So that explains why I haven’t been seeing anything new showing up on the library shelves.
Bah, grumble. I also like my books on paper.
The uterune replicator also has multiple cultural implications
There’s elements of both in almost every book, but the ratio changes quite a bit. So no matter what amount of one you prefer over the other, you can probably find one or two that hit your sweet spot.
I love these books! I read them in internal chronological order (not publication order) and I actually think it works fine like that, although the discontinuities in quality are interesting. She definitely grew a lot as a writer over the years! And yes, the political machinations are a major theme.
The man who is now my husband started lending them to me when we were dating, when he found out I hadn’t read them yet. We were in what I called a “medium-distance relationship” – we lived far enough away that we only saw each other on weekends. So every weekend he’d bring me another book. At first I was like, “I guess these are fine.”
After a few weeks of this I started asking for two at a time…
Then I got to Memory, which is still my favorite of the series. For those of you who haven’t read it, it takes a hitherto rather-minor character of the series and puts him in a kind of awful position. At that moment I realized how much this character, whom I had not realized I was paying all that much attention to, meant to me. And then I realized I’d fallen desperately in love with all of these characters, the major ones and all the minor ones too.
Memory is the best book of the series for me, not that the others are bad, but Memory is the peak.
“… is that really a Cetagandan Order of Merit?!”
Point to your side! 
One of the things I always found tragic and endearing about Miles’ story, is that so many of his romantic efforts are doomed by one single thing: his devotion to his home and responsibilities. If he was willing to leave the Vor society fully behind, and embrace his Betan heritage several of his loves and crushes would have been more easily fulfilled.
So much of his story is not about finding someone to love, or love him, but finding someone who who meets that need while also being willing to love or tolerate Barrayar. His home, in many ways, is his first love, despite the way it’s society doesn’t love him back, until he makes it. 
Of course, this is explicitly mentioned in the books sometimes, he wouldn’t have a problem finding a bride, but finding a future Countess Vorkosigan is a much heavier lift!
My personal favorite is Mirror Dance, but Memory is damn near tied. That was a work of art.
Re: Mirror Dance, I just can’t resist a good redemption story.
And it showed another thing I love about Bujold, which is that she could have made Mark just a gimmicky clone villain and instead she imbued him with all the hopes and fears and meaning of any other human being. I was so moved by the immediate and unconditional acceptance he received in the family. The woman uses everything in service of character.
And that filled a real void for me when I was reading more classic science fiction. I just felt like the characterization was lacking. I loved the Big Ideas but I needed people to root for. And she gave me that.
Were his romantic efforts also doomed by the fact that he was 4’9” and has brittle bones?
You’d think so, but no.
What he lacks in height he more than makes up for in confidence. That dude gets around more than a lot of guys I know.
That’s because Bujold understands that while Science Fiction may the “literature of ideas”, that just means that it’s the LITERATURE of ideas, and needs to have everything any other work of literature needs - good prose, good characters, good plotting, good dialog, good themes - plus ideas. If you can’t write good literature, nobody will care about your good ideas.
She quite often sets up and then subverts cliche tropes, which I quite like. Like the end of Ethan of Athos, where it looks like Ethan is going to hit on Ellie Quinn , but instead he asks her to donate an ovary so he can use it for an ovarian culture, so that a lot of the next generation of Athosians will have her as a mother.
I loved that too. That book could have been so corny in less-skilled hands.
I think my favorite moment for Aral is in A Civil Campaign, where someone angrily says to him, “Do you know what your son has done?” and he replies “Which one?” while Mark is in earshot, and Mark is just poleaxed by the casual inclusion in the family.
Actually, the whole idea of Athos is a subversion of an SF cliche. There’ve been a few stories with female-only planets, but this is the only, or at least the first, male-only planet.
And she subverts expectations for what that planet will be like. There is a brief discussion of someone serving his mandatory time in the planetary military, which says “Georos’s brother is a first piccolo in his regimental band as part of a two-year mandatory service, which he plans to extend to further his musicianship.” Not quite the macho rah-rah you might expect.
You know those stories about the Count who assigns three impossible tasks to his daughter’s unsuitable suitor? Don’t try that with Miles. Just…don’t.
That person is one of my all-time favourite literary characters.
Anybody have a copy of Komarr handy so you can quote his talk with Ekaterina about his (would-be) girlfriends? “May I take a number?”
“The next number up is one”
Oh, no, there’s been a fair number. Athos is just unusual for being one that isn’t a hellish dystopia. In modern works it’s usually “the all female world/land is a peaceful Edenic paradise, the all-male world/land is a polluted war-torn hellscape”.
The men of Athos were just people. Not demons.
I loved that scene. Funny thing is, until I read that talk I never really put together the pattern of what happened with all the women he became interested in. Listed all together like that, the pattern was pretty obvious (and impressive),