Memory

My copy of Memory looks like it was reread several dozen times and then shoved in the bottom of a backpack and schlepped a few hundred thousand miles (it was). It's my favorite book in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, which is a series made up of some of my favorite books. But it isn't high literature or uber-intellectual science fiction or the kind of book that people call "genre bending." The plot is pure, fast-paced, crime-solving fun, like the rest of the series. It's just a cheap paperback.

But it moved me, and continues to move me. This review is my attempt to understand how and why. After some thought and another rereading, I've come to suspect that it's a book built on tiny, imperfectly perfect human interactions. The meat of Memory isn't in the plasma arcs or crime-solving; it's in Miles' rambling, sarcastic inner voices, the stilted and wrought conversations with his father, and the rocky finding of self at the late age of thirty.

For the full review, please visit my fantasy review blog at The Other Side of the Rain.