enne📚 reviewed Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
Memory
5 stars
Maybe this book rings very true to me as somebody who is airquotes old, but this is really a book about a middle age crisis; about how to handle losing everything, picking up the pieces of yourself, and then going on to the rest of your life all the same.
Miles has largely been unstoppable in previous books, and even death only slowed him down a little bit. But this is the book where he seriously fucks up by making a mistake, doubles down by lying about it, triples down by not come clean about it, and gets kicked out of his ImpSec job. And, his job is also his only connection to the Dendarii mercenaries and his Admiral Naismith identity. He could, of course, go run off to them, but it'd be a treasonous one way trip. So instead he stays home depressed, trying to put his life as …
Maybe this book rings very true to me as somebody who is airquotes old, but this is really a book about a middle age crisis; about how to handle losing everything, picking up the pieces of yourself, and then going on to the rest of your life all the same.
Miles has largely been unstoppable in previous books, and even death only slowed him down a little bit. But this is the book where he seriously fucks up by making a mistake, doubles down by lying about it, triples down by not come clean about it, and gets kicked out of his ImpSec job. And, his job is also his only connection to the Dendarii mercenaries and his Admiral Naismith identity. He could, of course, go run off to them, but it'd be a treasonous one way trip. So instead he stays home depressed, trying to put his life as Lord Miles Vorkosigan back together (and figure out what that even is, having put it on the shelf for so long).
There's some really good foreshadowing of all of this from the previous books. Miles strips Bel of its commission for lying about not knowing about Mark. Cordelia wonders several times what would happen if Miles loses his "little admiral". But the big one for me is when Miles tells Mark, "You are what you do. Choose again, and change." This moment comes a couple of books earlier, but that theme resonates strongly here through the whole book.
I really also appreciated the explicit revisit to Mountains of Mourning and Harra Csurik. This was really the only previous time in the novel that we see Miles really being authentically happy in his role as Lord Miles Vorkosigan, and so it's a great place to revisit in a novel about Miles becoming himself again.
Some smaller bits about book that I enjoyed: * lol at thirty being middle age * Simon Illyan also having to navigate figuring out who he is when he is not his job * the metaphor about the Dendarii being children that Miles is no longer responsible for along with this whole middle age crisis theme * Miles merging both of his selves vs Mark resolving into multiple selves * the Quinn scene at the end where she wants Miles to stay and Miles wants her to go and both would lose themselves if they did
