39. Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold (#10 in the Vorkosigan Saga)

I read this in the omnibus
"Miles in Love"

I love reading and since the dip from my daughter's birth, I have been steadily turning it into a constant habit.  It's kind of like eating for me now, which is cool.  I have to say, though, that sometimes it can be a bit of an effort, especially when a book is annoying or boring.  Reading these Vorkosigan books is the exact opposite.  They are like delicious ice cream sundaes that aren't too filling and not unhealthy.  I had set a goal to find a long science fiction series and many voices suggested that Bujold's saga be the one.  They were right.  However, now that I am over halfway through and really am getting (and really enjoying) the style and rhythm, I have the dilemma of wanting to plow right through them but also wanting to savour them and not wanting them to be over.

This dilemma is only amplified by Komarr being my favourite so far and it leading to a potential romantic situation whose outcome I am desperate to learn!  Komarr takes place on, you guessed it, Komarr. It's the planet situated right next to the only wormhole that goes to Barrayar and is thus strategically crucial for Vorkosigan's planet (and growing empire).  The Cetagandans did a deal with Komarr to allow them through the wormhole to invade Barrayar.  When Barrayar repulsed that invasion, they then came after Komarr, invading it and securing the planet and the wormhole.  Miles' dad was a principal military leader in that invasion and it ended with a bunch of Komarrian politicians and rebels getting massacred after having given up their arms thus earning him the nickname "The Butcher of Barrayar".

Several decades later, the power relationship has softened somewhat as Barrayar has tried to integrate and assimilate rather than dominate.  The Barrayan emperor Gregor has fallen in love with a Komarran scientist and they are to be wed, when suspiciously destructive accident sends a freighter into the massive solar reflector that is crucial to Komarr's terraforming project.  Miles, newly appointed and youngest of the Imperial Auditors is sent out with an older colleague and engineering expert Lord Vorthrys to investigate.

This premise alone is intriguing and satisfying, but this book becomes doubly delicious when they are sent to stay with Vorthrys' niece, Ekaterina Vorsoisson.  She is a stifled wife and mother married to a career bureaucrat who is just on the border of being truly abusive.  However, you define his behaviour he is one of the most dislikeable characters I have read in a book in a long while.  He has a rare genetic disorder that makes him a "mutie" in the Vor prejudice and deals with it in the most loserish way possible, by hiding it and avoiding getting the treatment because he wants to do it in some faraway place where nobody will know which is way beyond their means.  Even worse, his son also has it and he keeps delaying the treatment for him as well.  He is also just a generally insecure and mean dick and the wife has long suppressed herself to be able to survive with him.

What makes the book so fun is that Miles is immediately smitten with her.  She is his physical type and then keeps revealing more and more layers of a great personality with suppressed potential.  These books are very much romantic adventure fantasies in the Georgette Heyer mode (others have made this comparison) and here the comparison is particularly apt.  There are so many great scenes of Miles using his class, charm and experience to try and get her to like him.  The fantasy is on both sides as we want her to fall in love with Miles and we also want him to user his wealth and power to grant her the life she deserves.  It's good stuff!

There is also some cool space stuff (though at the planetary level) and a fun conclusion with some action.  I stayed up way too late.  Now I want to jump into the second one to see how the relationship progresses but also want to wait.  Dillema!