The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 10: "Dreamweaver's Dilemma" and Other Stories

Dreamweaver's Dilemma is a collection of stories and essays by Lois McMaster Bujold; it contains two Vorkosigan-universe stories, one of which was previously published, but the other of which can only be found in this collection. I chose to read the volume relative to where it was originally published; it came out in 1995, between Mirror Dance (1994) and Memory (1996).

Dreamweaver's Dilemma: Short Stories and Essays by Lois McMaster Bujold
edited by Suford Lewis

Collection published: 1995
Contents originally published: 1985-95
Acquired and read: February 2026

The title story, "Dreamweaver's Dilemma," is the Vorkosigan story original to this volume, though my understanding is that it was written very early on, possibly even first; it's set hundreds of years before the rest of the "saga" and thus its ties to it are fairly light. Like a lot of Bujold's short fiction, I am discovering, it is sort of a murder mystery; a woman who is a "dreamweaver" (someone who composes immersive psychic experiences) comes to realize one of hers may have been used for nefarious purposes and thus tries to figure out what's going on. I would say it's fine but not great; perhaps predictably, my favorite part was the joke about Cleveland!

What is great is "The Mountains of Mourning," which was a reread for me, as it was also collected in Borders of Infinity (1989). (The cover blurb trumpets this is as the story's first hardcover appearance.) Great story, one of my favorite Miles tales, and well worth the excuse of a reread even though I read it less than a year ago!

Other than those two, we have four other pieces of short fiction. One, "The Adventure of the Lady on the Embankment," is a passable piece of Sherlock Holmes pastiche; it's probably not a surprise that Bujold does an excellent Watson. The other three are similar in that they're all what Farah Mendlesohn would call "intrusion fantasies": all stories of the fantastic intruding in an ordinary domestic space. My favorite of these was "Barter," where an overworked stay-at-home mother makes a trade with an alien salesman for a device that makes her life at home much easier! A quick and cute story.

Finally, there are essays, both by and about Bujold. I found the ones giving insight into Bujold's life and process the most interesting; if you like good "behind-the-scenes" material about an author you enjoy, this material is solid. She is never not an entertaining writer!

Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Memory

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 9: Mirror Dance

My ninth Vorkosigan book is the second of a duology, the third time Bujold took a book she had written in the 1980s and came back to it to write a sequel in the 1990s, one that deepened the previous book's themes and character moments.

In this case, Mirror Dance is a direct sequel to Brothers in Arms. (It's also a follow-up to one of the stories in Borders of Infinity; I pity anyone who thought the novella collection was skippable!) Brothers in Arms introduced Miles's clone, Mark. I enjoyed that book a lot, but I think in that book Mark was primarily constructed as a foil to Miles: Miles is a person with so many obligations weighing him down, so what would it be like for there to be a version of Miles with seemingly no obligations at all? As I wrote in my review of that book, though, "it seems to me there's more thematic depth to be mined from the character of Mark than we actually get here, since Bujold's emphasis is largely on the action and intrigue plot."

Mirror Dance: A Vorkosigan Adventure by Lois McMaster Bujold

Published: 1994
Acquired and read: September 2025

Bujold returns to Mark in this book because she wants to take Mark seriously, not just as a foil to Miles. Who is Mark? These are the questions Mark himself is wrestling with, of course; the one obligation he does have is that he wants to save his clone-brethren, the other people raised just to substitute for someone else. But beyond this, who is he? He has no idea.

It's all quite good, and goes places I didn't expect. It's a bit difficult to explain exactly what makes Bujold so good, because a lot of times it's not so much about what happens as how it happens; with layers of compassion and reality that make the whole thing come to life and make any earnest moments feel totally earned. My favorite parts of the book were the ones where Mark goes to Barrayar and meets the mother and father he never knew he had—never even knew he could have. But he needs them. As Cordelia says, "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in." Mirror Dance chronicles the slow acceptance Mark makes of these other people into his own life, because if he doesn't do it, he will have no life. Mark is perennially frustrated to learn how many people Miles has made an impression on: "He's not a man, he's a mob," he thinks at one point. But those people made Miles who he is, too. We're all mobs. Mark is frustrated because he feels like, as a clone, he's a pale reflection of Miles. But if we don't reflect others, there's nothing to us. By the end of the book, Mark is a proud reflection of Miles.

There's lots of good action, too, of course, and jokes, and some moving bits; there was one part where I was genuinely worried for a main character and was misting up. There hasn't been a bad Vorkosigan book so far, and there's been several very good ones, but I think of the nine I've thus read, this one is probably the best.

Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Dreamweaver's Dilemma

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 8: Borders of Infinity

From 1987 to 1989, Lois McMaster Bujold published three novellas featuring Miles Vorkosigan. May 1989's "The Mountains of Mourning" (originally published in Analog) is set between the first two Miles books, The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game. The other two, both published in 1987, are "Labyrinth" (also from Analog) and "The Borders of Infinity" (originally published in the anthology Free Lancers), and they are both set prior to Brothers in Arms. Later in 1989, they were collected in a volume confusingly called Borders of Infinity, linked together by a slight frame story set after Brothers in Arms, so that's where I read it.

"The Mountains of Mourning" features no interplanetary adventure at all; it's set entirely on Miles's home planet of Barrayar, while Miles is hanging out on his family's country estate. Miles is roped into investigating an apparent infanticide among the country folk; the mother of the newborn baby suspects the father is responsible.

Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold

Collection originally published: 1989
Contents originally published: 1987-89
Acquired: May 2024
Read: April 2025

In a sense, it's a simple mystery story: Miles investigates a crime, talks to witnesses, runs afoul of local prejudices and mysterious attacks. But this is Bujold, with her immaculate attention to characterization and detail, and so it's a highly effective mystery. Moreover, it does what good mysteries do (in my opinion) and expose some kind of wound in the world. In this case, it's all about the way Barrayaran society deals with disability, the thing Miles has struggled with his entire life, not just in other people, but himself. Excellently done, my favorite story in the book. (Others agree as to its excellence; it won the 1990 Hugo Award for Best Novella.)

"Labyrinth" continues this theme. The novella is set when Miles is serving in his "Admiral Naismith" persona as commander of the Dendarii Mercenaries. The mercenaries travel to a space station to extract a scientist for Miles's master back on Barrayar, but of course things get a lot more complicated. Again, the story focused on disability, especially marked physical difference and the way we dehumanize other. Miles has a "hermaphordite" officer serving under him (I imagine Bujold would use different terminology in the 2020s), there's a "quaddie" (a genetically altered four-armed variant of humans from Bujold's earlier Falling Free, which I haven't got to yet), and an experimental subject kept in captivity. What we see in the story is how physical difference and setbacks can make it easy to ignore someone's essential humanity, to lie to ourselves and say someone might be better off dead than disabled. Plus, it's Bujold, so it's an exciting, fun, well-done caper story.

(As a Star Wars "Expanded Universe" fan, I did find it very disconcerting that there was a character named "Baron Fell." Baron Fel first appeared in a Star Wars story almost ten years later, and Mike Stackpole does seem like the kind of guy who might read Vorkosigan, so I wonder if the name was lodged in his subconscious somewhere. I googled a bit, but apparently I am the only person to ever read both X-Wing comics and Vorkosigan novellas and comment about it on the Internet.)

Lastly, there's the title story, "The Borders of Infinity," about Miles going to a particularly nasty space prison. Miles, of course, organizes the prisoners from nothing. Great stuff of course, but more action-adventure focused than the other two, with less thematic depth, and thus the weakest story in the volume. But in most other authors' hands, this would be one of their best!

The frame story is pretty slight; basically Miles's superior in Barrayar military intelligence, Illyan, demands to know what Miles has been spending so much money on while leading the Dendarii, which leads into each of the three stories in turn. It's fine, I guess, but I kind of wish it wasn't there, because I think the stories themselves would read better prior to Brothers in Arms, but the frame necessitates (even if just slightly) reading the volume after it.

Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Mirror Dance

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 7: Brothers in Arms

In my Vorkosigan reading order, this is the seventh book overall, but the fourth Miles one, though the previous Miles-focused one (Cetaganda) didn't really move the character forward in any kind of way. So here, we have Miles's first progression since what was the second book I read, The Vor Game. However, it's worth pointing out that in publication order, this is the second Miles novel, preceding Vor Game. (Bujold was crazy!)

Brothers In Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold

Originally published: 1989
Acquired: December 2022
Read: November 2024

Perhaps this is why the opening of Brothers in Arms jars a bit. If you left off with Miles in Vor Game or Cetaganda, you left off with him as a member of the Barrayaran military; he has his links to the Dendarii mercenaries, but his focus is on his traditional military career. It's weird, then, when you begin Brothers in Arms and find not only that Miles is with the Dendarii mercenaries, but this is apparently what he does on a regular basis, to the point of leading them into major combat actions! My vague understanding is that the book I will read next will actually fill this in somewhat; even if it didn't, though, it's the kind of thing one must get used to when reading a series of books about someone's career published out of chronological order; certainly as a fan of C. S. Forester's Hornblower, I am very familiar with it!

Once you get over that initial discomfort (and this just may be the fault of my reading order, not the book), the beginning of the novel is good fun. Miles has been serving with the Dendarii, who are repairing and resupplying on Earth, but finds himself ordered to join the staff of the Barrayaran embassy on Earth while he's there, so he must simultaneously maintain his Admiral Naismith persona and his Lieutenant Vorkosigan one—all the while the Cetagandans are trying to kill Naismith, but the Dendarii need him, and his Barrayaran superior has ordered him to stay away.

It's a recipe for farce, and of course farce is a thing that Bujold is quite good at. But it's more than that; the book itself points out that Miles is always acting: Admiral Naismith is a persona, Lieutenant Vorkosigan is a persona, and so too is Lord Miles. So who, then, is left? Who is he when he's not fulfilling all these obligations to other people? What is the Venn diagram of those people?

Like any farce, though, things must escalate, but to discuss this, I must get into spoiler territory, so look away if that offends you. (I will say, though, that it's a thing I knew going in, being familiar in a very broad sense with the overall outline of the saga.) In order to explain how Admiral Naismith and Lieutenant Vorkosigan can be in the same place even though they're not the same person, Miles invents the idea that one is a clone of the other created by his father's enemies... and what should happen but who waltzes into the situation: a clone of Miles created by his father's enemies! As complications go, it's honestly a bit contrived even if it is, obviously, fun.

Bujold does her best to justify it, but it's not so much the justification that lets her get away with it as what she does with the conceit. Because who is "Mark" (as Miles dubs him), but the blank space in the middle of that Venn diagram, the person that Miles might be without all those obligations weighing on him? So even though his clone wants to kill and replace him, Miles wants to help his "brother" to be the person he never can be.

But it's not true, of course. Mark is no more free than Miles is; in a sense, he's even more a victim of others' obligations than Miles is. At one point, Miles asks Mark to imagine who he might be if he was free of his creators and their plot... but can Miles imagine who he might be if he were free of all his obligations? No, Miles has no idea at all. In this book, he tries to romance Elli Quinn, but Quinn won't come back to Barrayar with him... and Miles just can't imagine himself without Barrayar, even though in doing so it seems he might actually be able to have Quinn. Who are we, Brothers in Arms seems to say, but all our obligations? Or at least, the ethical ones?* In the end, Miles must try to fulfill all his obligations as ethically as he can, because otherwise, there is no Miles at the core of that Venn diagram. That means saving Mark, but not imposing himself on him. Mark will discover his own obligations for himself.

This sounds very pretentious, perhaps, but it's Bujold, so of course it's not. Like I said, the whole thing is wrapped up in a beautiful veneer of farce, with good comedy, fun character moments, and some genuinely tense action sequences. If I have any criticism, it's that it seems to me there's more thematic depth to be mined from the character of Mark than we actually get here, since Bujold's emphasis is largely on the action and intrigue plot. Like yes, all of the above is definitely going on, but it's more of a background element than a foreground one at times. But my understanding (no spoilers for me, please) is that Mark returns in future books. Bujold has a pattern of introducing an idea and then returning to it years later in a more complicated way (Shards of Honor versus Barrayar, Warrior's Apprentice versus Vor Game), so I have faith that this book isn't just a fun action-adventure romp, but also a set-up for something bigger and better later on.

Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Borders of Infinity

* Not just via Miles and Mark, but also through the subplot about Miles's superior Galeni, who I loved. I hope he comes back someday.

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 6: Ethan of Athos

Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold

Ethan of Athos may be part of the "Vorkosigan saga" in that it connects to other books in the same milieu but it is not a "Vorkosigan novel" in that Miles Vorkosigan does not actually appear in it—and nor does any other member of the Vorkosigan family. The biggest link to the other novels is that Elli Quinn, a member of the Dendarii Free Mercenaries from The Warrior's Apprentice, is a central character; otherwise, the novel draws on some of the same broad background as the other Vorkosigan novels, especially the influence of the planet Cetaganda, which we saw in the novel of the same name.

In some ways, I think Ethan of Athos is a victim of Bujold's success. In chronological order, this is the seventh Vorkosigan novel; in my hybrid order, it's the sixth. Either way, as a reader, you are probably hoping for more Vorkosigan. That's why you are reading these books, but you'll get none of it here. My friend who has pushed the Vorkosigan novels on me has never actually read this one!

Originally published: 1986
Acquired: May 2024
Read: July 2024

But this is a problem you're having as a modern reader, and it's not the novel's fault. Ethan of Athos was just the third Vorkosigan novel published, one of three to appear in 1986, after Shards of Honor (June) and The Warrior's Apprentice (August); Ethan was published in December. The first three books thus don't share any central characters: Shards features Cordelia, while Warrior's Apprentice her son Miles. The next "Vorkosigan" book would be 1988's Falling Free, which does not feature any Vorkosigans and in fact takes place centuries prior to the other books. Bujold wouldn't write a book that featured the same central character as a previous book until the fifth, 1989's Brothers in Arms—it's not until then that this series, I would argue, meaningfully becomes the "Vorkosigan saga."

Prior to 1989, you just have four novels set in the same general cosmic background. Like a lot of science fiction writers, Bujold prefers to not have to reinvent a universe everytime she writes a new book; see for example Ursula K. Le Guin, Iain M. Banks, and Becky Chambers. Ethan of Athos feels like an outlier now, but in 1986, she clearly wasn't thinking of this as a series of books about one person or family. Imagine if, in the mid-1970s, Le Guin had decided to write a bunch more Genly Ai novels following on from The Left Hand of Darkness, and then someone handed you 1974's The Dispossessed telling you it was part of the "Genly Ai saga." Even though it takes place in the same universe, and even fills in an important piece of backstory, you would probably feel alienated when it turned out to be about some guy named Shevek, not Genly Ai at all. Thinking of Ethan as a Vorkosigan novel does it a disservice—but unlike the Hainish novels, or the Culture novels, or the Galactic Commons novels, Bujold's science fiction milieu doesn't have a designation derived from the setting, just one derived from the characters... and they are totally absent here. (Miles is actually mentioned a lot, but by Elli, who doesn't know his real name, and thus he's not even called "Vorkosigan.")

Okay, so if we're not taking Ethan of Athos as a Vorkosigan novel, how should we take it? Well, there are two ways we can take it, I think. The first is as a novel about gender. The Athos of the title is something I don't remember seeing very much in science fiction before: an all-male society. (Just Manjula Padmanabhan's Escape. Wait, isn't there a Cordwainer Smith story with a premise like this? But certainly, it's much less common than the all-female society.) The people of Athos reproduce by combining their DNA with ova acquired from off-planet. Everyone is a man, homosexual relationships are completely normal, the people of Athos have a deep fear of women inculcated by generations of misogynistic stories about a kind of human being they've never actually met. What reproduction might be like in the future is something Bujold has been interested in throughout her novels in this setting; see also the uterine replicator that's central to Barrayar.

The book has some fun stuff that derives from this premise, and I appreciate that it doesn't do what might have seemed an obvious thing in the 1980s, end with Ethan realizing women aren't so bad after all and that he's actually a heterosexual; it ends with him affirming his homosexuality, actually. But while Barrayar leveraged the uterine replicator as part of a complex exploration of various aspects of motherhood, I don't think Ethan has much to say about masculinity. Imagine if (to bring up Le Guin again) Left Hand of Darkness had been about someone from Gethen going to another Hainish world, and that they just spent most of the book going, "Wow, two genders!" Like, you might have gotten some interesting worldbuilding, but it also would have been a novel with much less to say. I wish we'd gotten to see more of Athos, and I wish we'd gotten more of a sense of why this planet is like this. Sure, I get misogyny... but it's a weird breed of misogyny that would reach the conclusion of having a planet with no women. Misogyny is usually about putting women in a particular societal place, not about getting rid of them altogether!

What all the gender stuff ultimately is, is a background to an espionage thriller. When the new egg cultures sent to Athos are sabotaged, one of their physicians, Ethan, has to travel into the outside universe to acquire some new ones—one of the first Athosians to do that in generations. In classic Bujold fashion, he quickly finds himself ensnared in a complex plot he doesn't totally understand; the fact that he comes from a planet with literally no women mostly serves to heighten his confusion. Without doing the book too much of a disservice, I would say that ultimately it's fun and well done, but that's about it. Like most Vorkosigan books, you're swept up in it and you have a good time.

It would be possible to understate the importance of that; there are many sf novels out there where that never happens! There are good characters and good comedy and good twists. I was happy to see Elli again (and I gather she will pop up in future Vorkosigan books), and I liked getting to know Ethan (and am sorry to gather he never pops up again). But other than Cetaganda, this is the least enjoyable Vorkosigan novel I've read thus far. Admittedly, this is damning with faint praise, because other than Cetaganda, I've enjoyed them all!

Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Brothers in Arms

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 5: Cetaganda

Cetaganda: A Vorkosigan Adventure by Lois McMaster Bujold

In my custom Vorkosigan saga order, this is the fifth book, taking us back to the "present day" of Miles after a two-book flashback to the era of his mother.

Published: 1996
Acquired and read: December 2023

As the first Miles book following on from the events of The Vor Game, it is honestly a bit of a disappointment. Of the five books I've read so far, it's the first that doesn't feel like it moves the story forward in some kind of way, the first to not really tell me anything about its central character I don't already know. Miles and Ivan go to the planet Cetaganda, and of course find themselves embroiled in political subterfuge, plus also investigating a murder. It's fun enough, but I didn't feel like it had a strong thematic or character spine undergirding it, nothing was holding it together other than the political plot—and honestly I don't really care about the political disposition of Cetaganda, even if it does hypothetically mean war with Barryar.

So far, the Vorkosigan books are often at their best when considering cultural clashes, but I got little sense of that in this book even though it ought to be rife with it; in the rigid, ossified, stratified society of Cetaganda, one might think Miles could see a mirror to his own society. (And indeed, the cover implies such an image.) But I did not see such a thing really presented in the actual book.

Of course, it's a Vorkosigan book by Bujold, so it has good action, fun jokes, nice moments of characterization, and all comes together well. But it's the first book in the series that has felt disposable, that hasn't felt like a story that needed to be told. One knows she could do more.

Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Ethan of Athos

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 4: Barrayar

Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold

My fourth Vorkosigan novel (third in chronological sequence, eighth in publication order) picks up right from the end of the previous one, Shards of Honor. Indeed, Bujold's very interesting afterword discusses how originally Shards was going to be longer but she realized she was introducing new complications instead of wrapping up existing ones, so she went backward and found a spot where it could stop, orphaning several thousand words that she'd written. It was another five years or so before she went back to that orphaned material and realized it could form the beginning of a second novel about Cordelia, one about—as the title is very clear about—her new life on the planet Barrayar.

I had actually read Shards and Barrayar before; over a decade ago my friend Christiana loaned me an omnibus edition of the two. Rereading the review I wrote at the time, it's almost hilariously lukewarm:

It has some adventure narrative tropes I find uncomfortable (the "other" being simultaneously more dangerous and more interesting than the home society), some slightly strange gender politics (the woman must give up her society utterly for the man she loves, who never seriously considers it), and some stuff that's just plain weird (everyone reveres one character who is a rapist), but overall I enjoyed it. It gets off to a rough start, to be honest-- there's a lot of journeying through a dangerous landscape, which I find tedious, and our protagonist Cordelia has a tendency to be rescued by other people a lot.  But at the one-third mark, she finally starts making her own decisions, fleeing her home planet in a fantastic sequence, and then traveling to Barrayar, where she marries Aral Vorkosigan and is forced to navigate her way in a strange society.  At this point, I was completely absorbed, and I loved all the political maneuvering and civil war stuff, and Cordelia herself shone quite well.

Originally published: 1991
Acquired: January 2022
Read: November 2023

On this read, it was pretty obvious to me that the books are interrogating the things I found uncomfortable, and I'm not sure why I didn't know that the first time; these books are all about that contact between cultures and danger of being fascinated by the "other"; the gender politics of Barrayar are continuously scrutinized. And when on Earth was Cordelia ever a victim who needed to be rescued!? What I do think is fair is that I clearly liked Barrayar more than Shards. While Shards is good, I definitely think Bujold got better as a novelist in the interim; Shards is like three linked novellas while Barrayar has a unity of plot and, especially, theme.

The other really interesting tidbit the afterword brought into focus for me was that this was a book about parenting. I just don't think I saw that at age 24, and even if I had, it would not have resonated the way it does as a 38-year-old father of two. Most of Cordelia's emotions and decisions are driven by the fact that she's a parent. This is obviously the case when it comes to Miles, but it's true almost everywhere in the book: the way she thinks about the boy emperor, Gregor, for example, or her ability to figure out what the emperor's mother Kareena is thinking. I definitely liked the book before, but this time through I felt it, there was a real intensity to it. The book is filled with great moments, some of them funny, some of them grim, all of them thoughtful and considered. I won't list them here, but if you've read it, you'll easily bring a number of them to mind.

Science fiction can sometime feel like a young person's game: young people doing epic stuff like fighting empires. But Barrayar is science fiction for the middle aged. Yes, there are evil empires, but it's about the struggle to be a good parent in all its myriad forms, the right you keep up every day, not always because you want to, but because you won't be yourself if you give up.

I know there are more Cordelia-focused novels in the saga's "main" sequence, but it's a shame there aren't more of these books about her younger days on Barrayar, because in some ways she's an even more interesting protagonist than Miles.

Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Cetaganda

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 3: Shards of Honor

Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

This was the first-written Vorkosigan book, and (if you ignore prequels set well before the main series), it's also the first chronologically. Yet I chose to read it third, treating the first two Miles books, The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game, as a duology, and then moving backwards to read the two Cordelia books as a prequel duology.

Originally published: 1986
Acquired: January 2022
Read: March 2023

It certainly was not intended to be read as a prequel, but I found that it worked quite well. Shards of Honor is told from the point-of-view of Cordelia Naismith, the captain of a science vessel from Beta Colony, who becomes entangled with Aral Vorkosigan, commander of a warship from Barrayar; they are the future parents of Miles. Cordelia is an important presence in the first two Miles books, but admittedly not much of a presence, in that she plays little role in those books, so it's nice to see her here. It's also good to get a perspective on Aral more sympathetic than the one we usually get from Miles, for whom his father is a principled but stern authority figure. Reading Shards of Honor this way, it does what the best prequels do: fill in and enhance our understanding of the later-set stories. I found a lot of little moments where one could aha! in seeing how Warrior's Apprentice and Vor Game were set up, not just with the characters of Aral and Cordelia, but also with Bothari, the damaged sergeant who comes across as more villainous in Warrior's Apprentice, but who turns out to have been kind of a victim here.

Like previous Vorkosigan books, this reminded me of the Hornblower series by C. S. Forester. Not so much in terms of content (this was much less of a Hornbloweresque military escapade than the Miles books, it's more of a combination survival-thriller-and-romance), but structure: Shards of Honor was originally published as a single novel, but it was clearly written as three novellas, one about Cordelia and Aral's original meeting and survival trek, one about them meeting again in a war zone, and one about the consequences on Beta Colony of Cordelia's adventures. Each (especially the first two) has a clear beginning and end, and clear character arc all of its own, and could be read entirely satisfyingly without the others; the second even contains bits of dropped-in exposition for people who hadn't read the first part! It's a little jarring in that the book doesn't even use something like "Part Two" to make the transition; you turn a page and suddenly you are months later in a different place reading about a different thing. But aside from that, the device worked for me—nothing in this book wears out its welcome, nor does it feel underdeveloped. Instead you get three solid stories for the price of one!

In terms of series chronology, Shards of Honor is followed by a short story called "Aftermaths" which is available in Cordelia's Honor, the Baen omnibus of Shards of Honor and Barrayar. I was prepared to track it down (it is, for example, available as a free episode of the Escape Pod podcast), but was pleasantly surprised to find it was included in my NESFA Press edition of Shards, a fact completely unmentioned on the NESFA website or the cover or in the introduction of my actual book! I'm glad it was; it's not essential to the ongoing story, but it is an effectively written story of those left behind by war.

Next up in sequence: Barrayar

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 2: The Vor Game

The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold

In chronological order, The Vor Game is the fifth Vorkosigan novel—in publication order, it is the seventh! The way Bujold jumped around the timeline is often unreal; she wrote books set seventh and ninth before jumping back to this one. It's one of the many ways, however, that this series reminds me of a favorite series of mine, the Horatio Hornblower novels by C. S. Forester. Forester also jumped back and forth in his hero's life; I'll have to keep reading to find out if Bujold introduces as many continuity errors in the process as Forester did. In my hybrid order, however, The Vor Game is the second book.

Originally published: 1990
Acquired: January 2022
Read: November 2022

There are many ways this series is like Hornblower, and I'll talk about another one in my next post, about Shards of Honor: the other one I want to discuss today mostly focuses on the opening segment of this novel, which was originally published as a standalone novella, "The Weatherman." Following the events of the previous book, The Warrior's Apprentice, Miles Vorkosigan has graduated from the military academy and is sent off to his first posting... to monitor the weather at a forlorn ice-encrusted remote military base on his home planet. But, of course, he eventually ends up in the same kind of dilemma that Hornblower so often ended up in, one where the dictates of military service run up against his personal morality. Can he save the lives of innocent men without violating the chain of command? Like Hornblower, he distinguishes himself with clever, intellectual solutions to his problems. The way he thinks up to get out of this situation is brilliant. I love this kind of thing, a hero who is both principled and clever. That was the moment I texted my friend (who has been pushing the books on me for a decade): "This book is so totally my jam."

Then Miles is off on another adventure. This is also a very Hornblower move, the novel made up of multiple disparate stories, but the next adventure keeps twisting and turning. Soon Miles is hunting down the mercenary group he created in Warrior's Apprentice, and then he's uncovered a vast plot, and now he has a very important dignitary to protect, etc., etc. To be honest, it kind of threw me. I wanted more adventures of Miles in the service! How does he learn to fit himself into that hierarchy? It's a very Hornblower question...

...but you know, while it seems to me Bujold must have been inspired partially by Hornblower, this is not Hornblower. It has its own identity, and its own questions to ask. Once I adjusted to that, I came to enjoy the book much more; I think it's the kind of novel that even though it was good the first time, it will improve on a reread, once you can see how it all fits together. The question isn't how does Miles make himself fit, but it seems to be, where can Miles find that he can fit? At least, I think so! Bujold has wrong-footed me before, and I am sure she will do so again, but I look forward to finding out where Miles is when I next pick up his story, with Cetaganda. (But first, we jump backwards a bit...)

Next up in sequence: Shards of Honor

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 1: The Warrior's Apprentice

The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold

My friend Christiana has been after me to read the Vorkosigan books for some time and, indeed, she did get me to read the Baen collection of the two Cordelia novels over a decade ago. But I never got around to reading anymore; you lot know how many books are on my reading list! Recently, my sister's voice has joined her. I was finally spurred to action by the fire that destroyed Uncle Hugo's Bookstore in Minneapolis during the Black Lives Matter protests. Posts on File 770 drew my attention to the fact that the store, as it was being rebuilt, was selling signed copies of special editions of the Vorkosigan novels that had been released by the New England Science Fiction Association.

Originally published: 1986
Acquired: January 2022
Read: March 2022

These editions were nice hardcovers, with better art than what graces the Baen editions. You can see them on the NESFA site here, and on the Uncle Hugo's site here. I think they look nice, and they have definitive texts and extra critical apparatus, and I suspected they would look nice on a shelf together. The whole series hasn't been done, but they would match the fact that the one Vorkosigan book I do own (the sixteenth! someone got it for me as a present) is in hardcover, too. So I put them on my wish list, and my sister got me signed NESFA editions of the two Cordelia books for Christmas. Me being me, however, I had come up with my own reading order for the Vorkosigan novels that was neither chronological nor publication (more on that in a future post), and I had decided to start with The Warrior's Apprentice (second in publication order, fourth in chronology). Thus, I picked that up from Uncle Hugo's myself, and off we went!

At first I struggled with it. It's a bit jumpy at first. As I texted my friend when I was partway through, "Like he's failing out of school, now there's a party, now he's on Beta Colony, it wasn't clear to me what the book was actually about. But now that he is on his smuggling run with his weird crew it is super fun."

And indeed, groups of weird people who must work together to run a spaceship is basically my favorite genre of science fiction, and this is a particularly well-executed example of it. I like how Miles bluffs his way into a situation, and then is forced to escalate his bluffs again and again, and soon he supposedly runs a massive mercenary organization... and then he does run a massive mercenary organization! I loved his "inspection" of the mercenary ship he captures. Forward momentum! Miles himself is the kind of character I love, of course: logical, honorable, cunning, clueless. Basically Hornblower in space, how could I not like him?

I had some niggles, aside from the opening—a romance subplot didn't convince me too much, the stuff about a certain character felt a bit too icky but not handled sufficiently well—but on the whole this was a highly enjoyable book, one that gave me exactly what I want. I am writing this in August, when I have not yet got to my next Vorkosigan book, but I hope to do so soon!

Next up in sequence: The Vor Game