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*New York Times* Best-Selling Author. The Long-Awaited New Installment in the Popular and Award-Winning Vorkosigan Series. Starring the Explosively Charismatic Miles Vorkosigan. **            Miles Vorkosigan is back!** Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprove—he’s been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorp—an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future—attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter Miles to check it out. On Kibou-daini, Miles discovers generational conflict over money and resources is heating up, even as refugees displaced in time skew the meaning of *generation* past repair. Here he finds 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*. Bribery, corruption, conspiracy, kidnapping—something is rotten on Kibou-daini, and it isn’t due to power outages in the Cryocombs. And Miles is in the middle—of trouble! “Fresh, intriguing, and, as always with Lois McMaster Bujold, superb.” —**Robert Jordan** “It is such a delight to read something by such a good writer, who now seems to be writing at the height of her powers. . . . I really have seldom enjoyed a book so much . . . I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.” —**Diana Wynne Jones** “Living breathing characters who inhabit unusual yet believable worlds.” —**Jean Auel** “Bujold successfully mixes quirky humor with just enough action, a dab of feminist social commentary and her usual superb character development . . . enormously satisfying.” —*Publishers Weekly*   “One of sf’s outstanding talents . . . an outstanding series.” —*Booklist* “Excellently done . . . Bujold has always excelled at creating forceful characters and she does it here again.” —*Denver** Post* “. . . an intelligent, well-crafted and thoroughly satisfying blend of adventure, sociopolitical commentary, scientific experiments, and occasional perils . . . with that extra spicing of romance. . . .” —*Locus* ** ### From Publishers Weekly Fans have been clamoring for Hugo winner Bujold to pen a new Vorkosigan Saga novel since 2002's Diplomatic Immunity, and they will not be disappointed by this thoughtful tale. Only five days after arriving on Kibou-daini for a cryonics conference, interplanetary diplomat Miles Vorkosigan narrowly escapes kidnapping. Drugged, dazed, and alone, he is taken in by Jin Sato, whose mother was the leader of a cryonics reform movement until being declared mentally ill and involuntarily frozen. Now Jin lives in a building full of squatters running an illegal cryonics clinic. Under imperial orders to investigate the shady dealings of the cryo cartels, Miles connects the far-flung pieces and exposes a sneaky plot. Bujold introduces appealing characters to join familiar ones in exploring the ramifications of a planet-wide culture of postponing death, and her deft and absorbing writing easily corrals the complex plot and softens the blow of a tear-jerking conclusion. (Nov.) (c) Copyright © PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. ### Review ''Bujold retains the wit, intelligence, action, and great character development that have made the Miles Vorkosigan series so superior. In Komarr she proves once again that it is possible for the latest book in a series to be as good as the first.'' --*Voya* on *Komarr* Bujold successfully mixes quirky humor with just enough action, a dab of feminist social commentary and her usual superb character development . . . enormously satisfying. -- *Publishers Weekly* One of sf's outstanding talents . . . an outstanding series. --*Booklist* . . . an intelligent, well-crafted and thoroughly satisfying blend of adventure, sociopolitical commentary, scientific experiments, and occasional perils . . . with that extra spicing of romance. . . --*Locus*