redshift

She preferred her military history with more temporal displacement. A century or two, say. She imagined some cool future scholar looking through a time-telescope at her, and gave him a mental rude gesture.

As with Young Miles, Cordelia’s Honour is a compilation volume, although in this case it contains only two books: Shards of Honour and Barrayar. The books in question are set before and around the time of Miles’s birth, respectively, and focus on his mother, Captain Cordelia Naismith, and the sequence of events which cause her to meet Miles’s father, Aral Vorkosigan. Given this, the basic outcome of the book shouldn’t be surprising, particularly if you pick them up in the same order as I did (i.e. publication order, not chronological order) — but the process of getting there is beyond convoluted, and a really good read.

The books play strongly on the contrast between the societies Cordelia and Aral come from (Beta Colony, where freedom of choice, equality and so on are emphasised, and Barrayar, a planet controlled by an emperor with a warrior caste as the main political players and discrimination of a whole variety of types is rife); the joy of Bujold’s writing is that it isn’t a clear-cut comparison between an idealised democracy and a deeply despotic empire. Both sides have problems, often big ones.

The characters themselves are delightful, too; from the glimpses of Cordelia and Aral I gained reading Young Miles I had every reason to expect that a story about their past would be fascinating, and I really wasn’t disappointed.

Of the two I find Barrayar to be by far the stronger book, although both are enjoyable; Cordelia very much comes into her own in the second book, against all odds, and that’s a joy to read. Any flaws I could pick up on — and there were a couple, but small enough and probably personal enough to me as a (slightly odd) reader to not be worth giving much coverage here — really didn’t undermine the strength of the stories and the characters.

I’d be inclined to recommend the Vorkosigan saga to anyone who likes political sci-fi, really. These books and the others I’ve read contain a mixture of action and politics which has done a good job of keeping me interested, and the setting is fascinating.

Reading order probably isn’t that important, either, although I would say that the compilation volumes Young Miles or Cordelia’s Honour are likely to be the best places to start. The books aren’t always the easiest to get hold of outside the US, but various online booksellers and some independent bookshops can often do the trick. They’ve worked so far for me!

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’.”