Vorkosigan Readthrough: Mountains of Mourning

[extrapenguin]

• "Well, old man," he whispered, then shouted: "ARE YOU SATISFIED YET?" is a pretty good summation of Miles' life


• And so Admiral Aral's life took General Piotr's like an overpowering hand of cards, and where did that leave Ensign Miles? Holding two deuces and the joker. He must surely either concede or start bluffing like crazy…, too


• There were 50 000 Firsters. I wonder how good a diverse population that would make? Is that enough that most of the birth defects are due to radiation, rather than from bad recessives showing up due to inbreeding?


• How long was the Time of Isolation, anyway?


• What's an "aura detector" that Miles referred to – some sort of infrared recording thing?

Next up, The Vor Game, on the 7th of August (Sunday), with a reminder on the preceding Wednesday.

Comments

[james]

So naturally my work schedule kicked into high gear right when this went up and I never saw it. :-)

Anyhow, I have often wanted more stories exploring the Time of Isolation, because I have so many questions. How much did they remember about the time before? When the wormhole opened up, did they still have any tech? They didn't seem to have good medical tech if they were dealing with mutations by infantcide, but they seem to have adapted very quickly to modern galactic tech. (At least in the city, but it seems like it's only supposed to have been a few generations since the ToI ended.)

Mostly I want stories about the kings and royal families a thousand years ago, dealing with a very different Barrayar but who have eeriely similar personalities thereby proving that indeed Miles is related to the royal family. ;-)