redshift

Miles gestured the injured mercenary captain ahead of him into sickbay with a little jab of his nerve disrupter. The deadly weapon seemed unnaturally light and easy in his hand. Something that lethal should have more heft, like a broadsword. Wrong, for murder to be so potentially effortless–one ought to at least have to grunt for it.

Young Miles by Lois McMaster Bujold is a compilation volume, containing two novels and one novella of the Vorkosigan Saga: The Warrior’s Apprentice, The Mountains of Mourning, and The Vor Game. While the actual reading order of the series can be a bit confusing, the first of these was the first published and the others follow from that within the timeline of the series. There are books set previously, which I haven’t yet read, focusing on other characters and events. I started at this point almost by chance, but it seems to have been a good place. The saga is space-opera, full of interplanetary tension and all the rest.

The first and last of the stories in this volume, the full length novels, are full of wild adventure (misadventure?) across space, with the central character, the crippled Miles Vorkosigan, just barely keeping everything running as he invents wildly to try and make situations work, with varying success. The novella, The Mountains of Mourning, is a more subdued and thoughtful piece set on Miles’s home planet, dealing with social prejudices. It’s a short murder mystery, of sorts, focused entirely on the rural society of Barrayar.

There are a lot of things I’m fond of about these books. They balance humour and seriousness wonderfully, and many of the characters are fantastically sharp, well-drawn people who are honestly fascinating to read about. The adventures are really great fun, and the writing drags you along. (I finished reading The Vor Game in the small hours of this morning, due to an inability to put it down and go to sleep.) I think, really, I’m fairly thoroughly hooked; I’ll certainly be hunting down more of this series.

“Simon,” said Count Vorkosigan, “there’s no doubt ImpSec will have to go on watching Miles. For his sake, as well as mine.”

“And the Emperor’s,” put in Illyan dourly. “And Barrayar’s. And the innocent bystanders’.”