However, with Rodeo’s lease almost up, and Orient IV impatient to develop the planet and start slapping heavier taxes on the mining industry, the Cay Station and its administrators have basically no time left to turn a big profit fast and justify the existence of their quaddy charges. The Cay Project is an orbital station full of genetically designed people with four arms – one pair in what we’d consider the normal orientation, and one pair instead of legs – known as quaddies. Quaddies were designed to live and work in a zero-G environment more efficiently than bipedal humans, and to eventually become self-sustaining and self-propagating GalacTech bankrolled the creation of the species in hopes of gaining an unpaid space workforce with superior physical capabilities.

The planet was leased specifically because it was deemed undesirable (and because the lessor, Orient IV, was not interested in regulating or restricting any activities GalacTech wished to pursue while in control of the planet), but for some time the profits from mining and petrochemical extraction have been offsetting the costs of a massive genetic experiment. Rodeo is a desert planet on a 99-year lease by the company, and it has proved massively profitable due to its previously-undiscovered mineral wealth. The protagonist, engineer Leo Graf, works for GalacTech he is sent to a planet on the edge of nowhere called Rodeo. Falling Free is the first novel in the internal chronology of the Vorkosigan Saga, and I’m pleased I took the time to track down a copy.įalling Free is set in the space-traveling and colonizing future of the human race. My current library system is fantastic, however, and I can generally request and receive an interlibrary loan of any book (except for the newest and shiniest of the new releases). As a slightly off-topic aside: nothing puts me off a writer or a series quicker than a library not holding one/several of the books in a series for no apparent reason (yeah yeah, stolen or lost… but you can replace it eventually, you cheapskates). I had been meaning to check out Lois McMaster Bujold’s sci-fi novels for a couple of years (because I really enjoyed her Sharing Knife fantasy series), but my local libraries and bookstores never had the straight-run of her popular Vorkosigan Saga novels.

Falling free by lois mcmaster bujold