First, whoever drew Dag on the cover did not know what they were thinking. I really don't see his attractiveness in this image and yet his is really attractive in Bujold's writing. We can't even see his golden eyes here. After the excellent capture of Spark's character on the last cover, I found this a real let down.

That said, the rest of the novel was a bit of a let down as well. Dag's Lakewalker community troubles take up way too much of the first half of this book. It's interesting as they come in, meet characters and discover relationships, but the meat doesn't happen until the latter part of the novel. And now that they're together, the heart fluttering romance is more of a throb and less of a flutter. Yet Bujold keeps me interested with her world building. There is obviously a lot more to the history of this place that she has in mind and I would love to find out, so I will keep reading.