Falling Free

Falling Free is an early novel in the Vorkosigan series. It was written shortly after Shards of Honor, The Warrior's Apprentice, and Ethan of Athos, when Bujold hadn't quite decided on Miles as the protagonist. It takes place 200 years before any of the other books, back when space exploration was fairly young and Barrayar was in isolation. It tells the story of the quaddies, gentically engineered humans designed for zero-gee work before the invention of artificial gravity.

This is not a favorite book in the series, being both an early work and disconnected from all of the main characters I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised by home much I liked it. It's not the smoothest or most layered of Bujold's work, and she dives into technical stuff in a slightly distracting way. But the characters are amazing, and the plot, while straight-forward, is fun and interesting.

My favorite part is that we get a few points of view from the chief antagonist Van Atta, who cares about nothing so much as profit and his own career. He's an awful person, but getting inside his ehad reveals how deluded he is. He makes incredibly wrong assumptions, and it just drives in how utterly he is going to be defeated by the good guys.

One of the things I love most about the series is how safe it feels. Yes, there are space battles and tremendous accidents. Bujold doesn't she away from death or injury. But her books are laced with a strong sense of compassion and optimism. You know, early on, that the characters you care most about are going to be alright. It may lower the stakes, but it also makes for a nice, relaxing read. I don't have to spend time worrying that awful things will happen to the characters I love, because those are reserved as punishments for the characters I hate. In a world that seems obsessed with "gritty realism", there's comfort in that.

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