Even when I may think the story is dragging a bit, the characters make up for the lull. Bujold has a wonderful hold on the characters regardless. I just felt like I didn’t get enough time with them. However, that doesn’t mean the characters are shallow by any stretch. I never connected to them in the same way as I did with Cazaril and company in The Curse of Chalion. While I undeniably did care about Leo and the quaddies. I wasn’t quite as taken with this story or its characters. My first jaunt with Bujold was with her book The Curse of Chalion, which I loved because it played with many interesting ideas about things like godship and wit being a far more capable weapon than swords. This is actually the fourth book in the series, but I’m reading the series in chronological order as suggested by the author herself. Leo’s plan to help the quaddies gain freedom is enormous in scope and seems a bit too ambitious, but the alternative is far worse. He hatches a plan to save them and allow them to live life on their terms. Leo, who has only worked with the quaddies for a few months, seems to be the only person who acknowledges that they are people despite their appearance. They shouldn’t exist and aren’t protected under intergalactic law. They don’t have standings as human beings. The quaddies (the experimental humanoids who are classified as “post fetal experimental tissue cultures”) are considered little more than inventory, and the company who funded the project to create them are equally as anxious to find a way to get rid of them once they’re proven to be obsolete. Soon, Leo finds himself placed in the center of a revolution, forcing him to confront the ambiguous morality that plagues the Cay habitat, forcing him to take a stand where he’d once only wanted to do his job and stay under the radar. He doesn’t learn how special until he reaches the habitat and witnesses just how loose and fast his employers have played with genetics.

Leo is chosen to teach welding to a group of special cases. Leo Graf a talented engineer who finds himself pulled from his current station to a habitat operating in a system on the fringes of intergalactic law.

Falling free bujold