"The Warrior's Apprentice", Lois McMaster Bujold

[igenlode]

This was the first Vorkosigan book I ever read; the first Bujold book I ever read. It swept me away, and it still does.

I didn't get to read "Shards of Honour", which I had to order from America via the local bookshop in those pre-internet days, until long after -- this one I just came across at random in the library, and picked out on the basis of its clichéd cover to use as an example of mechanical science fiction as versus my love of high fantasy. Needless to say, I had to pick another book for that particular essay (I eventually went for Isaac Asimov); it rapidly transpired that Miles Vorkosigan's world had as much loyalty, drama, nobility (in all senses) and thwarted romance as any Tolkienesque epic, and it was brilliantly and humanely written.

In this early book, Miles is as inspired and ingenious as in his 'adult' version, but he is insecure in very different ways -- I don't think he ever again needs to prove himself to his own parents as he does here, and it is oddly touching. And while he goes through various failed relationships with 'galactic' women later on, at this point we (and he) take it for granted that Elena is The One, and it hits hard... and in fact, the one he does eventually manage to settle down with is ultimately not all that dissimilar.

Of course you get a completely different perspective on the Elena/Bothari arc when reading it, as presumably intended, with knowledge of the events of the first book, rather than regarding it just as Miles blithely does, as a hopeful mystery to be solved in order to win the lady's hand. The resolution of the mystery becomes a predestined fate rather than an unfairly tragical bolt from the blue - but it is testament to Bujold's writing that it works both with and without this foreknowledge.

Oddly enough, given that she was the main protagonist of the first novel, we hardly get any sense of Cordelia as a character here. If anything, we get to see more of Miles' grandmother! The focus is much more on Miles' relationship with his father, and although Aral Vorkosigan doesn't make many actual appearances in the course of the novel his son's motivation is powerfully convincing.

This is space opera in the full sense of the word, complete with heroic (and manically improvised) speeches and heartfelt allegiance, but it is also hard science fiction where technical details can make or break an operation. With hindsight I can see that it pushed precisely the right buttons where I was concerned, but it is with gratitude that I can record that it continues to do so. I still haven't read all the Vorkosigan novels - they have never been all that easy to get hold of round here - but this one, with Miles just beginning to spread his wings, remains just as good as it ever was.

(I have to say that I don't remember so many typos- including the persistent misspelling of 'liege lord/man'- in the original edition, though!)

Comments

[watervole]

I have loved these books for so many years.

I remember picking up a discounted copy of 'Ethan of Athos' in my local post office, purely because it had gay men in it (I was in my early slash fiction days).

The next day, I went back and bought the only two other Bujold books they had. Stuff gay men, I was sold on the quality of the writing!

Where do you live? I have almost the entire series on ebook now, so might be able to part with my old paperbacks if postage isn't too much of an issue.

[igenlode]

I can't imagine ever seeing a copy of "Ethan of Athos" in my local post office, which very definitely did not sell books -- it was a big purpose-built main Post Office building with its name carved into red brick outside, a long hall for queuing and rows of grilled windows (now long since sold off and converted into a night club/bar of some sort; the small remaining Post Office franchise counter has been moved to the back of a local 'convenience shop' which sells sweets, cards and cheap Chinese toys with entertainingly bad translated text on their boxes...) I was given my copy by a fellow fan as a thank-you gift on the specific grounds that it was a rarity that was hard to obtain even in America on the grounds of its content!

Gay fiction really isn't my thing, let alone slash fiction -- but "Ethan of Athos" is in effect based on a fish-out-of-water trope ('what are these dangerous things called women?') with the single-sex reproduction concept being a plot point to explain why Ethan is out in the big bad world in the first place. (Bujold mentions as an aside in one of her essays that the original motivation for writing that novel was a desire to write about 'a man doing a woman's job' as a counterbalance to lurid Amazonian depictions of women doing men's jobs -- what we would now consider the curse of the Obligatory Strong Female Character, I suspect!) At any rate it didn't worry me.

But that sort of thing is the reason why my Bujold collection consists of a couple of non-Miles rarities ("Ethan of Athos" and "Dreamweaver's Dilemma"), plus a couple of paperback omnibus volumes acquired via an Amazon book-token I once won online ("Miles, Mutants and Microbes" -- comprising "Falling Free", which I had had from the library and loved, "Labyrinth" and "Diplomatic Immunity", the then-latest novel -- and "Miles in Love", containing "Komarr", which I hadn't read, "A Civil Campaign", which I'd had out of the library but which made rather more sense in the context of its predecessor, and "Winterfair Gifts", which is more of a bonus novella). I still have my original and almost-pristine copy of "Shards of Honour" ordered expensively from America (I am a very careful reader, at least with paperback spines) and the second-hand "Warrior's Apprentice" I have just been re-reading, and I think that's it. I know I definitely haven't read the Cetaganda-set novel that gets alluded to in some of the later stories; I have a vague memory of "Barrayar" from the library, and I know I did read Mark's origin novel ("Mirror Dance"?), though it wasn't one of my favourites and he has never been my favourite character. I don't think I've seen the Duv Galeni-as-Avon novel, whichever it is, or if I did the parallels clearly didn't register ;-) But there is clearly a missing Escobar-set story somewhere explaining the Emperor's marriage, and it's probably that one. Otherwise I think I've probably read most of them at one time or another.

Also "Paladin of Souls", which I picked up second-hand after some dithering in the explicit knowledge that it was a sequel to (and would contain massive spoilers for) a Bujold fantasy epic that I hadn't read. In the event, as with most *really good* sequels -- see also "The Warrior's Apprentice"! -- it turns out that you absolutely do not need to know the events of the first book in advance, and that in fact the revelation of what 'really happened' works equally well when it hits the reader with as much of a shock as it does the characters who were unaware....

Where do you live? I have almost the entire series on ebook now, so might be able to part with my old paperbacks if postage isn't too much of an issue.
Thank you, that would be very kind (although I don't actually have the shelf space; my copies of Libby Purves are still languishing in a cardboard box alongside "Clarissa", "Bardelys the Magnificent", and other random books I couldn't fit into my admittedly copious bookcases, in the hopes that I might eventually build or squeeze a few more shelves in!)

I live quite locally to you in the South of England, so postage wouldn't be all that prohibitive -- but I am going to be away (and offline) shortly, and not back until the New Year, so posting things is probably not advisable. I already have visions of unexpected Christmas parcels getting taken back to the sorting office and being returned to the sender because I am not around to collect them :-(