Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold

[rowyn]

This is an enormously painful book; unlike most of the Vorkosigan books, I remembered significant sections of it with uncomfortable clarity. It's not so a matter of implausibility or coincidence in the action, but just that a lot of the events are agonizing. Even knowing how it would resolve was not enough to buffer against the rawness of it. It's an important book, but I was tempted to skip it just for it being so full of horror. I read it again anyway, and it does have a nicely satisfying denoument, so there's that. I am only giving this one a 5, though. I don't think I'll be reading it again.

Next up is Memory, which I don't particularly recall. I think I'll finish the ninth Aubrey/Maturin novel first, Treason's Harbour, first -- I'm around halfway through it already.

Comments

[mrw42.livejournal.com]

Do you have a list of all of the Vorkosigan books in order? I am not sure I have read all of them, and I read them out of order, so it might be interesting to go back and do them again...

[zeeth_kyrah]

Next up is Memory, which I don't particularly recall.

Ironic, that..

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

I liked Mirror Dance, and I might rank it a bit higher than a 5, but not a lot higher. The bits with Miles having to do detective work on his own memories to figure out who he is (and how many people he is) made up for the torture porn, and Mark's "black gang" metaphor works for me way better than I thought it would.

I do remember Memory. Very, very fondly. So fondly that, frankly, having read the books after it (except for the most recent), I really, really feel like Memory should have been the series finale and she should have started another wormhole-nexus series introducing all new characters. For one thing, Auditor Miles is just way, way less interesting than either Lieutenant Miles or Admiral Miles. Remember how the first book-length story's title is a pun on Disney's version of The Sorceror's Apprentice? None of the books since, well, maybe since the end of Borders of Infinity, has that same madcap pacing that I so enjoyed, nor Miles' previously nearly endless reserves of charm and enthusiasm. Yes, it's realistic that (especially after the disaster that happens to him at the beginning of Mirror Dance) Miles grows up and grows old. But realistic isn't, in this case, good story-telling.