Wow, this book is a lot less complicated than I remember from the first and only time I read it five years ago. (Though actually, it's equally fair that I'm a much more complicated reader, so).

It's a good book – unfolding mystery, wit, emotional tension, new landscapes for the universe. It's just the thematic punches were far more straight-on than I remember – keep an eye out for things that fall in this book and things that are caught, add a twist of identity games, and you've pretty much got it. Two unrelated observations:

1. Wow, it's kind of amazing how Ekaterin codes perfectly as a lesbian trapped in a miserable heterosexual marriage for the first half of this book. From a certain set of textual reading habits, that's exactly what her exhaustion and distance and sexual disconnection mean.

2. You know, I've studied politics and I've studied psychology, and I much less seriously dabbled in history. And I am still really unconvinced by the Komarr integration scheme. I just flat out don't buy it as anything more than naive hope, and, um, Aral Vorkosigan is not naive. He does have a reason to want to redeem the subjugation of Komarr, though, huh. But, I mean, seriously? Two separate planets with a huge spatial and communications gap, a bloody and highly resented conquering (I'm not the only one who keeps analogizing to Ireland, right?), and a completely different cultural conception of power structures are supposed to integrate via the occasional cross-cultural marriage? Ooooooh-kay…

Anyway. The last scene of this book still made me squeal and go, "oh, Miles!" so, you know, it's not like it bothered me that much.