it lightly was a serious mistake. It was never light. Not once, though it may seem that way. Jin does not get his fairytale, though he is is given his life anew. And Miles isn't given his fairytale. Just his life, anew. I'm not sure whether to start reading this book over, or start reading the entire series over. It's one or the other, though, because one reading was not enough. I took it too lightly the first round.
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75 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Turning Point, October 16, 2010
This review is from: Cryoburn (Vorkosigan Saga) (Hardcover)
I first read Ms. Bujold's Vorkosigan series when I was in high school in the 1990's. I have reread those books and was eagerly awaiting this next saga. I was not disappointed. This is a book about death, how we deal with it and growing old.
Once again we are again pulled along Miles' wake as he first tries to figure out what is so fishy about the cryonics deal Kommar has with New Hope II otherwise known as Kibou-daini. Kibou is a planet obsessed with death and with trying to beat it and old age. Miles, in the course of resolving his assignment from Gregor and helping 11 year old Jin (two birds one stone kind of thing) must think of his own views on death and aging. In the end these things are easily skimmed over the first time you read this novel. Easily skimmed that is, until the end when Bujold hit you with a train you didn't even see coming. Now those issues Miles and the reader skimmed over are even more profound and I felt a compulsive need to reread the book.
I know this sound like a cryptic review, but you can read a plot summary above before you purchase and any spoilers will truly spoil the book. I can tell you we see a different side Miles who can seem cold even unattached in this book due to the perspective of new characters, who truly have no clue who Miles is. Readers are reassured that the Miles we have come to know is still the same (older & wiser) when the story switches to his perspective. We also see how Miles has grown into his job as Imperial Auditor and Bujold's prose is as witty as ever. I can only give you my best recommendation for a story; it was engrossing, it made me laugh, think and cry. All the things a great story is supposed to do.
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115 of 128 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must., October 19, 2010
This review is from: Cryoburn (Vorkosigan Saga) (Hardcover)
This is the umpteenth Vorkosigan Saga novel, long salivated after by all right and proper fans (whose ranks do include me, as fair warning), and like all books in the series it functions as a stand-alone and even would serve as a decent introduction to the series. It's not the best introduction, but anyone who comes to the series through this novel will have no trouble keeping up with the plot here and will also not be spoiled on any major events from earlier on, except for
Mirror Dance (Miles Vorkosigan Adventures) -- but to be fair, just knowing that the series continues is a spoiler for Mirror Dance.
What makes the Vorkosigan Saga unique in my experience (and if there are any other series that share this quality, please, let me know!) is that it is a very long-running series where each book does stand-alone yet which carries the same set of characters throughout (with the occasional addition or subtraction) and in which the characters undergo fundamental change throughout, significant, life-altering experiences that can't be brushed off or reset in the next volume. The best volumes in the series are, in fact, those that deal with those life-altering experiences.
Cryoburn does not fall into that category. Instead, it falls into the slightly-less-satisfying but still exceptional category of Vorkosigan Saga novels that use the science fiction setting to explore the effect of technological innovation on human society. Unlike many science fiction writers, Bujold has little interest in the physics of her universe; she hand-waved some wormhole-aided space travel technology and then never gave it another thought. The technology Bujold is interested in exploring is the technology of life and death. Many of her novels explore what strange subcultures we might create given a workable uterine replicator (
Falling Free (Miles Vorkosigan Adventures),
Ethan of Athos, and
Cetaganda (Vorkosigan Adventure) leap to mind, and the technology is important in nearly all of the others); this novel explores in depth what strange distortions the cryochamber (a technology that allows freezing and reliable reviving of humans near -- or recently -- dead) might work through society.
I don't think Bujold gets enough credit for how science fiction -y her novels are. Not hard SF -- we get no lovingly technical infodumps of any of these technologies -- but true soft SF of the sort Ursula LeGuin writes, extrapolating futures frightening for how very human they are. I believe, in every Bujold novel, in the way her societies have been distorted. But unlike much thoughtful soft SF, Bujold always bears in mind that she is writing an entertaining story first. I suspect this is why it's easy for people to brush her off. There is nothing didactic about her writing, and the social extrapolation is always either essential to the plot (in which case you can look at it as purely plot-related) or done in small little asides that, if you are racing to get to the end, are very easy to overlook. She also takes time to make the reader laugh, often -- something I wish far more science fiction authors would do.
So Cryoburn works in both those ways. Like many a Miles novel before it, it's a fast-paced adventure wherein Miles happens to people, and their lives (and worlds) are skewed in his wake. Like recent Miles novels, Cryoburn very much benefits from having two POV characters besides Miles; these POVs let us see more of the human cost of his manic forward momentum. One of the alternate POVs, a young boy named Jin, is very well-done and makes this the first Vorkosigan novel since
The Warrior's Apprentice that is fundamentally YA-friendly. (The other POV is Armsman Roic, who though wonderful in the novella "
Winterfair Gifts [With Earbuds] (Playaway Adult Fiction)" is used mainly for plot-advancement here.) And like all Vorkosigan Saga novels, everything comes together in a hectic (but never confusing) climax with Miles the victor.
But after that satisfying (though not world-shattering) climax comes the denouement, which was telegraphed from page one (and which Bujold has repeatedly told readers was next for the series) and which I had been dreading from the moment I heard this book was going to be published. And it feels. . . strange. It left me off-balance, and while I'm sure it was supposed to leave me off-balance I can't help but wonder if Bujold just chickened out. The Aftermaths section (a perfectly pitched call-back to the first Vorkosigan novel,
Shards of Honor) was delicate, and so very right (it's a set of five drabbles), but. . . it will likely leave any new readers confused and cold, and to longtime fans it feels like the only "To be continued" of the series, because it screams for elaboration.
On the other hand, it does work, intellectually, as a cap for a series that has produced three Hugo-winning novels, one Nebula-winning novel, and a number of Hugo- and Nebula-winning short stories and novellas. So it is entirely possible that I am left unsatisfied simply because it's over. Again.
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