Mountains of Mourning
Mountains of Mourning is a Vorkosigan novella, included in the Young Miles omnibus between The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game. It's only 90 pages long, but I still felt like it deserved it's own entry.
This story is wonderful and dense. It takes place about three years after the conclusion of The Warrior's Apprentice. Miles has just graduated from the officer's academy and is on leave pending his first assignment. His plans to relax and goof off are interrupted when his father assigns him to investigate a murder charge from a woman in their district.
What unfolds requires the reader to be familiar with Barrayar's history, as laid out in previous books. Barrayar was isolated from the rest of the galaxy for a long time and is only recently (during Miles' lifetime) catching up with the social and technological progress that has passed it by. Historically, mutated or deformed babies were murdered at birth. There's a lot of bigotry and intolerance and resistance to change still to be found, especially in the more rural areas of the planet. But change is coming, and it has been declared illegal to kill babies.
So we come to the first charge of infanticide. A child was born with a cleft palate. It's pointed out that this can now be repaired with a fairly simple surgery. But before the mother was able to travel to the hospital, her daughter was killed. She accuses her husband, and Miles is tasked with investigating her charge and then carrying out the punishment (death in this case) of the guilty party.
The story follows the beats of a very well-constructed mystery. But it's also a rumination on how hard it is for older generations to change, how relatively easy it is for the young to embrace a new way of life, and the painful clashes that arise while the two are vying for power. There's a lot here that I recognized in our own political landscape. The specific example of killing deformed infants is abhorrent, but it helps drive home the point of just how sweeping and necessary these social changes are.
I continue to love Miles and all the different stories Bujold is able to tell with him.
This story is wonderful and dense. It takes place about three years after the conclusion of The Warrior's Apprentice. Miles has just graduated from the officer's academy and is on leave pending his first assignment. His plans to relax and goof off are interrupted when his father assigns him to investigate a murder charge from a woman in their district.
What unfolds requires the reader to be familiar with Barrayar's history, as laid out in previous books. Barrayar was isolated from the rest of the galaxy for a long time and is only recently (during Miles' lifetime) catching up with the social and technological progress that has passed it by. Historically, mutated or deformed babies were murdered at birth. There's a lot of bigotry and intolerance and resistance to change still to be found, especially in the more rural areas of the planet. But change is coming, and it has been declared illegal to kill babies.
So we come to the first charge of infanticide. A child was born with a cleft palate. It's pointed out that this can now be repaired with a fairly simple surgery. But before the mother was able to travel to the hospital, her daughter was killed. She accuses her husband, and Miles is tasked with investigating her charge and then carrying out the punishment (death in this case) of the guilty party.
The story follows the beats of a very well-constructed mystery. But it's also a rumination on how hard it is for older generations to change, how relatively easy it is for the young to embrace a new way of life, and the painful clashes that arise while the two are vying for power. There's a lot here that I recognized in our own political landscape. The specific example of killing deformed infants is abhorrent, but it helps drive home the point of just how sweeping and necessary these social changes are.
I continue to love Miles and all the different stories Bujold is able to tell with him.
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