This book consumed me, I could barely put it down. Every plot development and realization delighted me. Captain Cordelia Naismith, from a democratic planet whose gender equality is often remarked upon, and Lord Aral Vorkosigan, from the aristocracy of imperial, segregated Barrayar, speed-run enemies to lovers on an uninhabited alien planet after being left behind by their respective crews and spend the rest of the book trying to figure out how to exist - separately and together - while thrust in the midst of both planets’ political scheming.