My brother has recommended this series to me many times and I can see why. Bujold's writing is excellent and her characters are unique, well drawn, and easy to get emotionally invested in. It's very military-ish and there are some really unpleasant parts that sometimes feel like they are taken too lightly, but I think that when you look at the whole book you see that it's just the characters plowing through the horrors of war moreso than the author taking the subject material lightly. That seems to be confirmed by the epilogue. Between picking this up and now, I've kind of shifted moods and so will hold off continuing with the series, but I suspect that it's the kind of series where you can pick up a book every now and then when you feel like it without losing much.