The Flowers of Vashnoi Audiobook By Lois McMaster Bujold cover art

The Flowers of Vashnoi

An Ekaterin Vorkosigan Novella

 Preview

$0.00 for first 30 days

Try for $0.00
Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.

The Flowers of Vashnoi

By: Lois McMaster Bujold
Narrated by: Grover Gardner
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $12.86

Buy for $12.86

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

Still new to her duties as Lady Vorkosigan, Ekaterin is working together with expatriate scientist Enrique Borgos on a radical scheme to recover the lands of the Vashnoi exclusion zone, lingering radioactive legacy of the Cetagandan invasion of the planet Barrayar. When Enrique's experimental bioengineered creatures go missing, the pair discover that the zone still conceals deadly old secrets.

©2018 Lois McMaster Bujold (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Adventure Science Fiction

Featured Article: 12 of the Best Sci-Fi Series in Audio


From the furthest reaches of space to the microbiology of pandemics and gene manipulation, to the future implications of technology for societies similar to our own, science fiction is a fascinating genre that offers listeners a wide variety of ways to access its themes. In looking for the best sci-fi audiobook series, it can be difficult to know where to start due to the genre's sheer number of iterations and variations. But what these series have in common is an acute devotion to telling a good story, as well as fully building out the worlds therein. The writing is enhanced by the creative and impassioned narration.

Featured Article 12 of the Best Sci Fi Series in Audio
Excellent Writing • Engaging Novella • Consistent Voice • Strong Female Protagonist • Strong Characters
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
Loved this novella featuring Lady Ekaterin Vorkosigan, with Dr Enrique Borgos as side-kick. I’ve already read and reviewed the ebook a few weeks ago. I really hope Bujold is moved to write more in this world.
I love strong, intelligent women characters, which Bujold excels at writing. She also excels in strong plots and logic. I have all the audios of her books and have been acquiring any ebooks I’m missing. I’m always amazed at how much I underline or clip audio in her books because she makes so many good points.
Yes, I feel they are worth the time and money and I can recommend all her books, wholeheartedly.
I think Grover Gardner is one of the best narrators out there. Though I wish he had kept Enrique’s charming and funny accent.

Yay! A Vorkosigan novella

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Grover Gardner does an awesome job narrating these very fine books by Bujold. I enjoyed hearing this story told from Ekaterin’s point of view and could quite happily have listened to it continue...if only there had been another chapter or two or ten. The conclusion was satisfying; I just always want more!

A Thoughtful Look at Miles’ District

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Nothing groundbreaking here, but enjoyable story and a good read. Always good to get to know some of these characters better.

a nice mini-story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
its a vorkosigan book. its lois mcmaster bujold. nothing more need really be said. buy it.

another vorkosigan book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I didn't realize when I bought it that this is a novella, but I love all of LMB's books in the Vorkosiverse & narrator Grover Gardner, so that was ok. I've actually not been a huge fan of Ekaterin up to this point, but wanted to give it a try. I liked her much better in this book. She is the focus of it and she's shown in a better light; her intelligence and courage are more clear & less tortured by memories of her upbringing & her late husband. The 'calm' that Miles so loves is more of a settled centeredness than the former sort of withdrawal/social awkwardness that typified her in the earlier books. We get to see more of Enrique, and he's a bit less of the nutty, absent-minded intellectual type, & not quite so goofy. This is both good & bad; he's more of a 3-D character, but his goofiness could certainly be entertaining. We see a much different portrait of life in Miles' district and it's a tragic but extremely interesting look. I did find myself wondering at the end how the district folks were going to manage in their days ahead, & feeling rather dubious.

I absolutely love Gardner; he's been one of my favorite readers since the first time I heard him & I've several times bought books I would otherwise have passed on just because he read them. So...it pains me to say that his performance this time isn't as outstanding & utterly captivating as the dozens of other books I have that he's read. He's certainly not bad-- GG at less than his best is still better than most other readers, he just sounds almost...tired. It's still very easy to identify who's talking; his voices for each character are clearly individual. His rendering of the non-dialogue parts is good, as usual. I was sort of surprised that Enrique has completely lost his Escobarran* accent for some reason, & since I've listened to all the previous books multiple times that took a bit of getting used to. Gardner still did a good job, but this is the first time I've ever not given him 5 stars. Still love his voice, tho.

I'd recommend this to anyone who's a fan of LMB's Vorkosiverse, but if you haven't read any of the previous books in that universe you're likely to be confused by this one. I'd recommend starting at least with "Shards of Honor," which introduces Cordelia & Aral Vorkosigan. I rather envy anyone who has the joy of discovering this series ahead of them, but I can keep re-listening to them & enjoy them all the same.

*I've only ever encountered all the Vorkosiverse books in audio form, so am not entirely sure of some of the spellings.

pretty good entry in the Vorkosiverse

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I fell in love with Ecatherin together with Miles, now I get to know her better and spend time with her and her friends.

Lovely story of lovely characters

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It’s pretty hard for me to dislike anything that’s part of the Vorkosaverse. So it’s no surprised that I do like this little story.
It is nice to see Miles‘s wife growing in confidence and losing her internal doubts more and more, as she handles potentially dangerous and difficult situations.
It is also interesting to finally get a glimpse of Vashnoi, which we have heard about in approximately 17 other books and stories, but never visited.
This makes me wonder about the area around Chernobyl. I have seen TV specials about the strange mutated animal life that lives around there, and I have to wonder if there are any groups of people in the area in similar situations to this fictional one.

Grover did a good job narrating, although he forgot to use the pseudo Spanish accent he had previously used for Henrique, which was kind of disappointing. Also, he seem to be talking slower in this one—I don’t know if it’s just because he’s 10 years older than when he read most of the other books or what, but I had to listen to some of this at 1.1X.
Also, it may have been a little over compressed, or almost at the red line for clipping. Something about the audio just seemed a little punchy.

A fun little adventure of progress

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Ekaterin is a much stronger character than she may seem, and this little story emphasizes that. Grover Gardner is once again the voice of the Vorkosigan books. So very glad to get another story, however small; Ms Bujold always delivers more complexity than you find at first.

Nice little story, focused on Ekaterin

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Ekaterin continues the tradition of strong Vorkosigan women, married to men just and wise and generous to their respectful peasants and loyal retainers.

Still more tales of noble aristocrats

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
this is not strictly the best book she's ever written only because she's got so many other excellent full novels that have more room to work in. Grover Gardner is simply awesome and should read more then he does already. the two of them together are a very potent combination. you will never, ever go wrong buying something that these two have done.

very best author & 3rd best narrator. EVER!!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews