Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold
Baen, $25.00, 352pp, hc, 9781439133941. Science Fiction. On-sale date: November 2010.
Miles Vorkosigan is back, and salivating fans will be satisfied. It’s been eight years since we last had a new novel of Lois McMaster Bujold’s diminutive, hyperactive, hyperintelligent scion of Barrayar, and that’s been a long wait for fans of the long-running series. Echoing that eight-year absence, we discover that Miles has aged about eight years since Diplomatic Immunity, his last outing. He’s now comfortably married, the father of a couple of hyperactive children, and a very experienced Imperial Auditor. In fact, he’s Emperor Gregor’s first choice for cases of galactic impact, because Miles’s previous career (as an admiral running a mercenary fleet) has given him far more experience beyond the borders of the Barrayaran Imperium than all the other Auditors put together.
As he ages, Miles is slowing down a bit (just a bit), and so too is the story. Miles is off on another Auditorial mission, but we get quite a ways into the book before we learn just what that mission is. And Miles, being Miles, is very quick to discover a far more important, far more interesting case than the one assigned him. Ah, the joys of having nearly unlimited authority and a keen mind: haring off after the new case is all part of the job. And scrambling to keep up is SOP for Armsman Roic, constantly following, helping, and trying to protect his Lord.
Miles is on the planet Kibou-daini for a cryonics conference, and as the story opens, he’s wandering around the cryocombs in a world of drug-induced hallucination. It takes Miles (and us) quite a while to figure out why he was drugged, and just what he was doing in the extensive tunnels that house the crygoenically frozen—but legally still alive—residents of Kibou-daini. He was one of the targets of a mass kidnapping at the conference. Political intrigue, and differences of opinion over the treatment of the cryocorpses, reigns on Kibou. The companies that rule the trade rule the planet (as they hold the cryocorpses’ voting proxies, and control their estates in trust), and they like the set-up just fine as it is.
But there are other groups more interested in the truly alive, who would rather see the power (and the wealth) diffused out among the population. And one of those groups was apparently responsible for kidnapping Roic, Doctor Raven Duronna (member of the Duronna Group of physicians which is one of Miles’s clone-brother Mark’s earliest investments), and several other conference attendees—not for ransom, but to convince them to turn against the cryocorps. Well, once Miles is stuck in the middle of something, it’s that something which is in trouble, not Miles. True to form, he sets out to change a world without even meaning to.
Calling on the support of the Barrayaran consulate, Miles has access to whatever power the Barrayaran Empire has on this far-flung world (not much). And calling on his new-found squatter friends living in an abandoned cryopreservation facility, he has access to what just may be the true strength of this world. Now all he has to do is combine those resources to fight against the massively wealthy, massively powerful, completely entrenched cryocorps that want nothing more than to continue as they are. And incidentally, it would probably be in Miles’ best interests to at least give the illusion of accepting the bribe the White Chrysanthemum Corporation is desperately offering, in order for Miles to grease their entry to the Imperium.
But why would they want that entry? Is there something in their methods of business that makes Barrayar especially tempting? Surely it’s not the minor profits they’ll earn preserving people for later thawing, when they can be cured of what ails them. No, it’s something far more sinister. War is afoot, and once again, it’s up to Barrayar’s newest, youngest, shortest Imperial Auditor to turn the tide and win the battle before it’s even begun.
Following the template of earlier Miles novels, none of the story takes place on Barrayar. But there are shout-outs to the history we readers fondly remember. Mark and his companion make an important appearance (although Lady Ekaterin and the children are off-stage). The spectre of Count Aral and Countess Cordelia hover over much of the story, but again, intrude very little. Barrayaran politics is almost completely absent. What we have is the Miles we’ve grown to love being Miles: using his brain instead of his brawn to solve problems far too big for an ordinary person to tackle.
This is a deserving entry into the wonderful Miles series.