Yes, I reviewed a 'Vorkosigan Saga' novel by Lois McMaster Bujold last month too but she's a back-to-back Hugo winner for Best Novel, only the second in the award's history after Orson Scott Card pulled the same trick in 1986 and 1987 with 'Ender's Game' and 'Speaker for the Dead'. I liked 'The Vor Game' a lot, but this is better. It's smoother and feels like a consistent story because it wasn't an expansion of a novella. It was published seventh in the series as a direct sequel to the original that started it all, 'Shards of Honor', which I haven't read.

I was a little worried going on, knowing that it was set before 'The Vor Game', but it didn't matter much. So I knew that some of these characters would survive whatever happens because they're still alive twenty years later. So I knew about the assassination attempt on Miles's parents while he's still in the womb, even though it doesn't happen until a hundred and forty pages in. I knew a bunch of things, but I don't believe that knowledge spoiled anything, just as my lack of knowledge about the first half of this story didn't hold me back.

Clearly I should follow up with 'Shards of Honor', though and, realistically, everything else as well, given that I've had a blast with these. However, I'll have to double up a couple of months because I'm due to read 'Mirror Dance' in July, because that won the Hugo too. Can I work my way through five books in the intervening three months? I guess I'll give it a go. Fortunately, her other winner wasn't part of the 'Vorkosigan Saga' series, so this is the only time I'll need to fill in a gap.

For those who have read 'Shards of Honor', the quick summary from someone who hasn't read it is that Miles is a baby bump when it starts. Emperor Ezar Vorbarra is near death, so Aral Vorkosigan has been appointed regent until Ezar's son Gregor is of sufficient age to accede to the throne. His wife Cordelia, until very recently, was Capt. Naismith of Beta Colony. Gregor's father, the former Prince Serg, has disappeared and his partner in crime, Admiral Ges Vorrutyer, has been killed. His mother, Princess Kareen, is sharp and out of her husband's control. Barrayar itself is eighty years out of the Time of Isolation.

Our narrator is Cordelia, which is interesting just because she's female but even more so for being a stranger in a strange land. For quite some time, this is political intrigue and world-building, told by an outsider who's married in and hasn't quite figured out the etiquette. Barrayan life is wildly different between the everyday people, who we rarely see during the first half of the novel, and the ruling class known as Vor, who we are in constant contact with during that time. The only brief respite from intrigue early on is a failed assassination attempt on Aral and it's the only action we see outside a tournament.

Even having only one book behind me, I enjoyed the character growth. Gregor's a boy here, only five years of age, but he gets moments. Elena is even younger, still an infant worried over by her father, Sgt. Bothari, who's huge and damaged. Aral, Bothari and Koudelka are the only survivors of the 'General Vorkraft' and they're all here. Koudelka is assigned to Aral, just as Droushnakovi shifts from Gregor to Cordelia. Another key player is Aral's father, Count Piotr, who starts out an awful lot better than he ends up, without him defecting to another side.

The pivot point of the novel is the soltoxin gas grenade that's thrown at Aral and Cordelia while they sleep. I knew about this from 'The Vor Game', because, while it counts as yet another failed assassination attempt, the teratogenic antidote will cripple her baby. I didn't know the reasons behind the attempt until now and I certainly didn't see the bigger picture that it belongs to. It's at this point that the book stops being political intrigue almost for the sake of it and starts being political intrigue with real and recognisable stakes. Everything escalates from there until a coup is attempted and suddenly we go from second gear to top.

There's a lot here and there would have seemed to be more when this won the Hugo in 1992. For me, right now, there's a lot here about tech. Barrayar isn't backward to us but it is to Beta Colony and we're reading about it from a Betan point of view. Birth in particular is very different there, with uterine replicators the typical way to go about pregnancy instead of an emergency gamble to save the life of the future Miles Vorkosigan. There's also a lot here about women, which isn't a shock today but likely was in 1992 when science fiction, especially of a military bent, didn't spend a lot of time dealing with mothers and babies and childbirth. It's also a shock to the Vor, as worthy female characters like Cordelia and Droushnakovi have goals inconsistent with tradition.

I won't talk about what happens after the coup attempt, beyond the inevitable battle for power that emerges in its wake, but I will say that Cordelia gains a serious reputation in the latter part of the book to surely prompt any Vor to reevaluate the so-called gentler sex. The moment when she—redacted to avoid spoilers—is absolutely glorious and I'd like to see this novel filmed if only so I could effectively be in the room when it happens. It would take a seriously good actress to do it justice and similar talented actors to react in the background.

Far less important in the grand scheme of things, but not to her, are scenes where she just talks. There's a fantastic and thoroughly emotional conversation between Cordelia and Bothari, which is just as powerful as any world-changing moment. And she ends up as a "go between" for Kou and Drou, which is an official position. The scene where she finally gets them into a room to conquer a nest of misunderstandings is almost as glorious as the scene I mentioned above. These don't need a movie at all because they're hardly visual. They would work as well on radio.

What surprised me the most, I think, was the level of intensity, because it completely ignores any template. Sure, we could map out a high low high low high trajectory but that isn't what makes it all work. That's the intensity level, which starts very low, builds slowly until the pivot point, then builds faster until the coup, at which point it's crazy intense all the way to the end of the book, an inevitable and welcome moment of relaxation our reward for survival. In other words, it's rather like a rollercoaster that starts out ambling along quietly at a serious height, then plummets with increasing speed for a few hundred pages until it finally returns to the level when we're done.

Next month, I'll be looking at half a Hugo winner, because 1993 was a tie. I'll start out with Vernor Vinge's 'A Fire Upon the Deep', a space opera about which I know nothing except I have its sequel on my TBR shelf for review. Then in May, I'll follow up with Connie Willis's 'Doomsday Book', which I haven't read either. Ironically, I've met both authors at conventions and they both kindly signed my copies of these books. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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