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Ivan Vorpatril, often referred to as 'that idiot Ivan' is not an idiot at all. From childhood there was a distict possibility that if anything happened to the young Emperor Gregor, Ivan would be in the running for the job, something that Ivan has never wanted and has actively taken steps to avoid. As a military man, he's gone to great pains not to outshine his peers in case he got promoted to a rank that might make him a recognisable figure in Barrayaran's internecine politics. As an admiral's aide-de-camp, Ivan, quietly efficient, has risen up the ladder as far as he wants to go. So when, on an inspection tour with the admiral, Byerly Vorrutyer, town clown on the surface but also covertly working for Imperial security, talks Ivan into keeping an eye on a refugee from Jackson's Hole, Ivan's quietly fostered invisibility is thrown out of the window, Involved with Tej and her blue gene-altered sister, Rish, one thing leads to another, Bigtime. This is a marry-a-stranger-fall-in-love-later plot so beloved of historical novelists, but in this case it's delightfully accomplished. Most of the characters we usually concentrate on in Vorkosigan novels, notably Miles himself and his illustrious parents, take a back seat, or no seat at all in this book. Instead, we have Ivan himself, his formidable widowed mother, her lover Simon Ilyan, formerly ImpSec chief, now retired and getting bored, and Emperor Gregor. In addition, there's a whole host of new characters including Tej and her unscrupulous Jacksonian family.
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