Cryoburn

[jack]

I loved Cryoburn less than most other Vorkosigan books, and I'm not sure exactly why. I liked some parts of it, I liked seeing Miles and the other Barrayarans from the childrens' point of view.

Partly, I didn't really fall in love with any of the characters. There were a couple of children, a couple of Barrayaran diplomats, a few locals... but I can barely remember anything that distinguished them from any other children, or diplomats.

Partly, the plot seemed contrived. I didn't understand the threat to Komarr -- whatever the shenanigans with voting shares are, if they're obviously unfair, couldn't they change the law to prevent it after they figure out the problem? The "plot" seems to depend on persuading Komarrans to freeze themselves, isn't that plenty of time to close loopholes in proxying voting shares to corporations?

And I don't understand why Miles didn't have a larger entourage of trained security people, which would have solved several problems.

The first few pages are scary, and then... Miles wanders outside, and the first people he meet are friendly. Roic is kidnapped... and immediately escapes without much danger.

Am I missing something why all this makes sense?

Imperial Auditor

I strongly disagree with several friends who say that this is an inherent problem in Miles being an Imperial Auditor. I certainly agree that it's a difficulty. But it seems like it could be easily fixed.

Eg. Miles had an entourage of security people, but one was suborned by a CryoCorp. There, if Miles is fighting his own head of security, that would be a natural plot development, but really tense and scary.

Eg. A Miles travelled to Kibou-Daini from somewhere other other than Komarr, and a team of security people were supposed to meet him there, but were mysteriously delayed. There, that's essentially the same plot, but with extra tension because Miles is unexpectedly having to fulfil the ImpSec role.

Eg. Have Miles constantly complain that it was supposed to be purely bureaucratic investigation, and he hadn't expected any wetwork. OK, maybe he did do this, but it didn't really sink in, because Miles *always* ends up getting embroiled in things. If they'd stressed that Miles had been on dozens of boring diplomatic missions where nothing happened, it would have sounded more natural he didn't bring an entourage here. But they didn't, they stressed that Gregor thought Miles was the best at flushing problems from dangerous situations.

The ending

Nothing to say, except it was good.

Comments

[hilarita]

Yep. It's mostly 'meh'. A reasonable way of passing a couple of hours. No desire to re-read (unlike, e.g. Memory, which will fall apart in a few years from re-readings).

[syderia]

For me, almost the entirety of Cryoburn exists as a set-up for the ending. We need a plot about cryogenization so Miles and Mark can talk about their father so we can be reminded that Aral is old and somewhat fragile so the end won't come totally out of left field.

[jack]

It's true, this makes sense, but it seems like you've got to do something with the rest of the book, and I didn't especially work out what it was going for, it could have been quite different and still had room for the lines about Aral...

[damerell]

I thought Cryoburn was one of the weakest, certainly.