Young Miles

What an absolutely fantastic book!Young Miles is a compilation of 2 books and one novella. The three parts of the book are: The Warrior's Apprentice, Mountains of Mourning, and The Vor Game. They have all been published before, so if you own them, don't buy this book expecting anything new. Is it the book's fault some people don't know what they're buying when they purchase it? Cordelia's Honor; Miles, Mystery, & Mayhem, and Miles Errant are also compilations. This book is the first of the Vorkosigan saga with Miles, a cripple, as the main character, and it starts with him dropping out of military academy because of a broken leg. A member of the Vor (a military caste) class, his father the Prime Minister (former regent)of Barrayar, and living in a society that revolves around the military: this shatters Miles' dreams for his future. That is, until he accidently finds himself the "admiral" of a mercenary fleet and reveals a conspiracy against his father and himself. Unfortunately, being the leader of a private army on Barrayar is punishable by death. In The Mountains of Mourning, Miles is sent to investigate a case of infanticide, with the motive for the murder being an infants deformities. In The Vor Game, Miles has several other adventures, including attempting to stop an interstellar war and save his emperor.The first book I read by Bujold was Cordelia's Honor, which is a compilation of Shards of Honor and Barrayar. It tells the story of how Miles' parents married and how he became crippled. Cordelia, Miles' mother, was affected by a gas grenade thrown into her room when she was pregnant. Although she survived, her son's bones became twisted and brittle. So, Miles, the hero of this compilation, is 4'10" and has a curved spine, a head the size of a normal 6' person, and brittle bones that snap at the worst times. He's also extremely bright and hyper. Bujold is an excellent writer that makes each character come to life. There is no such thing as a two dimensional person in her world; each one is so incredibly different and deep. The reader can't help but get attached to some characters, crying and laughing along with them. I found myself giggling hysterically at some points in Young Miles, much to the confusion of those around me. Young Miles, like Cordelia's Honor, is also a page-turner. I read half the night away, only stopping when my eyes couldnt' stay open any longer. It's fast-paced adventure full of politics and military strategies. I often felt like my mind couldn't think fast enough to keep up with the story! It was absolutely wonderful!For those who have not read anything from Bujold, this is a great starting point in the Vorkosigan saga. It has characters from Cordelia's Honor, but Bujold doesn't expect people reading Young Miles to know everything about them. She does a great job keeping each story independent yet in line with the other stories. I started with Cordelia's Honor, which isn't quite as fast-paced (at least Shards of Hon

If you have already discovered Bujold, and are still in the stage of trying to acquire copies of everything she's written, then you might be frustrated by the reissue volumes, each of which includes two novels, and frequently a novelette. This volume includes The Warrior's Apprentice, "The Mountains of Mourning" from Borders of Infinity, and The Vor Game. Thus, there is nothing new here for the collector. On the other hand, this makes an excellent introduction to Bujold's work for the newcomer, because it introduces Miles Naismith Vorkosigan as he first creates his alter ego Admiral Naismith, then gives some revealing insights into his Barrayaran background, and finishes up with Admiral Naismith being given a permanent role in his life. Many of the later Miles books, while excellent in and of themselves, probably won't have as much resonance as they should have if you do not have this background in mind. (Which is not to say that these are something you need to suffer through to get to the good stuff. The good stuff starts right away. Why are you even wasting time reading this review? Read the book!)Note: the other reissue volumes are Cordelia's Honor, which includes Shards of Honor and Barrayar, and Miles Errant, which includes Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos, as well as "Labyrinth" from "Borders of Infinity."

"Young Miles", by Lois McMaster Bujold is the second compilation of the Vorkosigan saga. The first compilation combined the novels "Shards of Honor" and "Barrayar", to tell the story of Miles' Mother, Cordelia, his Father, Aral, and ended shortly after Miles' birth."Young Miles" is an outstanding compilation, consisting of two novels, "The Warrior's Apprentice" and the Hugo award winning "The Vor Game", divided by a novella, "The Mountains of Mourning, which won both the Hugo award and Nebula award for best novella. At the end is an afterword by author Lois McMaster Bujold, which is an interesting piece in its own right, telling the story of how these works came into existence.All three tales are available in seperate forms, the two novels by themselves, and "Mountains" is included in "The Borders of Infinity", but this definitively compiles the present tales of Miles as he embarks on his early career.Most would envy Miles Vorkosigan's position in life. The "Vor" at the start of his name signifies he's a member of his planet's nobility. He is heir to his father's title of Count, destinied to be one of the members of the ruling legislative body of his planet. He's foster brother to the Emperor. His father was the Regent in the Emperor's youth, and now serves as Prime Minister. Wealth, power and nobility; a grand and enviable destiny.But no one would want to be Miles Vorkosigan, especially not on Barrayar, a planet which had been isolated from the galaxy at large long enough to lose much of its technology, including medical technology, until the past few generations. A planet where mutated children were killed at birth, so that precious resources would not be wasted.For Miles is a mere 4'9" tall, hunchbacked, a mishapen head, and with brittle bones which break with alarming regularity. Not a mutant, despite the epithets he deals with daily, but the victim of a poison gas attack on his parents while he was still in his mother's womb.The adventure starts with "The Warrior's Apprentice." 17 year old Miles washes out on his attempt to join Barrayar's military academy because of breaking a leg during the physical testing stage of the entrance process.Discouraged, he ends up taking a trip to Beta Colony, to visit his grandmother Naismith, to accompanied by his bodyguard, Bothari, and Bothari's daughter, the beautiful Elena. Along the way, he picks up two additions, a mad jump pilot, Arde Mayhew, and a Barrayaran deserter, Baz Jesek. Events result into a jump into a war zone. Events further result in the creation of the Dendarii Mercenaries, by Miles, and led by Miles Naismith, an unexpected creation of Miles Vorkosigan."The Mountains of Mourning" tells the tale of a newly minted Ensign Miles Vorkosigan forced to investigate an infanticide in the back country of his father's district, a child killed simply for having a deformed mouth, for being a mutant, a matter of personal significance to the deformed Miles, and to his parents."The Vor Game"

I got the two books that are reprinted in this one almost by accident. I decided to see what the story was like. I could not put them down, and I now get my hands on anything that Bujold is willing to publish.This is not the first book in the time line, nor is it the first book Bujold has written of the series. However, I recomend that you start with this book or the two that compose it. There is nothing that is not explained enough to understand despite all the history that has gone on before. But, the charecters are so well developed by the time that this book is written that everything comes alive.Young Miles is the only really new charecter introduced. Almost all of the supporting cast and situations have been well established by this book. When we meet Miles, we fall in love with him. He is not a superman, but he achieves the superhuman. He can be annoying, flighty and self absorbed, but we see that it is his way of dealing with the world and overcome the bad luck he has handed to him before he was even born. Another way of dealing with the world is to be hyperactive and accomplishing several actions at once, so much so that when he is accidently given an "upper" laced drink no one notices until he crashes days later.After you read this, you can go back and read the first few books in the series. It is almost like watching Star Wars Episode 1 in that you know much of what will happen, but it does not take away from the pleasure of the stories. But start here and start the book at a time when you have little else to do for the next few days.

Readers should note that this book is a reprint of The Warriors Apprentice, The Mountains of Mourning and The Vor Game. The only new material is the authors afterward (7 pages) in which she explains the background to writing the series