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"I, Ivan Xav Vorpatril, ..., do take thee, uh ... what did you say your name was, again?"

If I had to rank books in this series by their comedy, this book would be up there right behind A Civil Campaign. Ivan Vorpatril has always had a long series of girlfriends but has dodged marriage as much as he's dodged extra work. The plot hook here is that in an attempt to save two women who are on the run from bounty hunters, immigration, and the local police, Ivan comes up with the idea to marry one of them in a rush (temporarily, of course!). Comedy ensues.

I love that there's a lot of ambiguity about how everybody else reacts to this "temporary" marriage. You get the feeling that everyone is sort of raising their eyebrow at Ivan, but also taking it seriously and are waiting for Ivan to come around to realize he's actually married and it's not just a temporary deal.

There's a lot of good parallels in this book. I liked getting to see Alys Vorpatril whose husband had been killed get to talk about loss and rememberances with Tej, who also has lost her entire immediate family. I like Shiv and Simon both being father-in-laws betting and dealing with each other (and how seeing Simon in this role makes Ivan realize that maybe Simon wants a different relationship with him). I love that Tej and Ivan can connect over how overbearing their families are, and how both of them just involve them in their plans without asking their permission or what they want. I love that both Tej and Ivan alternately both take and don't take their marriage seriously.

Thematically, I also appreciate that we get to see Ivan's reasons for being deliberately "middling" laid out here. In previous books, there's an increasing assumption that he's smarter than he looks but that he just chooses not to apply himself. However, this book really gets into the crux of the issue; because he's always been hyper aware that he's in the line of imperial succession (although not without a few murders and a civil war that he was born into), he has always applied himself to be conspicuously middling at all times. He also talks about being in the shadow of Miles, whose whole family overdoes everything. And truly, he's also just lazy and would rather not be handed work he doesn't need.

I think there are a few minor things that mar this book for me, and both are largely functions of this book being near the tail end of a long series with many characters, being set on a planet where all those characters reside, and also being one of the last books published. One thing this causes is that there is a lot of info dumping here. It needs to explain Ivan's family tree. It needs to retell the story of Vordarian's pretendership. It needs to explain titles of counts and and their heirs. These are all important to the story, but I think none of these things are delivered gently and are also all things previous readers know very well. This also suffers from some Marvel Cinematic Universe effect, where every character in an increasingly large roster needs to have some screen time. I think on the unnecessary end, there's a luncheon with Miles and Ekaterin and their kids, and their parents. Duv and Delia have to show up to. I think all of these folks could have been off planet (to Ivan's relief) without making the books worse. At least the book sends Miles and Ekaterin off to Sergyar pretty quickly so they can't steal the spotlight.

Miles and Ekaterin are getting back from their honeymoon when they are sent off to quaddiespace to investigate some Barrayarans who have gotten into some trouble. Needless to say this small investigation immediately escalates into attempted murders and politics (always) and threats of all out war. This book manages to tie in a bunch of bits from other books: there's the quaddies from Falling Free, Nicol from Labyrinth, Bel Thorne from a bunch of previous books, but also the Star Creche from Cetaganda. I think there's enough background explanation here (sometimes too much) that you could read this book without having read any of the others.

One thing I do really love about this book is that we get to see how terrible Barrayarans are. We get this perspective a little bit from Cordelia's point of view in Shards of Honor when Betans are horrified by backwards militaristic Barrayarans. And we certainly hear some later on a little, largely about Barrayarans fear of genetic mutation. But here, we really get to see Barrayarans as enthusiastic frat boys with weapons. "Oh, some of our people got arrested unfairly, well maybe we should take our plasma weapons down and try to break them out from the local jail."

As this book takes place in quaddiespace and involves a number of quaddies, I really appreciate the parallels that it makes to Falling Free. Part of it is disaffected Guppie, who also lost his livelihood by becoming biologically obsolete on Jackson's Whole. But, I do also love the last paragraph of the book saying "it felt like free falling into the future" as a deliberate echo of Falling Free's title and similar thematic lines.

Only a few books in this series are not from Miles' point of view. Maybe this was an editing decision, but while Miles is out of the action (but after he'd largely set the solutions to everything in motion) we find out that Ekaterin put those plans into action and ordered people around with authority she didn't know she had. This feels to me like it could have been some great scenes and some on page character growth for Ekaterin, but instead we just get told about it.

I think the foreword pitches this book better than I can.

We all know what happens when technological obsolescence hits the products of engineering; what would happen if (always a key SFnal question) technological obsolescence hit the products of bioengineering.

This is a book set two hundred years before Miles Vorkosigan is born. It sets up the origin story of the "quaddies", a genetically engineered race of four-armed people meant to live in zero gravity environments. It's a fun story of corporate greed, "kids" being smarter than their parents give them credit for, and a hectic escape to freedom. Unlike most of the other books in this series, this one feels the most like a more classic science fiction story.

(For those playing Bujold bingo at home, this also fits the older man younger woman romance trope between Leo and Silver. It's very funny that the book Diplomatic Immunity has a dramatic interpretive dance of their historical romance.)

Surely, the real point of having a dozen previous books in a long running series establishing characters and world building is so that you can then truly and properly roast them in the worst dinner party disaster ever imagined.

This book is a comedy of manners about various courtships in the shade of the Emperor getting married. I love that a science fiction action politics series can have a book like this in the middle of it, and it doesn't feel out of place.

I do wonder a little how well this book would stand up on its own, though. There's so much history with Drou and Kou, Cordelia, Mark, Alys Vorpatril, Simon that it's hard to know if this would be quite as satisfying to a reader who doesn't have the level of background of reading all the previous books. I think the primary crux of the story, of Miles waging a surprise war of secretly courting Ekaterin as if it were a military endeavor (and, crucially, without telling her), is romantic comedy that could land for anybody.

There are just SO many delightful moments in this book: * "Mother, Father, let me introduce--she's getting away!" * the pile of terrible suitors for Ekaterin * Cordelia sitting Kareen's parents on the couch to be the baba between them and Mark and Kareen * Ivan being seconded to his mother for the imperial wedding * the Lord Dono reveal to Ivan (but just Dono in general) * Gregor giving Nikki his comconsole number, and Nikki calling * the final courtroom (re)proposal scene in the end

A brief plural aside about Mark and his headmates; I do observe that this book definitely posits Mark as the one who "should" be in charge, with everybody else as explicitly "subordinate" and are described as "semi-autonomous subpersonalities". To me this feels somewhat different than how the previous books have treated it.

(A further brief aside about the cover linked here, but Miles is not taller than Ekaterin. Maybe boxes are really popular?)

Genre-wise, Komarr feels like the initial part of a romance book mixed with mystery. I hesitate to say mystery because none of these really are really true mysteries where the reader had enough information, but it's definitely Miles in investigation mode. Miles is learning his auditor role and goes with Auditor Vorthys to help investigate the destruction of planetary mirror array, staying with Vorthys's niece Ekaterin and her family. What seems like a small embezzlement situation turns into something with much larger political ramifications (as always).

I like seeing Miles as an Auditor and having to learn the limits of his near-absolute power. That finally, a dozen books later, he is in a position where he needs to be careful about what he asks for, because it will happen even if it shouldn't.

One thing I do appreciate generally about this book is that we get to see some of the less wealthy Vor social class who are struggling to get by. Most of the series is about incredibly powerful families on Barrayar who know the emperor on a first name basis. Here, Tien and Ekaterin Vorsoisson are struggling to make ends meet (although this is partially Tien's fault) but also are trying to maintain what it means for them to be Vor. I wish the series had more of this dynamic!

That said, specifically I don't find Tien to be particularly interesting other than as a source of trauma for Ekaterin. It partially reminds me of the bad fanfic trope where there's some established "character in the way" who needs to be made to look as bad as possible (here: controlling, sloppy, petty, mean) so that you can bring the two characters you want together.

I do think the Ekaterin and Miles flirting/romance here mostly works for me. I think it's really well written about what each find appealing about the other; Miles is looking for a competent Vor lady who can love Barrayar, and Ekaterin is looking for somebody who will let her grow and isn't afraid of her son Nikki's genetic disease. This is petty, but I think the only moment where this is ruined for me is the end of the book where Miles offers Ekaterin some jewelry (of a model of Barrayar) and says that he hasn't ever succeeded in giving any girlfriend Barrayar before. I think it's just the one-sided misuse of the word "girlfriend" here that makes Miles seem like he's twelve; even saying "woman" instead would have felt a lot better.