ExtraPenguin

I read it, finally. Forearmed and forewarned about the "nothing happens", it was still very "nothing happens"-y. Nothing that could generate suspense wasn't resolved immediately, except for the plascrete, which was very background the whole time and did get resolved in a vaguely deus ex machina way. All in all, I have to agree with avanti_90: the book is above all mild.

It's also a book where I'd have been interested in the story of anyone except the principal characters. Kaya Vorinnis, dealing with bureaucracy and an amorous ghem-lord, the University people, Freddie Haines and her five friends, all the diplomatic staff, the military folks running around, etc.

The romance itself fell flat. It's the least convincing romance Bujold has written. (Admittedly, I've never read the Chalion stuff, and am hazy on Ivan/Tej, but still.) I suppose she was trying to show ~a comfortable relationship that just adds sex~, but fell flat. At the start, Jole and Cordelia both claim to have fallen more distant from each other, but no real change in distance seems to happen. They just go from being friends with identical narrative voices to being friends with identical narrative voices who have unappealingly written sex with each other. Also the whole kids!!1! thing was verging on self-parody. Cordelia wanted six children, well, okay. She already has two. She proceeds to start six more, for a total of eight. It's ... well, idk. Cordelia's thought processes have always been alien to me, especially when she's involved in a romance plot like Shards of GJRQ. (Barrayar, she was mostly being confused about Barrayar and thus more relateable.) (Miles, OTOH, I grok much better, funnily enough.) Jole, again, seems Cordelia-like in mental voice (and physical, to the point where I occasionally had trouble determining who was saying what) and turns even more into a Cordelia expy, what with trying to become a scientist and desiring to raise loads of kids.

29: Favorite female protagonist.
OH FUCK I have loads. Um. Ummm.
Yoko Tsuno. She's an electrical engineer with numerous other competences. She encounters loads of weird shit, but, as an engineer, she just rolls with it. (If a thing doesn't fit the model, change the model) She's also supremely capable of forming friendships with seemingly every woman she comes across.

30: One book everyone should read
The dictionary.
Please, if you must use a word, know what it means.

31: Do you day dream about your favorite books? If so, share one fantasy you have about them.
My absolute #1 favorite book??? Do- do people have those? Shit, I have trouble picking my favorite series. Or favorite book from a series!
Well, I do daydream, mostly self-insert Mary Sue stuff. I am invariably the black-haired, white-skinned lesbian daughter/niece of a minor character who has a PhD in physics and minored in asskicking. I then find love in the arms of a redhead who also has a PhD in STEM, and together we invade a planet and get a Nobel prize. In the end, we will have murderated all of my enemies, and then we have kids.

32: OTP or NoTP?
99% of all canon het is a NOTP. My OTPs are generally either something along the lines of "two people who work together well and maybe have slightly different competences (battle couple)", frex Simon Illyan/Alys Vorpatril (lemme tell you how surprised I was when I found a canon het that worked!), or "dubcon-at-best fucked-up loyalty kink and command structures", frex Simon Illyan/Ezar Vorbarra.
Another way to become an OTP: have it not be too incestuous and have one of the people involved be Simon Illyan. (Essentially, all the Simon Illyan/X where X is not Miles or Ivan.) Captain Illyan is a very nice bicycle.

The servants aren't full characters. Honor's Armsmen from the Honorverse books are characters in their own right, and we get the names of secondary characters' security (President Pritchard's chief bodyguard is Sheila Thiessen, for example) whereas in the Vorkosigan books, we don't even get Pym's first name, let alone any of Gregor's armsmen's. In C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner books, Banichi and Jago are secondary characters in their own right, with more of a role in the plot than Bothari ever had. Even Tano has more of  a role than Vorish Armsmen.

Nomen est omen – at least in the Bujold 'verse

People are counted by their surname during Memory – Ekaterin is thus not in with the Vorkosigans. When someone was named after someone else, the name goes by its first bearer.

 

Vor: вор means ‘thief’ in Russian according to the Vorkosigan Wiki

 

( Etymologies! )
 

During research, I discovered that there are 26 people in the United States called William Shakespeare.

… I think that's got to count as some kind as maliciousness on part of the poor guys' parents.