The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Oh, just found this on wikipedia. As usual, not perfect - it doesn't say which Emperor brought in the position of Imperial Auditor for example, but it does have some useful information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrayaran_Imperial_Auditor

Just bought Cryoburn from Baen.

edited 19th Aug '12 4:49:55 PM by TamH70

@ Tam, yeah, that's the Zahn I'm talking about. That's the only other one that really strikes me as a political intrigue/mystery novel in space.

I may have to check that out then. I have, I must confess, a virulent hatred for the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe outside of the first three films, but I will take your recommendation under advisement.

Edit.

Oh joy, it isn't a SWEU book, or at least this review,

http://danielgreenfield.hubpages.com/hub/Night_Train_to_Rigel_by_Timothy_Zahn

doesn't mention it.

Nice!

edited 20th Aug '12 9:34:47 AM by TamH70

I always thought the Imperial Auditor position was not planned from the beginning. I think this because of the thing Nohbody pointed out—no, the position is never mentioned before Memory. I think that in-world it's probably existed for thousands of years... but I think Bujold made it up midway through the series.

As a writer, if I needed to put a particular, new element of my setting to use as a central plot point in a series book, I would make sure to give that element a mention or two in the book preceding it, just to make sure readers knew this new element existed. But if I hadn't done that, and it was too late, the book was in print... I'd just sigh and stick it in the new book anyway. I think that's what she did.

I'm not criticizing. It's a good retcon. But I think it's a retcon, otherwise she'd have mentioned it before. Chekhov's gun and all that.

edited 20th Aug '12 3:01:20 PM by swallowfeather

I agree. I suspect that either Bujold didn't plan past the end of Miles' military career, or she had a plan previously that she decided against. Nothing explicitly contradicts what she put in, but I think if there had been such a position in the past, Miles himself might have been audited a time or two ...

I also agree. I also think that my general impression is that I can only really see Gregor and Ezar on a good day as having the Auditors exist in their current form- under previous emperors, I'd imagine that they'd be the Gestapo to Imp Sec's S.S. (or is it vice versa?)

Edit- It is also plausible that Auditor would be a position the general public doesn't know about, but that also contradicts the later books, I believe- not to mention that even if the general public didn't know about them, Miles would.

edited 20th Aug '12 3:54:05 PM by Jordan

While I do agree that IA seems to have been created as a later thought, it's not really a Retcon. Retcons change previous continuity, and nothing about the Imperial Auditor position really affects previous writing in the series. It simply didn't come up before Memory, because the story didn't require it; had there been need for such a position before then, even if it hadn't previously existed in Bujold's head she'd create it.

I don't think the books say just how old the tradition is, or how common. Perhaps in the past they were simply rarer.

Mainly because, I think, there wasn't much of a population left to audit. The crash in the level of that population caused by the Time of Isolation would have that effect.

I read one of these. I can’t even remember which one now, possibly the first in the series. Anyway, I completely forgot everything about it after finishing it. I couldn’t help but think, “This is the series everyone’s going ga-ga over? The same one that won all those awards? It’s just so...mediocre!”

Anyway, did I make a bad choice in the book I started with? Or is it just not for me?

The first book by internal chronology is Cordelia's Honor, which is far from the best book; it's not awful, but it's backstory, explaining how the series' main character and his environment came to be. I'd say it's a poor start to reading them.

I would disagree with you on that, Morven. If you don't read "Cordelia's Honor", you will not have a clue as to the forces that shaped (literally) Miles into the teenager you see him as in "The Warrior's Apprentice".

I had a similar reaction in reverse. I had heard of the Vorkosigan Saga before I started hanging around here, but since I usually have a virulent hatred of most so-called hard sci-fi, I made up my mind not to read it.

I only started reading them because of the rep the books have here. Best decision I made since I thought I would give this mad idea of a MLP Fi M/Fallout crossover a shot.

Dammit, I got my titles mixed up thanks to the republications. Barrayar is the essential part of the omnibus Cordelia's Honor. The first book, Shards of Honor, is the skippable one. It's stuck together with Barrayar in Cordelia's Honor.

Shards is worth reading once you're hooked on the series, but everything in it that matters big-time is retrod in Barrayar anyway.

Of course, the books aren't to everyone's taste.

I started with The Warrior's Apprentice—that's another good place to start. It introduces you to Miles, who's the main character throughout the bulk of the series—it's the first book from his point of view. Barrayar, the preceding book, is from the point of view of his mom, around the time he's born. She's pretty badass, of course, and she's actually my favorite character, but most people seem to be more attached to Miles himself.

And The Warrior's Apprentice is really pretty representative of what most of the series is like. I'd say for sure if you don't like that one, the saga's not for you.

edited 21st Aug '12 6:40:47 PM by swallowfeather

More so for the first half or so of the series than the second half, I think. But I would go along with most of that.

One wonders what the Barrayaran Empire will end up like, what with the genetic matrix for telepathy from the X-10-Terran-C program handed over in that sample that Terrence Cee gave Imp Sec via Commander Elli Quinn ticking away like a timebomb. ( I am pretty sure that is what happened in the last bit of "Ethan of Athos" ), a greater (perhaps) level of acceptance of childhood deformity amongst the Barrayar population and a fully terraformed Sergyar to play around in.

That ain't going to be bearing fruit any time soon, at least not on Barryar. (Athos may be another story)

Yes Miles has done a lot to counter prejudice against those who are considered 'deformed' but remember even he has a defensive tic 'teratogenic, not mutagenic'. And as the sample chapters for Captain Vorpatril's Alliance show that even Ivan, who is probably among the most cosmopolitan and open minded segment of Barryaran high society still has a knee jerk reaction to the word 'mutation'.

Add to that the legacy of the Cetandagan occupation and anything that's going to happen with that is going be very sub rosa lest they bust out the torches and pitchforks.

Once that school got built in the Dendarii hill country in the aftermath of Mountains of Mourning, a stake got driven into the heart of the prejudice in Barrayar. The corpse of that prejudice is still shambling about, hasn't got the message yet that it is dead, but it is. Time will see it so.

Remember how that school was built in the first place, and who it is named after. The teachers and the pupils who pass through it will not forget. And they will spread that knowledge like a virus. One that instead of taking life, ensures it.

Barrayar now is not the same as the Barrayar that was. The old men and women that kept it in the dark ages are dying off very quickly. And as is well known, Ivan is an idiot. His kids will not be. His wife will see to that. Miles still has that nervous tic, as you said, but I would purty much go along with the proposition that it will make less and less difference as his kids get older, regardless of the pressures of being Count Vorkosigan.

edited 22nd Aug '12 7:48:51 PM by TamH70

It's worth remembering, too, that Ivan's not quite as stupid as he likes to pretend. He learned early on that playing dumb let him avoid responsibility.

Not just about laziness, either. For his social class, responsibility tends to include pain and death.

edited 23rd Aug '12 12:03:28 PM by Morven

Is it bad that I think a book with Ivan as a protagonist would be kinda awesome?

Because it would.

He does have his own book, and it's hilarious.

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. Available here:

http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1678-captain-vorpatrils-alliance-earc.aspx

Note, electronic advance reader copy. There may be formatting issues and the like but the book is really really funny.

and try not to make the same mistake I did. Read this one before Cryoburn. Like a lot of other books in the series, Mrs Bujold did not write the books referred to in strict chronological order.

I don't think it matters all that much, TBH. The very ending of Cryoburn might make some scenes process differently in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, but it doesn't affect the plot.

I disagree a bit on that. Not reading them in the order I suggested made the punch at the end of Cryoburn worse. Poor Ivan.

since the cryoburn cd seems to be offline at the fifth imperium, do only the hardcovers come with the CD's?

Buy the Cryoburn ebook at Baen Ebooks, here:

http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1252-cryoburn.aspx

Once done, scroll down the page, notice the cd iso zip file, download it and profit.

6 bucks for a helluva lot of material isn't to be sneezed at.