CryoBurn

Book: Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold

Bookrant time. I've just stayed up all night to finish Cryoburn, the latest (last?) book in the Vorkosigan Saga. Got in only 5 hours of sleep since so I'm still a little bleary-eyed and will likely be a miiiite incoherent. The Vorkosigan Saga is a series I highly, highly, recommend to anyone who likes reading for pleasure by the way, and since this is one of the later books my thoughts on it are bound to be full of spoilers, so I'll put those parts below the cut.

Cryoburn follows the latest adventure of Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, who was 16 when we first met him in The Warrior's Apprentice and is now 38 and (mostly) settled with a family of his own. As Imperial Auditor of the Barrayaran empire, Miles is sent by Emperor Gregor to investigate an off-worlder cryocorps' plans for expansion onto one of their own planets. The cryocorps (cryonics corporation) in question is one of many that effectively rule the planet Kibou-daini, a planet obsessed with cheating death by freezing their dead by the millions.

Kibou-daini is the first nod I've ever seen given to an Asian culture in this series (a Japanese one, in this case). Don't worry, I'm not going to devolve into a rant about diversity and multiculturalism here, because 1) I don't feel that strongly about it, and 2) my thoughts are rather preoccupied with other things. Still, I thought I'd just mention this because I overlook things like this in fiction all the time, but the extent of globalisation (universalization?) in the future written in these books have led even me to wonder about the absence of Asian characters. You'd think China having the biggest population on old Earth would mean at least a significant, if not strong, presence in the galactic world many centuries later. Oh well.

I've read some reviews that seem to be of the opinion that this book isn't one of her best. That it hasn't got any memorable characters, aside from Miles himself, who is rather diminished as well. I think I have to agree. Bujold can write yes, but I've always felt that it was her characters who made the book, and all the interesting new ones promised in the summary,

"...a young boy with a passion for pets and a dangerous secret, a Snow White trapped in an icy coffin who burns to re-write her own tale, and a mysterious crone who is the very embodiment of the warning Don't mess with the secretary."

just didn't seem to live up to their potential. Everyone felt a little flat, smaller somehow and faded into the background, even the villains, who aren't even on-page at all. This book sounds like a dud right, so why am I still talking so much about it? Well, then there was the epilogue. Which was so bittersweet and beautifully written and in keeping with what the author has effectively set up for the whole novel, that I can't believe I didn't see it coming. In fact I feel like the entire adventure in Cryoburn was really a prelude to the epilogue, a thought experiment before the actual deed -- which may be why it seems so faded as a standalone? Because it's not meant to overshadow the ending?

I'm venturing into spoiler territory here; click for more.

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Count Aral Vorkosigan, the great man behind Miles's 'Great Man's Son Syndrome', has been a huge driving force in Miles' life and story (12 books worth of them), directly and indirectly. He's one of The main characters, even if he's not actually a main character, so I suppose it's fitting that Bujold pretty much takes an entire book to send him off to the afterlife. Tribute to the great man? It worked anyway, because I'm all teared up.  :'(

I love books like this, books that manage to turn my thoughts and judgments and ignorance on themselves. In case it isn't obvious enough already, death and mortality is the theme that runs throughout Cryoburn. Cryonics is so prevalent on Kibou-daini that activists lobby for inclusion of the poor, for basic human rights to encompass the chance to be frozen and have your life extended. Mention is made of the planet Jackson Whole's ethics-free clone-brain-transplant operations, and the story crosses paths with Miles's brother Lord Mark's lifelong goal to put them out of business by developing better life extension methods.

At one point, Miles observes that with mortality being absolute, so it might be as well for people's obsession with avoiding it.

"I'm not so sure of that," said Miles thoughtfully. "If people start getting frozen at eight hundred instead of eighty, the game will still go on, just set to a new equilibrium."

It was just this sort of intellectual detachment from the idea of death that I maintained throughout the novel. I wondered at people's obsession with staying alive indefinitely. I agreed with Miles' casual judgment that these people were more concerned about not dying than living. When Sergeant Taura refused to be cryonically frozen on the grounds that life would be just as difficult after, and that she wouldn't want to wake up in a world with no friends, I nodded along with her.

I viewed mortality through the lens of an outsider much like Miles did most of the book. Then BAM! the epilogue comes packing a huge emotional punch, and I am knocked on my back. My immediate reactions, as expected, were along the lines of don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie. I don't care what state Count Aral would be in otherwise just not something so final as death please. I cried.

I'm not discounting either of the reactions I had to dying, logical and emotional. I feel that it is precisely because I held two such (naturally) conflicting views in that short span of time that I can examine them in tandem and reconcile them to each other. Miles kind of goes through a similar journey (though fundamentally different I guess, real grief is nothing like fiction-induced grief, and I've not had any deaths in my immediate family whose memory would be triggered by this). He makes those pithy observations on death to himself, then struggles with letting go when it comes to the people he loves (Sergeant Taura and his father). I felt his pain even as I tried to remove myself from it. It is a testament to Bujold's skill that she has managed to engender in me so much love and subsequently grief for a character who mainly exists through Miles's eyes within the context of these books.

And thus, wallowing through the murky sentiments of the aftermath, I come to these thoughts. Death is for the living. True enough, whether we manage to live to 80 or 800, death ultimately hurts most for the people you leave behind. People will still love you at 800, and your passing will not be any less painful for them. If there isn't anyone left who loves you by then, I imagine the bulk of the pain is for you in the years leading up to it.

"Nobody," muttered Roic, "should die of old age at thirty-standard." Certainly not such a blazing spirit as Taura's had been.
M'lord looked meditative. "If the Duronas' or anybody else's anti-aging research ever succeeds, I wonder if death at three hundred or five hundred will come to seem as outrageous?"

Well, there's no need to wonder so far ahead. Count Aral was at least 82 when he died, old for Barrayaran standards, and one would say he lived a full life. None of that detracted from the grief, as I full well know. I wondered about the title of this book, CryoBurn. I'd thought it meant freezer burn or something, but it's apparent to me now that it's a juxtaposition of freezing and burning. Or more specifically, of limbo and closure. Stretching out the inevitable, but ultimately losing out on those years spent in stasis. Or cauterizing and letting the past make way for the future.

Don't get me wrong though, the novel isn't trying to moralize over humans' futile attempts to thwart death or anything like that. It's really about letting go. And I'm learning to let go, just as Miles had to. 4/5 on goodreads.