Lois McMaster Bujold Cryoburn

Annotation

Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprovehe's been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorpan immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown futureattempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter, Miles, to check it out.On Kibou-daini, Miles discovers generational conflict over money and resources is heating up, even as refugees displaced in time skew the meaning of ';generation' past repair. Here he finds a young boy with a passion for pets and a dangerous secret, a Snow White trapped in an icy coffin who burns to rewrite her own tale, and a mysterious crone who is the very embodiment of the warning ';Don't mess with the secretary.' Bribery, corruption, conspiracy, kidnappingsomething is rotten on Kibou-daini, and it isn't due to power outages in the Cryocombs. And Miles is in the middleof trouble.