Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is the latest book in Lois McMaster Bujold’s long-running Vorkosigan series of space operas. It takes place between Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn, and though Miles Vorkosigan makes a brief appearance this is a book solidly about Miles’ cousin Ivan Vorpatril.

Long-time readers of the series will be familiar with Ivan, who’s been a foil for Miles in a number of the books; he plays the comic relief in Cetaganda, gets trapped in a giant water pump in the Thames estuary in Brothers in Arms, throws Miles in a tub of ice water in Memory, and helps foil a plot or two in A Civil Campaign. Still, he’s usually the comic relief; and unlike his cousin he’s not at all the go-getter type. What Ivan wants is a quiet life; and for most of his life, due to his dreadful nearness to the throne of Barrayar, having a quiet life has required being unambitious and unnoticed. Ivan, like Claudius, has spent his life hiding his light under a bushel. We see this cover slip a bit in A Civil Campaign, where he gets caught up in some intrigue with Imperial agent Byerly Vorrutyer; and it comes all of the way off in this latest book.

It seems that Ivan (who’s not at all stupid, even though Uncle Aral has always called him “that idiot Ivan”) has risen to the rank of aide to the admiral in charge of operations for the entire Barrayaran fleet. He’s invaluable in that role because of his highly developed political sense, and he likes it because the admiral is a good boss, and he usually gets to stay in the capital, Vorbarr Sultana. As the book begins he’s on Komarr with the admiral conducting a surprise inspection, when Byerly Vorrutyer catches him and (Miles-like) gets him totally wrapped up in something that doesn’t concern him…until suddenly it concerns him very closely indeed. He might even (consternation, uproar!) end up….married!

I have long been in the habit of reading Bujold’s new books aloud to Jane. They read aloud well, and they are usually funny in spots, and we enjoy trying to figure out where’s she’s going before we get there. This one came out on the Tuesday, 6 November, and I had to finish reading it to her by Saturday, 10 November, because I was getting on a plane first thing on Sunday. It was rough, but I managed it, and enjoyed every minute.

The whole series is good; the worst are pretty good and the best are really amazingly good. The last really amazingly good one was A Civil Campaign, which is brilliant; the next two were at the lower end of the scale, and this one pleasantly comes in about the middle of the pack: a solid entry, and some good storytelling.

If you’ve not read anything by Bujold, start with Young Miles or Cordelia’s Honor and work your way through.

Recently I received a review copy of My Sisters the Saints, a “spiritual memoir” by Colleen Carroll Campbell, and I confess I stayed up late to finish it.

In this book Campbell shares her life with us, both the good and the bad, and along the way she tells about particular saints who helped her get through. The names are familiar: St. Teresa of Avila; St. Therese of Lisieux; St. Faustina, St. Edith Stein, Mother Teresa, and St. Mary, Mother of God. She tells us of their lives and writings, and just what there was about them that spoke to her and helped her to cope with the trials of her life. I was familiar with most of the saints in question, but nevertheless I learned a thing or two about them.

The compelling part of the book, though, is Campbell’s own story, and her efforts to get over herself, and to learn to serve and love God. Running through much of the book is the story of her father’s struggles with Alzheimer’s Disease. These passages resonated especially strongly with me, because my own father was afflicted with Alzheimer’s in his last years.

My father was a brilliant man, and a born problem-solver, and it was horrifying and distressing to watch his capabilities fade. More than that, nothing made Dad angrier than a problem he could nothing about (politics, consequently, always made him furious), and as time went on there were more and more of these. Once he got terribly angry with my wife Jane, because “People aren’t keeping me informed about what’s going on!” Jane, with perfect grace, said, “Yes, Dad, you’re right.” And he was—not for lack of trying on our part, but he was right.

Every since then, I’ve determined that if I get Alzheimer’s in my turn, as seems likely (all of his siblings who lived long enough have shown the signs), that I want to be jolly rather than grumpy. And to be jolly then, I figure I need to stop being grumpy now. It’s a hard thing to do.

But Campbell’s father has shown me a better way. Campbell came to befriend the saints while learning to cope with her father’s illness; but her father had spent the better part of his life learning to know God and his saints. And in the year or so after the onset of Alzheimer’s, when he could still talk and make some amount of sense, everyone who met him was struck by his joy and his faith. Here was a man who was offering up his trials to God, and spreading God’s love and peace to his family and to the others in the nursing home where he lived.

Eventually Campbell’s father deteriorated to the point where he couldn’t even talk anymore, far past where my father was when my father died; and he suffered horribly. But he held on to the joy as long as he could.

So that’s my new goal. I don’t just want to be jolly when I’m old and infirm; I want to be joyful, and a blessing to those around me. May it be so.