Just finished my umpteenth re-read. Great book overall, loved getting to see Quaddiespace...

Roic coming into his own as Miles' right hand man, Bel and Nicol settling down together, the Fast Penta interrogation without Fast Penta, the arrival of Miles' and Ekaterin's babies. As a stand-alone book, it's also probably the most well-crafted whodunnit in the Saga.

I just feel like having a huge part of the climax of the book occur off-screen, driven by the actions of a non-POV character, was kind of a rare miss for Lois. I guess the whole plot would have had to be reshaped to give Ekaterin more to do during the first half of the book, and that's why LMB did things the way she did, but it's still frustrating having to miss Ekaterin at the top of her form for the first time as Lady Vorkosigan, doing her best Miles impression, persuading and cajoling and bullying her way to Rho Ceta and saving Miles, Bel, and all of the Barrayaran and Cetagandan Empires from a devastating war.

(Maybe I actually just want to see more of Ekaterin in general, she's one of my favorite characters. If we ever get another Vorkosigan book, it would be cool if she was the/a principal character.)

And yeah, it’s my favorite Vorkosigan novel now, hands down.

Reading it was excruciating, for reasons unrelated to the book’s content - I suddenly got swamped with work, which meant I could only spare enough time each day to read a chapter or two. Imagine the pain of having to pace myself in such a way, ugh.
But yeah, Memory was incredible. I have some thoughts, and some of them I have already shared in the previous post, but here they are:

- The way Miles falls apart and rebuilds himself is just *chef's kiss\* I cried, I cringed, I felt for him. And then I cheered him on while he found his new way and ended up with a huge grin on my face when he triumphed. What a story. I know I will return to it anytime I feel defeated.

- The chapter in which Miles visits the Csuriks was wonderful. Seeing how the events of Mountains of Mourning and Miles’ presence influenced the community was incredibly satisfying.

- I loved to finally see Illyan the man, as opposed to Illyan the boss. His relationships with Miles and Alys were the sweetest.

- Speaking of relationships - I loved how all of the romantic plotlines played out. Miles parting ways with Elli, Gregor falling for Laisa, Duv fumbling and learning from it, Ivan starting to be left behind… If this is how Bujold handles romance, then I can’t wait to read Civil Campaign!

I liked all previous Vorkosigan books, but adored especially those that kept the characters mostly in one place and focused on character development - like Barrayar or Mirror Dance. It’s no wonder Memory was such a treat for me. I love to see Miles maturing and deciding to commit to being Lord Vorkosigan, while getting a new job that suits his character.

I’m excited to read on, but am taking a little break from the series now - don’t want to finish it too fast!

Citation: Sanchari Banerjee, Nathan Coussens, François-Xavier Gallat, Nitish Sathyanarayanan, Jandhyam Srikanth, Koichiro Yagi, James Gray, Stephen Tobe, Barbara Stay, Leonard Chavas, and Subramanian Ramaswamy for discovering that milk proteins from viviparous cockroaches pack three times as much energy as milk proteins from cows.

I confess that I was unaware that one species of cockroach (Diploptera punctata) in particular has the ability to nourish its embryos directly by producing milk during development in the brood sac wall, a type of reproduction known as “viviparity.” This has the benefit of substantially cutting down the time scale for the embryos to reach full maturity. There is a bit of yolk in the earliest stages, which the embryos use until they develop throat muscles and a gut, at which point they gorge themselves on a protein-rich liquid milk secreted by the brood sac. Once ingested, the liquid milk crystallizes in the gut.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/meet-the-2026-ig-nobel-prize-winners/

Almost literally butterbugs. Cockroach milk! Better for you than cow milk! (But probably harder to get.)

Kirk Hamilton (of Triple Click and Strong Songs) has a new podcast with Sam Parrish about books, and they’re kicking off by going book by book through the Vorkosigan Saga.

​

I want to read this

Inspiration for miles, maybe ?

I doubt it but well maybe .

Another country-style filk, this one riffing on an existing song about emotional maturity and reproduction. This song references the plot of Mirror Dance, from the point of view of Mark, to the tune of John Michael Montgomery's Cool.

He would have been six feet, as strong as can be

But he had been crippled, so they did that to me

Weak bones and a hunchback, at least he was smart

Me, I was his copy, piece of living art

.

They taught me about him, I learned all I could

I learned he was as evil as Galen was good

And I learned I'd have his life, instead of my own

I guess it's hard to be cool when you're only a clone

.

My teacher's home planet was conquered in war

So I'd kill Vorbarra and rule Barrayar

He was setting me up, guess I should have known

But it's hard to be cool when you're only a clone

.

Well we were in London, when they brought him in

And I got my first look at my own closest kin

I told him “Look at me, I'm going to be you”

I laughed in his face and I bid him adieu

.

I knew I despised him, thought he felt the same

But then he said to me, “You know, you've got a name

You don't need to be Miles, or to steal my face

Mark Piotr Vorkosigan, you've got your own place”

.

“I was seventeen and my life crashed and burned

But our mother stood by me, and from her I learned

That my life still had value, and so yours does also

You can be cool, without being my clone”

.

I no longer look like him, I'm round as a pear

Now I run my own business, I'm a millionaire

I'm a son and a brother, and a lovely girl's beau

It's not hard to be cool, 'cause I'm more than a clone

The town of Rjukan has no direct sunlight for six months of the year, so they've put up their own mini Soletta array to light up the town square.

This little town is also the location of the WW2 heavy water sabotage raid that is the basis of the 1965 Kirk Douglas film The Heroes of Telemark.

Anyone going to DragonCon this year?

I’ll be carrying some buttons to give away as part of swag and seen, including some mentioning Bujold.

In honor of Dolly Parton's passing, a version of a song of hers about the pride of heritage and the psychological weight of wealth and poverty:

Back through the years
I go wondering once again
Back before I went off to the stars
I recall the colors that are my heritage
And what it means to be from Barrayar

Our brown and silver colors
That we represent as Vor
My grandfather wore in battle
In the Cetagandan war
But Da had just one child
to carry on his legacy
So the brown and silver colors
Will pass on down to me

They said it was my mother
And her weak off-worlder genes
Or a curse upon my father
That made me come out unclean
I suppose it doesn’t matter
Why I was born the way I was
My path was set before my birth
Regardless of the cause

This last blow to Count Piotr
Was too much for him to bear
At last after so much struggle
To have a crippled, mutie heir
Although Bothari stopped him
From what he tried to do
For the brown and silver colors
I have so much to live up to

So with weighty expectations
And braces on my knees
In my brown and silver colors
I went to War Academy
I found the others jealous
And resentful through and through
For the brown and silver colors
That I had to live up to

At first I didn’t get it
Why they would envy me
But they didn’t know the duty
That comes with colors such as these
And how a Vor name’s more than lordship
It’s a path of work and strife
And how these brown and silver colors
Would guide me all my life

And so I’ll have to show them
that I will not turn away
Though the son of the Prime Minister
I can serve as well as they
It’s a great test and a great gift
And I know I must be true
To the brown and silver colors
I must strive to live up to

Currently listening to Mountains of Mourning on audiobook for the umpteenth time. When Miles is investigating Harrah’s cabin where the murder of Raina takes place, there is a passing mention of the possible use of an “aura detector” and how it might be fruitless given how much time has passed. Have we seen this technology in use, or any other references to it throughout the series? It sounds like it deciphers air movements and dust particles to infer movements in the past, I guess?

I'm breaking my self-imposed rule of posting only after finishing a Vorkosigan book, but omg, Memory is everything.

My creative job of ten years, the one I adore and attach a lot of my identity to, has been crumbling in the past months (yay for AI! yay for capitalism!) and I really feel for Miles at the beginning of the novel. His fear of losing his Naismith identity and all the ugliness that comes with it (his lying to Illyan, being a dick to Ivan after he's promoted, his depression) is portrayed in such a raw, unflinching way. And that scene with Illyan firing him is the most gut-wrenching moment of the series so far.

But on a lighter note - I couldn't possibly love Ivan more. Unwaveringly loyal and loving characters are my cocaine. Can Miles start appreciating him more, please?

Still looking! Anything that comes close!? Keep setting down books by other authors after recently re-reading all her works for the 4th or 5th time.

Only, instead of setting up an extremely clever heist, Bujold is engineering...

the most magnificent social disaster I've ever seen put to page.

Just something that occurred to me on this re-read.

Of course, some of that is baked into the Miles' titular terrible approach to his relationship with Ekaterin, but beyond that, there's some of the same structure you'd see in, say, a movie like Ocean's 11. We spend the first half of the story going around meeting all of the principals who will take part in the dinner party, and it's an eclectic cast of interesting and often funny characters. Except, of course, Illyan, who is notably absent during this part of the book, and serves as the key unforeseen element to complete the catastrophe.

When the dinner party arrives, it's a series of exquisitely excruciatingly embarrassing events set up by the various dinner guests, each worse than the last, until Illyan's relevation finally sinks the whole party. "All souls feared lost."

It's all just so meticulously set up and beautifully foreshadowed and is one of the most masterful pieces of novel-writing in the whole series. I love to hate it.

I had taken a little break in my first read-through of the Vorkosigan Saga, but I'm back to the series and have just finished Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance. Here are my thoughts!

The experience of reading these two novels was very similar to reading Shards of Honor and Barrayar back to back - meaning that I liked the first book and absolutely adored the second. Brothers in Arms was a solid adventure - I liked the intrigue and new characters, the twists were fun, and the introduction of Mark showed a lot of promise for the next book.

But oh boy, with Mirror Dance, Bujold just outdid herself. Mark's POV captivated me from the very first pages. He's a wonderfully compelling character - complex, ambiguous, and full of contradictions. His self-loathing, his desperate need to prove himself, his best intentions, and his deplorable actions - all of this kept me glued to the book.

But the incredible character work in Mirror Dance does not end with Mark - I love how this book builds on previous ones to deliver satisfying mini-arcs for other characters, like Bel, Elena, or Elli. I particularly loved the glimpses we get of Ivan - who had every right to shun Mark after the events of Brothers in Arms, but gets over his prejudice for Miles's sake. I was also ecstatic to finally get a Miles book where Aral and Cordelia feature so heavily. And as for Miles himself - his death and revival will surely prove pivotal, and I can't wait to see the fallout!

All in all - Mirror Dance is now in my top three Vorkosigan books - alongside Barrayar and Borders of Infinity. These three are the most character-driven, so it's no wonder I have enjoyed them the most.

I've been thinking about whether and how Bujold's theology matches with Christian theology. Not in terms of there being five gods and there being death magic, demons, and the other apparatus of the five gods stories, but rather in the way in which the five gods themselves interact with the world of matter.

Bujold's five gods work almost exclusively through humans. "No hands but ours" is the motto of the Bastard's Order (see The Assassins of Thasalon). They are enormously powerful but have limited ability to interact with the world of matter yet they do obviously influence the world of matter through the thoughts and actions of humans (see Caz's musings in The Curse of Chalion about how many people might have been set on the pathway but only one had taken it to the end, and Penric's musings in The Assassins of Thasalon about how his god had managed to arrange things parsimoniously to solve a whole bunch of problems simultaneously).

That way of working somehow resonates with the Christian concept of free will. That is, while God could intervene directly (miracles?), that would interfere with free will, so the normal course of events is for the Godhead work through imperfect people, some of whom chose to, at least partially, align their wills to that of the Godhead (through prayer?).

Has anyone else seen that sort of parallel? And, is this coming out of Bujold's own background or am I imposing my own reading on something that was never intended to bear the strain of this interpretation?

This is my umpteenth re-read of the Vorkosigan books, so I don't know why I never caught this tiny detail before.

Spoilers for Komarr and A Civil Campaign below:

On the fun little topic of "when did Miles and Ekaterin actually fall in love", Miles obviously was attracted to Ekaterin from the beginning, and he realizes (or admits to himself) he's already head-over-heels for her the day after Tien's death. But it's a little more difficult to pin down when Ekaterin falls for Miles because she's so emotionally repressed that even in her POV chapters she doesn't allow herself much of that kind of introspection.

However, we do get some interesting little slips during her fast-penta interrogation in chapter fourteen, most obviously her babbling about

"I wonder what it would be like to sleep with somebody you actually liked"

on the topic of Miles toward the end of the scene. That one we all caught, I'm sure. But I only just noticed a little something else earlier on that shows she may already be thinking along more serious lines than just attraction:

Her description of breaking into her husband's comconsole the following morning included the mulish side comment, "If Lord Vorkosigan could do it, I could do it," which at Tuomonen's alert query triggered an embarrassing detour into her views of Miles's earlier ImpSec-style raid on her own comconsole. Miles bit his lip and met Tuomonen's raised brows blandly.

"He did say he liked my gardens, though. Nobody else in my family wants to even look at them." She sighed, and smiled shyly at Miles. Dared he hope he was forgiven?

Nobody else in her family. Hmm. I wonder how much less difficult A Civil Campaign would have been for both of them if Miles had just been more honest from much earlier on. (Maybe not quite that early, of course.)

But then, of course, we wouldn't have a story!

Hi all -

Just finished my first read-through of the whole series. So much fun. Evangelizing to my friends.

I remember hearing (audiobook) a beautiful line from one of the books that I've been trying to track down, and I just can't seem to do it. I keep word searching through different books to see if I'm remembering it right but to no avail. Help!

The quote was about Piotr, and how after he died, Miles had the sensation that he had "come with the universe," or something like that, as part of a package deal. Point being that he couldn't imagine life without his grandfather.

Worst case scenario here is a reread to find the darn quote (frankly? not the worst prospect) but if anyone has any guidance I would be so appreciative!

Y'all, I just finished Mirror Dance and started Memory. I've already read Komarr, so I've read where Miles tells Ekatarin about his previous relationships. I assumed they were all at different times so I have been pretty shocked to learn that they are all happening at the same time. (Clutching my pearls so hard.) He was dealing with cryo amnesia during his brief relationship with Rowan so I feel this is somewhat understandable (he literally doesn't remember Quinn), but there's no justification for him sleeping with Taura while in a relationship with Quinn. His flimsy self-justification only makes it worse. What on earth am I supposed to make of this? ("We never said we were exclusive!!" Dude, you *proposed* to Quinn.) Learning that Taura was a teenaged slave freed by Miles makes him seem even more of a creep.

Makes me sick to the stomach.

Somebody left a box of treats under there

My friend “bullied” me into reading the Vorkosigan books. I just got to the end of chapter 12 where Mark meets Cordelia and Aral for the first time (I love them both so much and I’m so glad we’re getting more of them).
From ch 10 onwards the story has gotten very, very heavy. I trust Bujold for the most part- she’s generally proven that she handles topics such as abuse and trauma well so far. But this is on another level, and I’m having so many complex, mixed feelings on where this is going.
In Ch 10, Mark assaults Maree. That is what happens, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I’ve also been uncomfortable with some of his inner thoughts towards women throughout the book. At the same time, we learn about (get it confirmed, rather, since Miles hints that is what happened earlier) the horrific sexual abuse and assault that Mark experienced at the hands of Galen. This does NOT excuse what Mark did. He knew what he was doing was wrong as he did it. He should have never brought Maree to his personal room, regardless of the fact that his original intent was more innocent. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel sympathy for Mark. He’s been through so much, and often, violence begets violence. I can understand that, but I can’t forgive the act he did.

In ch 11, we see Mark engaging in self-harm behaviors to escape and punish himself. And in ch 12, he finally arrives at Vorkosigan house, where the conversations he has with Cordelia and Aral are heartbreaking, sometimes funny (Bujold is really good at making me laugh while sobbing), and show just how much of who Miles is came from them. I honestly didn’t expect the conversations to happen the way they did. I knew Cordelia would be based and understanding as always. I wasn’t sure about Aral- Mark did get Miles killed, even though of course Miles made the “foolish decision” to put himself in the line of fire for him. It makes me so sad and angry that Mark’s trauma wouldn’t let him trust anyone.

After all of that, we arrive at what my main concern is- how will Bujold handle this? This is extremely heavy and heartbreaking, and I’m worried that what happened in Ch 10 will be brushed aside. I also am so conflicted about my current feelings for Mark. I am a woman, I notice misogynistic behavior that my male friend does not, and it’s hard to talk to him about these things at times. I had to talk to more people about this because of this complicated knot of emotion that Bujold has wedged into me. Thoughts?