Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold
Cryoburn is the long-awaited new novel in Lois McMaster Bujold’s excellent VORKOSIGAN SAGA, following 2002’s Diplomatic Immunity. If you’re not familiar with this series yet and are in the mood for some intelligent, character-driven and consistently entertaining SF, drop everything now and go find the first few books. Almost all of them are conveniently available in affordable omnibus editions from Baen. You can start with the Cordelia’s Honor omnibus if you want to read the series according to internal chronological order, or Young Miles if you want to start where Miles Vorkosigan, the series’ unforgettable hero, really gets into gear.
In Cryoburn, Miles is on Kidou-daini (a brand new planet in the series, as far as I know) to investigate a possible scam involving cryogenically frozen people. As the novel starts off, he has just narrowly escaped becoming a hostage during an attack at a cryonics conference and is wandering around in a drugged haze, because he happens to be allergic to the drug used by his would-be kidnappers. By the time the (very amusing) hallucinations wear off, he finds himself in an underground cryonics clinic, taken under the wing of a young boy who has recently run away from home. Eventually, Miles finds his way back to the local Barrayaran consulate, and begins to unravel a mystery that leads much, much farther than anyone originally suspected…
Cryoburn shows Miles in his Imperial Auditor role, investigating a mystery in the name of Emperor Gregor, but as he isn’t actually on Barrayar, his powers are more limited than they would be on his home planet. Still, in typical Miles fashion he quickly pulls the local consular staff along in his wake as he investigates and solves the mystery through legal, quasi-legal and, well, uniquely Milesian methods. As always, there’s lots of action, a good amount of humor, and Bujold’s consistently excellent dialogues. It’s hard to be bored, reading a Miles Vorkosigan novel.
By now, a narrative infused with Miles’ manic energy will be more or less expected by long-time readers, but as a special treat, Cryoburn alternates viewpoints from Miles to Jin, the boy he meets at the cryonics clinic, and (best of all) Miles’ Armsman, Roic. Roic is a sturdy, calm fellow who sounds as if he is used to his master’s antics by now. It really can’t be a coincidence that his name rhymes with ‘stoic’. Seeing Miles through Roic’s eyes is the best part of this novel.
In a nutshell, Cryoburn is a good installment in a great series. I doubt that many long-time fans of the VORKOSIGAN SAGA would consider this one of the best entries in the series, but expecting that would put the bar almost impossibly high. The plot also doesn’t really advance the overall story arc of the series much, and instead reads as if it could be one of five or ten other missions Miles completed in the same year. However, the end of the novel, which is unconnected to the mission, suddenly and painfully yanks you back into the main continuity of the series, and will have you clamoring for the next book. Since it’s been almost 10 years since the last Miles book, hopefully this will motivate some new readers to get into the VORKOSIGAN SAGA, which is easily one of the best SF series of the last few decades.
I think you nailed it. It’s not the strongest book in the series even though the secondary characters, especially Zin, were great. But that ending! Big changes ahead.
This one sounds pretty interesting, and I’m always in the mood for good scifi!
I must start these soon!
At times I wonder what “character-driven” means. Does it mean that readers ignore the story?
I admit that I was somewhat disappointed with Cryoburn the first time I read it. It just did not communitcate the excitement of most Vorkosigan stories or the humor of Civil Campaign. But after letting it filter into my consciousness for a while and reading it again it comes across as one of the more meaningful stories in the series.
First of all this world that Miles visits does not have any technology that other worlds in the Nexus do not. But as a society they have done something completely different with it. And some people have more influence on what is done than others. The story also shows how children are completely helpless as to the consequences of the decisions made by adults, even those they never meet. Is that what “character-driven” means?
So who is really in control in our computer driven society? Our economists can’t even talk about the Planned Obsolescence of automobiles, even though there were one billion of them by 2010. What about computers and software?
What is the significance of science fiction if the readers don’t think about the science and technology?