The Flowers of Vashnoi

Bujold recently released a new Vorkosigan novella, and the truth is that there just isn't that much to say about it.

The Flowers of Vashnoi takes place shortly after Captain Vorpatril's Alliance and is told from Ekaterine's point of view. It sees her and Enrique testing out a new batch of butter bugs that the hope will consume the radiation in the Vashnoi district and make it habitable sooner. In the course of this project, they discover people living in the irradiated zone, and they have to figure out what to do about it.

This is a pretty short story, and for good reason. You have competent, compassionate, and above all privileged people encountering a problem and immediately doing everything within their power to solve it to everyone's benefit. It's an exercise in wish-fulfillment. What if the people in charge genuinely cared about their people and could quickly bring about meaningful change to better their lives? What if knowing about a problem was nearly the same thing as solving said problem?

It's a cozy little story about good people doing good things. And it's short because there just isn't enough conflict to sustain much plot. I'm glad I read it, but that's almost entirely because I care so deeply about these characters, and I want to know that they're doing alright.

So I hope Bujold releases a few more of these short stories and novellas that let me drop in on the Vorkosigans. It's like a mini-vacation from the world, where I don't have to think to hard and everything turns out fine in the end.

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