In keeping with the most depressingly realistic dystopian future I've ever read: voila, the revolution. Nothing's changed.

FOR CERTAIN VALUES OF FAMILY offers more pure payoff than any other novel/novella/set of Administration stories.

For all the readers that started the series thinking: overthrow the system, this terrible authoritarian regime has got to go, here's the brave new world.

For all the readers who told themselves: I can stop feeling so conflicted about swooning over Toreth once he's not torturing people anymore. Well, does it make a difference?

For me, the answer is mixed. Yes and no.

The older I get, the more I appreciate incremental improvements. Baby steps are better than nothing. Appreciate the milestones along the way. They count. Halving the acceptable torture techniques is better than not halving the acceptable torture techniques. And if the changes don't last, well, even a reprieve is worth something.

The series has shown us in a million different ways that Toreth is not going to develop a conscience. The best we can ask for is that he finds the right handler.

Warrick, by the way, is the perfect handler. And their relationship really shifts into a new gear. More than once during FOR CERTAIN VALUES OF FAMILY, Toreth conquers his ingrained habits. He's poised to flee, his usual defensive mechanism, but instead he deals. He's offered the sort of palatable lie that allows him to maintain the pretense that his relationship with Warrick is casual, and he refuses it. We learn a little more about his childhood--because he actually speaks about his parents with his own mouth.

Book after book, we've seen Toreth draw closer and closer to Warrick. He exists in a constant state of longing and fear, need and rejection, love and carelessness. Book after book, I find myself thinking: he's changed, hasn't he?

This time, there's no question: he's changed. For the better.

It's baby steps. It's incremental. There are no guarantees. But it's progress. ( )