Book Note: Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign (#3)

This is book 10 of the "Miles Vorkosigan" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Rereading the Ekaterin sequence, or the Imperial Auditor sequence (though he was a temporary auditor in Memory also).

This book still has some of the best adult thinking about relationships—from Ekaterin, and Miles, and Mark, and Kareen, and Cordelia too. It's also rather subversive towards simple-minded positions of principle ("death before dishonor" and such).

Also good political threads as Miles, Rene, and Lord Dono deal with the Council of Counts on various fronts, a slapstick fight when the parole officer comes for Enrique, and a real fight when the thugs try to castrate Lord Dono and run into Ivan and Olivia unexpectedly. I'm not really sure I believe in Ivan and Olivia being that much better than the armsmen; admittedly they're not the Vorkosigan, ex-Impsec, armsmen, but still. [Hmmm; on consideration...Ivan is Impsec, and Olivia was trained by her mother who just happened to be Gregor's personal bodyguard during the really crucial years. Okay, I guess they can be that good.]

It's just a beautiful book all around.