Elf Sternberg

I'm not convinced that Simon Illyan having memory lapses counts as a The Big Thing except among those of us that Bujold already has firmly in her steely grasp. And for those, she hardly needs a The Big Thing; most of us would read a book about Miles reading the phone book.

Of course, in a Bujold book about Miles reading the phone book, by the end of the novel, Miles would be in the hospital from paper cuts, the pages of the phone book would be raining down across half of Vorbarr Sultana, and the Cetagandans would be sneaking around trying to recover the page with Terrance See's old phone number and address on it.