Cryoburn, new Miles Vorkosigan book by Lois McMaster Bujold
A new Miles Vorkosigan book by Lois McMaster Bujold is coming out in November. It’s called Cryoburn.
It looks like a local story, not changing the larger arc of the series. The series is at an interesting point. Early on, it was heading toward having Miles by the key player in the Barrayar/Cetaganda war that seems to be developing.
Then the series changed direction. There was a small Barrayar/Cetaganda border skirmish in The Vor Game. Then in Cetaganda, Bujold gave indications that the Cetagandan empire wouldn’t be aggressively expanding. When Miles got permanently discharged from the military that seemed to be the end of the war plot direction.
So what’s next? Bujold could stop writing this series. But I’m a fan, and like a vampire want more, always more from the author. So I see one main possibility–aliens! Perhaps the Cetagandans run into hostile BEMs in the far reaches of the empire and the reaction wave runs into Barrayar space. Cetagandan fleets retreating through through the other planet’s wormholes stir things up, or the plot that develops slower, the Cetagandans reaching out for help.
Or the Barrayarans or Miles encounters the aliens himself. The Vorkosigan books are set in a human universe, so any alien plot would also have first contact overtones.