Monthly Mini Review

Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold, narrated by Grover Gardner – B I am slowly making my way through the Vorkosigan saga. (Next are the 2 Miles romance books and I’m so excited!!) I had heard that Memory was very sad and many of my friends report sobbing as they read/listened. I must be heartless because I didn’t have that reaction at all.

I was a bit grumpy with Miles at the start because he was being dishonest and cheating on Ellie (Quinn). At least by the end of the book he had acknowledged that he was in the wrong on the latter (in relation to the former this happened much earlier in the story). Still, Miles is supposed to be better than that!

I also thought the story took a long time to set up and get going. I knew from previous books that all of the beginning would turn out to be relevant to the tale but it didn’t have any sense of urgency for me until after Miles starts investigating what’s happening at ImpSec (I won’t spoil the story by saying exactly what he’s investigating).

It is a transitional book. Miles’ time with the Dendarii mercenaries is coming to an end (that’s not a spoiler, it’s in the blurb) and he has to decide what’s next. I suppose the apparent aimlessness of the beginning of the book fit with what was happening inside Miles but I can’t say that it was riveting stuff. Once Miles was in the thick of his investigation I was much more engaged.

Perhaps because I knew from others that something sad was going to happen, I was bracing for any number of things. As they didn’t end up eventuating, when the thing actually happened (or, at least, what I assume to be the thing my friends cried about) it felt a little anticlimactic and not really a cause for sadness at all. Maybe I’d have felt differently if I hadn’t been expecting anything sad.

Grover Gardner does his usual excellent job of narration. I am so looking forward to the next book in the series and watching Miles finally get a HEA. Memory was, in the wider sense of the series, not my favourite, but LMB is never a waste of my time.

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