Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan is once again in his favorite situation--in the midst of a major mystery, with people trying to kill him or exploit him. This time, he's on the planet Kibou-daini, checking out the cryocorps--corporations that freeze corpses for future revival when their medical conditions are curable--because one of them is attempting to expand its franchise to Komarr.
This is a fun Miles romp, through a planet where the dead aren't dead, at least they're not supposed to be, and they still vote--or rather, the corporations that hold their contracts and their proxies do, on their behalf. When political activists dedicated to equal cryo rights for the poor discover that some of those voting cryocorpses may be real corpses, due to a covered-up failure of cryo fluid a generation ago, the cryocorp responsible has a major secret to hide, and a powerful reason to make people disappear. Meanwhile, other activists want to simply burn all the cryocorpses, and let their property pass to their descendants.
When one of the groups kidnaps Miles, they've handed him his first serious clues to what's really going on, and what the fraud might be that's intended for the Komarr franchise. Along the way to finding the whole story, he meets the young son of one of the disappeared political activists, his extensive menagerie, and a whole underground, secret cryocorp for the poor, operating in a a facility abandoned when the cryocorp that owned it moved to more modern facilities.
This is a fun book, and if you've enjoyed the other Vorkosigan books, you'll enjoy this one. It's only fair to warn you that there's a kick in the teeth coming at the end of this one, but it's one we've known is coming.
Recommended.
I borrowed this book from the library.
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