Book Review - Young Miles, by Lois McMaster Bujold

I had an opportunity to meet Lois McMaster Bujold recently, and I told her what recently occurred to me: the first two Vorkosigan books are responsible for bringing me back into science fiction, after two decades of straying from a childhood built on Asimov and Bradbury. Well, to be fair, the Mass Effect games had a lot to do with that, too. But the first Vorkosigan omnibus, Cordelia’s Honor, was the first sci-fi book I’ve read that excited me like Foundation or All Summer in a Day used to. After I finished it, I had numerous people tell me that the saga doesn’t really get going until Miles’s story begins in the books presented in this volume. While I had to adjust my expectations a little in order to really get the most out of this omnibus, I can definitely see what they’re talking about.

The first book, The Warrior’s Apprentice, is a farce with a tragedy at its center, which took me a little time to get used to. I think I was expecting some grand and self-important introduction to Miles Vorkosigan and his sprawling story and legacy. What I got was a sarcastic, whip-smart son of a noble who tries not to be devoured whole by a spur-of-the-moment white lie that grows into a lumbering, self-feeding construct of half-truths and bent rules. I took things too seriously when I started the book, and got somewhat annoyed at the serendipitous coincidences and increasingly improbable scenarios. Once I caught on, though, it read almost like a Shakespearean comedy: seemingly innocuous decisions interlace and send Miles on wild, unpredictable courses. However, one of Miles’s snap-judgement gambits, made just as he is getting confident of his string of successes, has dire consequences. This scene is especially powerful to readers who have read the previous books in the series. Although this development jabs a monkey wrench into the otherwise madcap pace of the story, it interjects a well-written dose of character development into the proceedings, which seems to plant the seed for Miles’s further maturation later on in the series.

This idea is further explored in the included short story, the Mountains of Mourning. Set chronologically between the two novels, the story takes Miles out of space and thrusts him into the hinterlands of his home planet of Barrayar, where he has to pit his noble title and fledgling leadership skills against the entrenched, vicious customs of his own people. This theme of the responsibilities and burdens that come with rising through the ranks carries over into the second book, The Vor Game. This story follows the same general template as the previous book, with Miles hopping from location to location, often under an assumed identity with an intricate cover story, attempting to prevent the entire house of cards collapsing under him. This time, however, he does so with the official blessing (grudging though it may be) of the Barrayaran military. The stakes are now much higher, and due to his previous experiences, Miles is more keenly aware of the consequences of his various schemes and what might happen if they fail.

The flow of the story gets a little snagged in places, and the books contain their fair share of melodrama and convenient plot devices. Even so, this one takes the universe set up in the previous omnibus and runs with it. Miles is a wonderful character, keenly aware of the mental strengths he must hone and employ to compensate for his physical weakness. The stories are good, and the characters are great. Best of all, Bujold leaves a lot of room for new settings and growing character arcs, without getting too wrapped up in hard sci-fi minutiae. In short, this is series that started strong, and at this point, is consistently getting better.

Verdict: 4 / 5