Memory

This story is a slowly-unfolding mystery taking place mostly on the planet of Barrayar, as our hero Miles tries to come to terms with being fired (which he knows he deserved) and also tries to understand why, soon afterwards, his very capable former boss suddenly has mental problems.

It's not at all clear for some time where the story is going, but in the end the purpose of it is basically to force Miles out of his previous career and settle him into a new and different one; and this is well accomplished.

As usual with a Bujold novel, the ending is more upbeat than the rest of it; but I find the rest of the story gripping and not depressing, despite Miles being very worried and unsure of himself, and several other characters also having a hard time.

I've seen someone describe this book as a “bad mystery”, because readers may be able to guess the identity of the villain before anyone in the story does. But I don't think that's the point. The author was trying to write a novel, not a guess-the-villain puzzle; if you want that kind of puzzle, look elsewhere. The identity of the villain is supposed to be a puzzle for the characters in the story, not so much for the reader. Whenever I reread a book, I usually remember the identity of the villain; and I reckon to reread good books over and over again, because I enjoy them.

Identity has been, in many ways, the central theme of the Vorkosigan Saga - how people define themselves, and how they can create prisons for themselves by letting others define themselves.

So of course, at this midpoint in the series, Bujold takes two of the central characters, Miles and Simon Illyan, and has outside forces strip their cherised, hard-fought-for identities away. Of course, identity is not the type of thing one can really survive without, so both men have to mourn their old lives, and then find new ones. In Miles' case, especially, building his new/old self takes time, and pain, and very nearly blood, making it more like a traditional birth than one from a Betan uterine replicator.

There is, of course, also a mystery/adventure plot to keep things moving along, and Miles gets to take on a new role (if not quite a new identity). Those parts were entertaining to read, and it's always a pleasure to watch Miles work his way through knots so Gordian that you can't even tell there's a knot there, but those parts by themselves would not be enough to make Memory a classic - it's instead the relationship between Simon and Miles, and watching them put themselves back together again, that made it such a satisfying read.

I almost missed this one, because it wasn't included in the CD of omnibus editions I received as ebooks, but I'm quite glad I didn't - it's an essential part of the Vorkosigan canon and quite literally changes everything.