After howevermany years of being generally aware of the existence of Lois McMaster Bujold, and at least several years of seeing people on Tumblr saying effusive things about her books, I finally read one. Libby lied to me about series order so it was a mostly-unrelated far-past-prequel to the books I had actually seen people talking about, but unfortunately it was also right up my alley and I have no excuse for why I didn't read any of her work earlier. I do have a fondness for the sort of classic scifi story that takes one thesis question ("What if a company could genetically engineer the perfect worker?") and then just lets it roll out to a conclusion. It's a fairly simple book, on that level - once the thesis is set up, it's mostly action plot about the practical process of getting people and equipment from point A to point B.

But I really love that first setup part, how it only takes the main character maybe an hour to go from "WTF are these mutants?" to "They've been raised from birth to obey orders from standard humans, according to the company they are not legally human beings, and they might not be physically capable of leaving their worksite even if they were allowed to, which they're not. They're slaves." And the people who have been working on this project for years, out of their various types of acceptance and willful ignorance, never even considered that he might have this reaction. And then this book cements my love by cutting directly from his "these poor kids have been raised to be subservient" epiphany to show us that they are already resisting in small ways and are perfectly capable of resisting in big ways on their own initiative.

Also I have to talk about the absolutely electric scene where the crew doctor calls in one of the mutants/young women into the clinic, and she:
- verbally pushes back against orders from an authority figure for almost the first time in her life
- realizes that he wants to sterilize her to prevent her passing on her engineered genes
- realizes that despite his initially nice attitude, he won't hesitate to sedate her and do it by force if she doesn't comply
- physically fights back against him for the first time in her life
- realizes she's stronger than he is!
- drugs him with his own drug and ties him to his own operating table with the restraints he was going to use on her!!
- points out that she could sterilize him for good measure if she wanted to!!!
- but unlike him she wouldn't hurt a helpless person for no reason or just because a company gave an order
- so she leaves him to sleep off the sedative unharmed

like!!! one might say this is over the top, but it's also fantastic so I don't care.