Disclaimer: the following review was written by an unabashed fan of Lois McMaster Bujold and Captain Ivan Vorpatril.

Warning: The following review is full of spoilers.

Two points I need to make up front:

1.  Ivan Vorpatril  is hands down my favorite secondary character in the Vorkosiverse.

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance

2.  That said, I was obviously beyond excited when I learned there was going to be an “Ivan” novel forthcoming, but my excitement was tempered by wondering, really, if Ivan was capable of carrying off his own narrative.  I mean, even Ivan knows he’s been Miles Vorkosigan’s donkey for years now…

I really should have had more faith in Bujold.  Of course Ivan is able to carry his own novel quite well, thank you, and Bujold wisely removes Miles to Sergyar except for a brief appearance, which prevents him from stealing Ivan’s thunder here.  Which is just as well, because the five or six pages he’s part of give you some idea of just how dominating a character he is.  He can’t help it.  But if you’re only going to read this book for Miles and Ekaterin, be warned now—they really do only make the briefest of appearances.  However, Miles is often referenced in one way or another, usually in the backstory.

Readers who have not read the entire series might miss some references to previous books and plotlines, although this shouldn’t really be detrimental to their enjoyment of this novel, which is capable of standing on its own.  But if you’ve read Memory and A Civil Campaign and even Cetaganda, your enjoyment will be magnified; since Bujold is very good indeed at sneaking in all the backstory you need to understand the plot and the worlds of Barrayar and Jackson’s Whole, however, you can start here if you wish and work your way backwards.  Then read them all forward again.  And again, and again…oh, sorry.

So Ivan.  The always charming Ivan, used mostly as comic fodder and as Miles’ foil in the earlier novels but given a bigger, better developed role in both Memory and A Civil Campaign, finally steps out on his own here with, if not the manic flare of his genius cousin, then at least with his own sense of style.  And as he wades through a phalanx of bounty hunters, Jacksonian plotters, and the machinations of the dissipated Byerly Vorrutyer, Ivan proves that it’s entirely possible he’s wasted in Ops.

When the novel opens, Ivan, as aide-de-camp to Admiral Desplaines, is temporarily stationed on Komarr and looking forward to exploring its domes in search of a little fun when By turns up on his doorstep, looking for help.  He’s up to his ears in an internal smuggling operation, and has learned that a certain young lady is being targeted for kidnapping, although he has no idea why or even who she really is.  He begs Ivan to take what little information he has and make her acquaintance with the idea of rescuing her—she’s really a side job here, and he just doesn’t have the time—plus, he can’t risk blowing his cover.  Since the young woman is stunningly attractive, and because Ivan is chivalrous to a fault, he unwillingly agrees to help By.

Because it’s Ivan, things don’t exactly work out the way he intends: he ends up being taken prisoner by Tej and her companion, Rish, then thwarting their would-be kidnappers (in a scene that makes it clear that Ivan was paying attention on all of those accidental adventures with Miles) and taking the women home with him until he can figure out how to safely get them off of Komarr.  When the tables are turned on them yet again, Ivan does what seems to be the only logical thing he can do at the time—he marries Tej even as Dome Security and Komarr Immigration officials are attempting to break down the door of his apartment, then hires Rish as a means of protecting them from deportation and himself from a charge of kidnapping.  He doesn’t consider that he barely knows his new wife.  Or at least, he doesn’t consider it for too long.  And he certainly has no intention of staying married anyway.

Tej, as it happens, is the youngest daughter of a Jackon’s Whole House Baron whose house was overthrown in a coup; most of her extended family, except for a brother currently working on Escobar, is assumed to have been killed in the takeover.  There’s a big price on her head as a result, and Ivan sees his marriage as a means to a little recreational sex and merely a temporary thing to keep Tej and Rish one step ahead of Jacksonian bounty hunters before eventually shipping them off to Escobar to meet up with her brother. Back on Barrayar, however, Ivan discovers that neither his family or ImpSec seem to be in any hurry to speed Tej on her way–and when the brother turns up on Barrayar with her presumed-dead family in tow, Ivan soon realizes that his formidable mother is the least of his family problems.

This is all a great deal of fun, and best of all, it gives Bujold an opportunity to flesh out the more domestic side of some of her secondary characters, including Lady Alys (I want her apartment!), Simon Illyan (who has some great scenes), and Count Falco Vorpatril (whose appearance is brief, but memorable), while delving into a little ancient Barrayarian history vis a vis the Cetegandan Occupation.  Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is a hybrid of a novel–part interplanetary political thriller and part domestic farce, with a little romance thrown in; it is also easily Bujold’s most readable, most enjoyable outing since A Civil Campaign—it’s funny as hell in spots, with just enough plot twists to keep things lively.  She makes the unusual mash-up work.

For me, what was most interesting was where the author took Ivan in his development.  Ivan is 35 in this book (which is, incidentally, set before Cryoburn), and has, in his previous outings, been cast as a happy-go-lucky womanizer whose mother despairs of ever seeing him safely married, but we learn more about Ivan’s relationship with Lady Alys here, and also about his place in her life, which is much more precarious now that Simon is installed as her domestic partner.  I realized long ago that Ivan was not the family idiot he’s made out to be, but now that he’s front and center here, it’s driven home pretty quickly that the Ivan we’ve grown to know and love was always filtered through Miles’ take on him.  So it was personally gratifying for me to see my own analysis of Ivan bearing fruit here.  In particular, there is a scene early on where Alys and Ivan, accompanied by Simon and Tej, go to burn their annual death offering for Alys’ now very late husband, Padma (who was killed by rebel forces just hours before Ivan’s birth) that provides enormous insight into why Alys is so formidable, and equal insight into why Ivan has been content all these years to stay within her orbit, quietly underachieving.  It’s a moving scene in many ways, and it speaks volumes about not only each character’s personality, but their often fraught relationship.  Likewise, we get to see a side of Simon that would have been almost unthinkable in the earlier novels—as a man who is emotionally vulnerable and trying hard to figure out not only what his role is in the Alys-Ivan relationship, but what his role as retired Chief of ImpSec is.

Ivan has always cultivated an air of intellectual laziness in the past, preferring to let Miles do the heavy lifting there while he plays a more ornamental role.  But it is a mistake to think that Ivan is stupid or lazy—he is, in fact, neither and never has been.  Here, he does some weasel work worthy of ImpSec and, furthermore, shows that he’s just as adaptable and quick-thinking as his cousin.  When dealing with Byerly Vorrutyer, who plays games within games as one of ImpSec’s deep cover moles, Ivan shows that he not only has By’s number, but that he’s just as good at playing his cards close to his chest as the wiggly By.  Always a character who reacted to situations instead of acting first, Ivan is forced in this instance to prove he is capable of both action and considered reaction—a major development for his character.

Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in his dealings with his newly-minted, if temporary, in-laws.  Bujold is obviously having a grand time with Tej’s family—they are truly awful people, as befits a Jacksonian House Baron and his family.  Jackson’s Whole, for those not familiar with all of the Vorkosigan novels, is Bujold’s picture of laissez-faire capitalism taken to the nth degree, where The Deal is Sacred and Power is King.  No good Jacksonian gives anything without receiving something in trade, and watching first Tej and then her parents try to work their Deals on Barrayar is both amusing and eye-opening.  Watching Ivan adjust to it is downright entertaining.  Similarly, it becomes clear that Tej is really quite as torn about her family as Ivan is about his: she finds them exasperating and impossible, but they are her family.

Which brings us, in the end, to Ivan and Tej’s marriage of convenience.  While both of them insist that their hasty wedding was nothing more than a means to an end, they discover that divorce Barrayaran-style isn’t as simple as they think. The reader, if not the characters, quickly tumbles to the fact that these two were made for each other.  They see in their partners all the qualities that their respective families have always refused to see.  To Tej, Ivan is brave, quick-witted, and thoughtful and not the amiable idiot.  To Ivan, Tej is not just the wayward youngest child with no purpose except as a bargaining chip in her parents’ political games, but a bright young woman, loyal to those she loves, who is capable of anything if someone would just give her a chance.

You’ll have to read the book, though, to find out if they can make this work.  I’m not going to tell you.  But I will tell you this: I loved nearly every word of this, and as soon as my husband finishes with it, I’ll probably read it again.

Borders of Infinity

I recently sat down to reread Lois McMaster Bujold’s Borders of Infinity, her three novellas set during Miles Vorkosigan’s younger years (the years prior to his visit on Earth) with the Dendarii Mercenaries.  Anyone who knows me wouldn’t question me rereading a Bujold—her Memory and A Civil Campaign are probably two of the books I most frequently reread.  But I rarely pick up these three novellas for another go.  I’m not a huge fan of short fiction, even longer short fiction, as a rule, so I just don’t read these over and over the way I do the Vorkosigan novels.

I really need to stop being so stubborn about short fiction.  Each one of these is really a small gem of a story, and each one gives a glimpse of a Miles that is only hinted at in the earlier books.  Of course, as a confirmed rereader, I can see seeds that are sown in these stories that don’t bloom until much later in the series—themes that are enlarged on, or characters who become more important, or character traits.

“The Mountains of Mourning” is the first of the stories.  In terms of the Vorkosiverse internal chronology, it takes place directly after The Warrior’s Apprentice.  Miles has completed his time at the Imperial Military Academy and is on home leave awaiting his first assignment.  He’s spending his time at his parents’ country estate with them, and a woman appears at the gate, demanding to see Miles’ father, Aral, Count Vorkosigan.  Miles, intrigued by her determination, takes the woman to see his father, where she demands an investigation into the murder of her child.  The Count assigns the task to Miles.  This is not the first time Miles’ impulsive behavior gets him into a situation he wishes he weren’t in, but it’s one that has long-reaching consequences for him and for his homeland, Barrayar.  The child who was murdered was born with a cleft palate, and murdered because of her mutation.

Miles, for those unfamiliar with the series, is deformed– short with brittle, easily breakable bones– the result of damage incurred in utero when an attack was launched against his father.  On Barrayar, any physical deformity is seen as a weakness, and in the backcountry districts, infants born with genetic mutations are considered “unclean” and summarily murdered to stem the mutation.  It’s a practice his own parents fought against in his own case; Aral sending his damaged son in to represent his Voice in the matter of Raina Csurik is a bold stroke against the practice, but for all that, it’s vital that Miles uncover the truth and deliver a clear message to the people of the district: if he fails to find the perpetrator, or to pronounce a sentence that delivers justice, the message he’ll be delivering will be one that serves to strengthen the ignorance of the people of Silvy Vale.

At its core, this story is a murder mystery, with Miles as detective (and ably seconded by his father’s Armsman, Pym, as his Watson), but its overall importance in Miles’ story cannot be underestimated.  Miles is a genius, but he has to work twice as hard as everyone just to keep up physically.  Having long ago learned that he literally can’t outrun his combatants, he has learned he has to outsmart them.  The people of Silvy Vale are fighting him now—there are secrets being kept and threats made against Miles.  He knows he has something to prove here to these people, and while he could do it with the considerable resources his father commands, he also knows that he’ll be sending the wrong message if he does so.  He is, after all, one of them, and in their eyes, he’s “unclean”—a mutant.  So he not only has to find out who killed the infant Raina, he needs to do so using good old-fashioned legwork and brain power to demonstrate to his people that it’s not the packaging that matters—it’s what you do with it. If he can find Raina’s killer, he can give her and her family justice, and that justice will include showing those who still practice infanticide that by never looking past an easily corrected genetic flaw they are destroying their potential future.  It’s a powerful message, and a theme that appears over and over in the series—Miles must continually seek to validate his own existence, and he also has to live up to his own expectations to do so.  Raina’s death becomes symbolic to Miles for the rest of his life: every move he makes, he makes with her death at his feet, a reminder that there but for the grace of his more enlightened, and more powerful, parents he might be, and every opportunity he has to bring enlightenment and progressive thinking to her people is a means of avenging her death and, in another way, justifying his own existence.

It is worth noting that “Mountains of Mourning” won both a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award, and with good reason–it’s a compelling story that is nearly perfect in its structure.

Miles is a bit of a knight errant—and no story does more justice to that title than “Labyrinth”, where Miles and the Dendarii set out to pick up a deserting scientist from unsavory Jackson’s Whole and end up rescuing one of his genetic modifications as well: a super soldier named Nine who is 8 feet tall, has fangs, and eats live rats. Originally charged with killing what Dr. Canaba describes as a monster, Miles gets caught by guards at the genetics lab and tossed in with this creature as his fate.  There he discovers that Nine may look like a monster, but she’s also, underneath the genetic modifications, a 16 year old girl with self-esteem issues.

Rather than kill her, Miles woos her, persuading her to join his mercenary army as a recruit after they spend a passionate few hours together.  If the idea of the under five foot tall Miles and the eight feet tall super soldier locked together in a carnal embrace seems ludicrous, it isn’t.  It’s one of the sweetest love scenes ever written, and Miles isn’t just saving his own skin here—he’s literally saving her from her own self-loathing.  Together they make a formidable team—she provides the brawn where his is lacking—and, with Nine rechristened Taura, the two of them go on to have many other adventures together, making “Labyrinth” a very satisfying story indeed, especially when Miles confronts Dr. Canaba with what he created and what he asked him to do to that creation—his loathing is something to behold.

“Labyrinth” is more than just a romantic adventure tale, though—its setting, Jackson’s Whole, is a truly horrific place, one where laissez-faire capitalism runs amok, where the only rule is business, and where nothing is sacred except The Deal.  Power is held by Houses, each with its own business interests—weaponry, genetics, etc.—and if it exists, it exists there.  And if it doesn’t, someone there can make it for you.  Genetic modifications, cloning for the purposes of clone-brain transplants, weapons of mass destruction—any horror you can imagine can be had.  For a price.  Jackson’s Whole is a cautionary tale of what happens when no one applies the brakes, when ethics are dead, and when those in power are so corrupt they’ll do anything to hold onto their position.  Bujold often uses her various settings to point out flaws in our own world by running them to the extremest point she can realistically get away with.  Jackson’s Whole is one such case.

Of the three stories here, “Labyrinth” is the weakest.  There’s just way too much going on–Taura’s rescue, Jacksonian politics and infighting, and a few other plot points that I’ll leave for you to discover.  It’s hard to process it all at once, and I remembered during this reading that I felt very overwhelmed by all of this the first time I read the story.  Even so, it remains, now, my favorite of the three stories here, despite its flaws.  Part of that is undoubtedly my familiarity with the Vorkosiverse.  Mostly, though, it’s my fascination with Jackson’s Whole, a world I wish she would revisit more often in the series than she does.

The final story in the trilogy is “Borders of Infinity”, which is set in a prisoner of war camp known as Dagoola IV.  Miles and his mercenaries are charged with smuggling one Marilican POW out of the camp, which is located inside a domed force field that is home to 30,000 POWs, mostly Marilicans, who are Barrayarian allies.  Dagoola is operated by the Cetagandans, Barrayar’s enemy, and is structured in such a way that no guards are necessary to maintain it.  When Miles arrives, having allowed himself to be captured, the scene is something out of Lord of the Flies—those who are stronger quickly strip the weak of their possessions and deny them access to the limited food.  The prisoners have become animals to the point where they travel in packs, preying on those who are too weak to resist.  Miles realizes immediately that he needs an ally here, but he’s got to charm one first.  And when he discovers that his targeted rescue is nearly dead, his whole game plan changes.

“Borders of Infinity” is a really fascinating story of what happens to people when they lose hope, and what they can accomplish once hope is restored to them.  As a key to understanding Miles’ character, it’s critical—this is manic Miles at his best, a man who once captured a mercenary ship with only four troops and who is like a military Pied Piper—he can tap dance so fast people will follow him anywhere.  By the same token, it’s easy to understand, after reading this, why people DO follow him anywhere: Miles has a sense of honor.  He makes outlandish promises, then bends over backwards so he can keep them.  He’s so confident in his own abilities that it oozes out of him and into those who lack confidence at all.  And he talks a good game—he’s outlandish, witty, and so very clever.  As a person, he’d probably drive me insane in about 20 minutes.  As a character, he’s hard to resist—even the most reluctant reader will likely follow him down a rabbit hole willingly.

If there’s an issue with this collection, it’s the rather weak internal storyline that Bujold uses to tie them together—Miles, who is slowly replacing his fragile bones with synthetics, is recuperating from more surgery when the Imperial Chief of Security—and his boss (his mercenaries are really a front for the Emperor’s private security task force) Simon Illyan stops by to demand an accounting for the outrageous expenses the Dendarii have run up.  It seems some of the Counts are asking questions about the drain on the budget and trying to lay the blame at Aral Vorkosigan’s feet.  It makes very little sense as an interleaving story because not enough time is devoted to it—readers who know little about Aral’s position with the Emperor or his backstory are going to be confused about why he’s such a target for this kind of thing, and even those who do know the whole story may be puzzled about why these enemies are using Miles’ cost overruns to get to Aral—Miles is supposed to be a deep cover operative.  They shouldn’t even know about his role in the Dendarii.  It’s a small oversight on Bujold’s part, but it bugs.  More important, though, it’s just not needed.  The three stories stand on their own just fine—there’s no need to somehow try and connect them.

That said, it’s easy enough to ignore the connecting story part and just concentrate on the actual novellas.  They’re delicious little bites of the especially tart apple that is Miles Naismith Vorkosigan.