Reviews and Comments

Bones & Runes was the #SFFBookClub January 2025 selection. It's a modern mythological quest of three friends trying to recover something stolen and grow as people and friends along the way. Overall it was a bit of a disappointment.

@eldang's thorough feelings after stopping reading sums up the majority of my thoughts. I'll try to get at a couple of other thoughts past that.

This book is attempting some interesting things by trying to mix together African, Irish, Hindu, and Greek mythology all at once. I can understand a story that is trying to stir together a variety of myths and methods of accessing the divine, but overall there's too many ingredients and everything is weaker for it.

Subjectively, I was disappointed by the writing. For a book that is so thoroughly rooted in South Africa and Durban in particular, I did not come away with much of a sense of place in most of the scenes. Part of this is that the characters are driven around by Ganesh from place to place in a way that makes it feel like the cast is teleporting between scenes.

But this isn't some seven stages of hell, Dante. These are African gods. The hero doesn't always survive. Forget heaven and hell. We've got no time for the devil here. Here, in this land, on this rock, we've got so many aspects of evil that one being doesn't suffice to hold its might; it's true strength. Maybe in your western worlds where everything is black and white, where you can afford one being to hurl your hatred at; one place that is good and one that is bad. This is Africa, baby. Here the good can be both bad and good at the same time.

I quoted this because this whole statement is repeated twice in the book almost word for word, but it feels all talk and no show. There is precious little ambiguity in this fantasy quest. There are a number of dangerous and neutral characters who deal in bargains or seem chaotically neutral, but the main players all seem fairly clear cut and shallow.

On paper, this final book in the Vorkosigan saga is doing some really neat things. It creates such a pleasing parallel bookend to the opening book, Shards of Honor. Both are set on Sergyar with Cordelia as a point of view character, Aral features heavily in both (although as a palpable absence here), and both thematically are about choosing new directions for your life. It's a nice way to send a series off into the sunset.

This book also has an incredible plot hook, to my mind. We learn that Aral, Cordelia, and Jole have been discreetly in a relationship together for twenty years off page. Or, probably better put, Cordelia and Jole have both been orbiting around the gravity well of Aral and both been in a relationship with him. This isn't that surprising as the reader was already aware that Aral was bi, and Cordelia is Betan and so likely wouldn't be flapped by such an arrangement. When Aral dies, Cordelia and Jole both have to work through their feelings in unhelpful ways: Cordelia forced to grieve publicly and closeted Jole forced to hide his privately. This book focuses on them reorienting their relationship to each other without Aral in the picture. What a great setup!

What hurts this book a little is that Admiral Jole is a fairly unknown character. We see him on page for about ten seconds in The Vor Game and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. He carries Aral's coffin in Cryoburn (and we tragically don't even get his point of view). That's it! It's a risky maneuver to try to bring back this minor character and tell the reader that secretly he's been in a relationship with two of the most major characters in the series. We also don't explicitly know how Barrayarans would feel about this sort of relationship or homosexuality or relationship inside a chain of command (although there's an intuition of disapproval earlier in the series). I think the book still works, but more foreshadowing would have made all of this much more powerful. That said, this series has been written across thirty years and not in chronological order, so if this is one place where cross-book foreshadowing falls flat, it's still got a great record over all.

What also hurts the book for me is that I think the interesting bits of setup are all told to us as the reader as having already happened. We don't get to see Cordelia and Jole grieving Aral. We don't get to see Cordelia sending Jole a message about Aral's death directly, showing how much she values his relationship with Aral. We don't get to see them try and fail to continue the relationship they previously had without Aral there. We just get a "three years later" when most of this has already happened and then are told about it. Without the investment in feelings of how things are broken, the resolution where they are mended feels so much weaker.

Instead, this book largely focuses Jole coming out of the closet about his past relationship with Aral and his newly forming relationship with Cordelia. In large part, Jole seems to naturally hide these personal details out of inertia and habit from how he discreetly had a relationship with Aral earlier; and, the consequences of coming out for him seem to be that... drumroll some people might feel a little weird about it. This is an incredibly low stakes hook to hang an entire book on, especially for a character the reader barely knows, especially for the final book in your series.

Look, as a not young queer person who lived in the closet well past its expiration date, a story about coming out and consequences cannot be more in my wheelhouse. This story, sadly, is just not it.

This is the final Miles-centric book for the series. One of the best parts of this book is that we get so much of Armsman Roic's wry point of view of the shenanigans.

To me, this one is weakened by trying to hearken back to the mode of adventure investigation Miles. Diplomatic Immunity works for me because it's sandwiched between two romantic comedies, involves Ekaterin, ties together a number of elements, and crucially ends with a "we really can't keep doing this anymore" moment for Bel and Miles. So, it's a little weird that he does, in fact, keep doing this. This book is set on a new Japan-esque planet that we have not heard of previously and involves mostly new characters; it largely feels like a one-off than a series capstone.

I think there are a lot of good components to this book that don't all gel together. The shadow at the end of the book is that Miles' father Aral Vorkosigan dies, not altogether unexpectedly. And so, this book focuses on a planet where people freeze themselves before death, so that they might be revived later if needed. Unfortunately, I feel like the mystery is more of an conspiracy cover-up investigation of corporations and voting; the (possibly) more interesting cultural feelings around postponing death feel largely unexplored. There's certainly some parallels around children and the absence of their parent, but this wasn't enough to make this book thematically resonate as strongly as it should have.

The ending moment is quite good though, containing fanfic-esque five views of Aral's death, written as drabbles. This is the highlight of the book for me, but is weakened by how thematically disconnected it feels from the rest.

"I, Ivan Xav Vorpatril, ..., do take thee, uh ... what did you say your name was, again?"

If I had to rank books in this series by their comedy, this book would be up there right behind A Civil Campaign. Ivan Vorpatril has always had a long series of girlfriends but has dodged marriage as much as he's dodged extra work. The plot hook here is that in an attempt to save two women who are on the run from bounty hunters, immigration, and the local police, Ivan comes up with the idea to marry one of them in a rush (temporarily, of course!). Comedy ensues.

I love that there's a lot of ambiguity about how everybody else reacts to this "temporary" marriage. You get the feeling that everyone is sort of raising their eyebrow at Ivan, but also taking it seriously and are waiting for Ivan to come around to realize he's actually married and it's not just a temporary deal.

There's a lot of good parallels in this book. I liked getting to see Alys Vorpatril whose husband had been killed get to talk about loss and rememberances with Tej, who also has lost her entire immediate family. I like Shiv and Simon both being father-in-laws betting and dealing with each other (and how seeing Simon in this role makes Ivan realize that maybe Simon wants a different relationship with him). I love that Tej and Ivan can connect over how overbearing their families are, and how both of them just involve them in their plans without asking their permission or what they want. I love that both Tej and Ivan alternately both take and don't take their marriage seriously.

Thematically, I also appreciate that we get to see Ivan's reasons for being deliberately "middling" laid out here. In previous books, there's an increasing assumption that he's smarter than he looks but that he just chooses not to apply himself. However, this book really gets into the crux of the issue; because he's always been hyper aware that he's in the line of imperial succession (although not without a few murders and a civil war that he was born into), he has always applied himself to be conspicuously middling at all times. He also talks about being in the shadow of Miles, whose whole family overdoes everything. And truly, he's also just lazy and would rather not be handed work he doesn't need.

I think there are a few minor things that mar this book for me, and both are largely functions of this book being near the tail end of a long series with many characters, being set on a planet where all those characters reside, and also being one of the last books published. One thing this causes is that there is a lot of info dumping here. It needs to explain Ivan's family tree. It needs to retell the story of Vordarian's pretendership. It needs to explain titles of counts and and their heirs. These are all important to the story, but I think none of these things are delivered gently and are also all things previous readers know very well. This also suffers from some Marvel Cinematic Universe effect, where every character in an increasingly large roster needs to have some screen time. I think on the unnecessary end, there's a luncheon with Miles and Ekaterin and their kids, and their parents. Duv and Delia have to show up to. I think all of these folks could have been off planet (to Ivan's relief) without making the books worse. At least the book sends Miles and Ekaterin off to Sergyar pretty quickly so they can't steal the spotlight.

Miles and Ekaterin are getting back from their honeymoon when they are sent off to quaddiespace to investigate some Barrayarans who have gotten into some trouble. Needless to say this small investigation immediately escalates into attempted murders and politics (always) and threats of all out war. This book manages to tie in a bunch of bits from other books: there's the quaddies from Falling Free, Nicol from Labyrinth, Bel Thorne from a bunch of previous books, but also the Star Creche from Cetaganda. I think there's enough background explanation here (sometimes too much) that you could read this book without having read any of the others.

One thing I do really love about this book is that we get to see how terrible Barrayarans are. We get this perspective a little bit from Cordelia's point of view in Shards of Honor when Betans are horrified by backwards militaristic Barrayarans. And we certainly hear some later on a little, largely about Barrayarans fear of genetic mutation. But here, we really get to see Barrayarans as enthusiastic frat boys with weapons. "Oh, some of our people got arrested unfairly, well maybe we should take our plasma weapons down and try to break them out from the local jail."

As this book takes place in quaddiespace and involves a number of quaddies, I really appreciate the parallels that it makes to Falling Free. Part of it is disaffected Guppie, who also lost his livelihood by becoming biologically obsolete on Jackson's Whole. But, I do also love the last paragraph of the book saying "it felt like free falling into the future" as a deliberate echo of Falling Free's title and similar thematic lines.

Only a few books in this series are not from Miles' point of view. Maybe this was an editing decision, but while Miles is out of the action (but after he'd largely set the solutions to everything in motion) we find out that Ekaterin put those plans into action and ordered people around with authority she didn't know she had. This feels to me like it could have been some great scenes and some on page character growth for Ekaterin, but instead we just get told about it.

I think the foreword pitches this book better than I can.

We all know what happens when technological obsolescence hits the products of engineering; what would happen if (always a key SFnal question) technological obsolescence hit the products of bioengineering.

This is a book set two hundred years before Miles Vorkosigan is born. It sets up the origin story of the "quaddies", a genetically engineered race of four-armed people meant to live in zero gravity environments. It's a fun story of corporate greed, "kids" being smarter than their parents give them credit for, and a hectic escape to freedom. Unlike most of the other books in this series, this one feels the most like a more classic science fiction story.

(For those playing Bujold bingo at home, this also fits the older man younger woman romance trope between Leo and Silver. It's very funny that the book Diplomatic Immunity has a dramatic interpretive dance of their historical romance.)

This is a cute novella about Taura coming back to Barrayar to see Miles and Ekaterin's wedding (and also having a fling with Roic).

It's a little bit of a weak story to me. There's a murder plot that is caught, but we've never heard of the perpetrators before and is mostly there as a plot device to make Taura and Roic heroes of the day.

I think the best part of this story is that we get to see Roic's perspective. Getting to see from the perspective of one of Miles' armsmen, particularly the newest one who deeply respects Miles but isn't privy to all of this escapades, is really fun. It also sets up Roic to be more of a character for when he shows up in the next book.

Surely, the real point of having a dozen previous books in a long running series establishing characters and world building is so that you can then truly and properly roast them in the worst dinner party disaster ever imagined.

This book is a comedy of manners about various courtships in the shade of the Emperor getting married. I love that a science fiction action politics series can have a book like this in the middle of it, and it doesn't feel out of place.

I do wonder a little how well this book would stand up on its own, though. There's so much history with Drou and Kou, Cordelia, Mark, Alys Vorpatril, Simon that it's hard to know if this would be quite as satisfying to a reader who doesn't have the level of background of reading all the previous books. I think the primary crux of the story, of Miles waging a surprise war of secretly courting Ekaterin as if it were a military endeavor (and, crucially, without telling her), is romantic comedy that could land for anybody.

There are just SO many delightful moments in this book: * "Mother, Father, let me introduce--she's getting away!" * the pile of terrible suitors for Ekaterin * Cordelia sitting Kareen's parents on the couch to be the baba between them and Mark and Kareen * Ivan being seconded to his mother for the imperial wedding * the Lord Dono reveal to Ivan (but just Dono in general) * Gregor giving Nikki his comconsole number, and Nikki calling * the final courtroom (re)proposal scene in the end

A brief plural aside about Mark and his headmates; I do observe that this book definitely posits Mark as the one who "should" be in charge, with everybody else as explicitly "subordinate" and are described as "semi-autonomous subpersonalities". To me this feels somewhat different than how the previous books have treated it.

(A further brief aside about the cover linked here, but Miles is not taller than Ekaterin. Maybe boxes are really popular?)

Genre-wise, Komarr feels like the initial part of a romance book mixed with mystery. I hesitate to say mystery because none of these really are really true mysteries where the reader had enough information, but it's definitely Miles in investigation mode. Miles is learning his auditor role and goes with Auditor Vorthys to help investigate the destruction of planetary mirror array, staying with Vorthys's niece Ekaterin and her family. What seems like a small embezzlement situation turns into something with much larger political ramifications (as always).

I like seeing Miles as an Auditor and having to learn the limits of his near-absolute power. That finally, a dozen books later, he is in a position where he needs to be careful about what he asks for, because it will happen even if it shouldn't.

One thing I do appreciate generally about this book is that we get to see some of the less wealthy Vor social class who are struggling to get by. Most of the series is about incredibly powerful families on Barrayar who know the emperor on a first name basis. Here, Tien and Ekaterin Vorsoisson are struggling to make ends meet (although this is partially Tien's fault) but also are trying to maintain what it means for them to be Vor. I wish the series had more of this dynamic!

That said, specifically I don't find Tien to be particularly interesting other than as a source of trauma for Ekaterin. It partially reminds me of the bad fanfic trope where there's some established "character in the way" who needs to be made to look as bad as possible (here: controlling, sloppy, petty, mean) so that you can bring the two characters you want together.

I do think the Ekaterin and Miles flirting/romance here mostly works for me. I think it's really well written about what each find appealing about the other; Miles is looking for a competent Vor lady who can love Barrayar, and Ekaterin is looking for somebody who will let her grow and isn't afraid of her son Nikki's genetic disease. This is petty, but I think the only moment where this is ruined for me is the end of the book where Miles offers Ekaterin some jewelry (of a model of Barrayar) and says that he hasn't ever succeeded in giving any girlfriend Barrayar before. I think it's just the one-sided misuse of the word "girlfriend" here that makes Miles seem like he's twelve; even saying "woman" instead would have felt a lot better.

Maybe this book rings very true to me as somebody who is airquotes old, but this is really a book about a middle age crisis; about how to handle losing everything, picking up the pieces of yourself, and then going on to the rest of your life all the same.

Miles has largely been unstoppable in previous books, and even death only slowed him down a little bit. But this is the book where he seriously fucks up by making a mistake, doubles down by lying about it, triples down by not come clean about it, and gets kicked out of his ImpSec job. And, his job is also his only connection to the Dendarii mercenaries and his Admiral Naismith identity. He could, of course, go run off to them, but it'd be a treasonous one way trip. So instead he stays home depressed, trying to put his life as Lord Miles Vorkosigan back together (and figure out what that even is, having put it on the shelf for so long).

There's some really good foreshadowing of all of this from the previous books. Miles strips Bel of its commission for lying about not knowing about Mark. Cordelia wonders several times what would happen if Miles loses his "little admiral". But the big one for me is when Miles tells Mark, "You are what you do. Choose again, and change." This moment comes a couple of books earlier, but that theme resonates strongly here through the whole book.

I really also appreciated the explicit revisit to Mountains of Mourning and Harra Csurik. This was really the only previous time in the novel that we see Miles really being authentically happy in his role as Lord Miles Vorkosigan, and so it's a great place to revisit in a novel about Miles becoming himself again.

Some smaller bits about book that I enjoyed: * lol at thirty being middle age * Simon Illyan also having to navigate figuring out who he is when he is not his job * the metaphor about the Dendarii being children that Miles is no longer responsible for along with this whole middle age crisis theme * Miles merging both of his selves vs Mark resolving into multiple selves * the Quinn scene at the end where she wants Miles to stay and Miles wants her to go and both would lose themselves if they did

I've put off talking about this book for a bit because honestly I'm not sure where to start. The short of it was that this was one of the best things I've read this year.

It is nearly impossible to describe the plot, but this is not a plot-driven book. It's weirder and bolder and chewier than The Saint of Bright Doors. To describe it at all, this is a book about two (ish???) characters whose various lives intertwine with each other across the timeline(s???), told in a series of simultaneously deeply interconnected but also wildly different stories. There's constantly recurring thematic motifs and threads, and I feel like the reader is asked to do a lot of work to try to connect the myriad of interconnected bits and bobs and hints in its various depths. I finished it and immediately considered starting again with my extra knowledge to try to piece more connections together and better understand the whole.

Tonally, I also think Rakesfall is doing very interesting things. In comparison, The Saint of Bright Doors had some funny side jokes like "nine-tenths of the lore" in the same way that Harrow the Ninth has "none house, with left grief"; they're references if you catch them, but feel like a drive-by joke and not the destination. On the contrary, Rakesfall surgically deploys out of place phrases and tonal shifts to make impacts that deliberately jar the reader.

I apologize for pasting a number of quotes, but it astounds me a little that all of these things can be in the same book, that otherwise has a much more serious tone. I don't list these quotes as examples of what most of the prose is, but as examples of the rare places it swerves to.

The simile of the two-handed saw is not a parable. It isn't even a story. That it is self-consciously a simile suggests an unseriousness, a little haha hoho, a little lol j/k.

This is a one-off line in a brief section of the story that takes place in the same world as The Saint of Bright Doors (although you do not need to have read that book for this story).

Everybody on stage is silent and motionless for another few minutes. The AUDIENCE grows restless. Somebody in the audience takes a picture--the flash is blinding--even though there was a sign at the door that said NO PHOTOS, NO SMARTPHONES. There are muttered complaints. Imiya blinks. His pupils are huge.

Devakarti returns to the chorus and starts organizing them to move on to their next lives.

There's a chapter that is written like a script for a play, but is also a play in progress, and also includes dead people in the chorus who were killed by people in the play. This is a microcosm of what the book feels like.

All his soldiers pee themselves a little, so the king calls up his favourite wrestler, biggest face in the city, beloved far and wide as the best good guy who isn't afraid of anything, and the king says, my Beloved Bro, will you Please take this Cup of Water out unto the Dread Cemetary and give it to that Loud Fucker, and Tell him to (a) Pipe down and (b) give Thanks to the generosity of his King? And the wrestler says Sure Thing, my King. He is also frightened but he goes anyway, and he tells himself, real courage isn't found in not being afraid but in doing things that when you are, which just goes to show that after years of celebrity he is so deep in character that his internal narrative takes the voice of an Educational Programme for the small children who are his biggest fans and buy all his T-shirts.

There are other stories within stories in this book, but this one is told in this amazing style of an incredibly informal fable that was striking.

All of this makes for the kind of risky style that could be intensely irritating or obnoxious if it wasn't done so effectively. I think it works for me and I'm delighted by it; more, I think the choice to do this fits in this hurricane of a story that mixes and remixes characters and themes to such a degree.

This book is the book where Mark comes into his own; but he certainly hits the lowest of the low points before he can come back out the other side on his own merits. The setup of this plot here is that Mark cons the Dendarii pretending to be Miles into a personal heroic mission of his own to rescue some clones; he fucks up, Miles comes to save him, and Miles gets killed(?!). Mark then has to go back to Barrayar and tell his and Miles's parents about this.

It's a great move to kill off your protagonist (who takes up SO much space) to create room for Mark to figure out who he is. This is also a series that has cryochambers where you can place severely injured people and maybe revive them later with better medical facilities. Here, the cryochamber with Miles gets lost and so it's less of a question of "will Miles live" but more "where did Miles get off to" and "what lasting effects will Miles have from this death". So, it's not like [I can't mention the name of these books here because it's a major spoiler] where the point of view character from book one is literally killed in a multi-book series, but it's still a fun narrative move.

His belly shivered with a terrible longing, restrained by a terrible fear. Progenitors. Parents. He was not sure he wanted parents, at this late date. They were such enormous figures. He felt obliterated in their shadow, shattered like glass, annihilated.

The part that is the biggest delight to me is Mark having to go to Barrayar for the first time. He's royally fucked up and has to tell their parents about it; but also it's that he was trained to assassinate Miles's parents, he knows the layout of the Vorkosigan house, and he kind of doesn't want anything to do with Barrayar. It's a delightful awkwardness of everybody having such sharp edges but also earnestly trying to connect with each other.

It was another strange reciprocity, that Miles should have things he wanted to to remember, and couldn't, while Mark had things he wanted to forget. And couldn't.

Thematically, I think this book is one of the strongest in the series. We learn from Mark dancing with Kareen Koudelka that a mirror dance is one where one partner copies the other's movements, and this book is all about the parallels between Miles and Mark. Miles comes to rescue Mark; Mark comes back to rescue Miles. They both have multiple selves (although Mark realizes more here, and in the next book Miles loses them). They both are knight errants in their own right. There's also plenty of mirror imagery here as well.

Finally, I would be very curious to hear what plural systems make of this book. To my eyes, this feels like some internal family systems situation becoming multiple headmates (my word) via trauma. I feel like there's some groundwork for this earlier in the novel, and that it's not just trauma-generated, as Mark identifies some of his actions as having been unknown headmates previously. (That said, I do think that this feels some like a hamhanded attempt to write off an almost rape scene by pinning it on a headmate.) In the end, like Mark is left fronting and from other people's view is treated like a singlet; I'll be interested how a Civil Campaign reads when we get back to their perspectives again.

Here we come to the real meat of the Vorkosigan series. Brothers in Arms through A Civil Campaigan carry a large part of my fond memories of this series--Mark (a clone of Miles) appears, and both Mark and Miles go through large identity shifts in who they are and how they related to each other and the world.

The initial plot of this novel comes directly off the last novella; there's a lot of costs for the Dendarii mercenaries from their last operation, and Miles comes to Earth for repairs and in desperate need of payment. This is one of the strong points about this series that I like; each story really stands on its own with a driving plot and strong closure, but there's plenty of natural-feeling foreshadowing hooks (both personal and political) and also gradual character development across time.

Goaded, Miles snapped, "Dammit, sir, what would you have of me? The Dendarii are as much Barrayaran troops as any who wear the Emperor's uniform, even if they don't know it. They are my assigned charge. I cannot neglect their urgent needs even to play the part of Lieutenant Vorkosigan."

Galeni rocked back in his chair, his eyebrows shooting up. "Play the part of Lieutenant Vorkosigan? Who do you think you are?"

Talking of character development, if Miles had an insubordination problem earlier where he would disobey orders and lie to his superiors, it's absolutely out of control in this novel. He gets grounded in the Barrayaran embassy with no orders other than to stay put and no pay, and immediately is sneaking off and engaging Ivan in his plans. In Cetaganda, he was breaking rules but he was trying to get away with it as long as he couuld. Here, the bureaucracy is truly just an obstacle and not something he feels any reason to obey other than as a means to an end.

Back to money, I feel that Miles is only able to carry his nobility as a mercenary because he has the financial backing of Barrayar to pay for his idealistic but not financially sound decisions. It's kind of a deus ex machina, that Miles can always lean on the trust and backing of Barrayar from a distance to cut through any "can we afford to save these people" ethical knots. Even Tung jokes about this at the end, that Miles not having to make a profit is an advantage no other mercenary commander has.

"And so you want to maroon me for the rest of my life on a, sorry, backwater dirtball that's just barely climbed out of feudalism, that treats women like chattel--or cattle--that would deny me the use of every military skill I've learned in the past twelve years from shuttle docking to interrogation chemistry... I'm sorry. I'm not an anthropologist, I'm not a saint, and I'm not crazy."

"You don't have to say no right away," said Miles in a small voice.

This book is also the "Elli Quinn romance" book, which really just sets up Miles for needing somebody who loves both of his Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith selves. To its detriment, I feel like Elli and Elena are both very similar here; both are competent space mercenaries who want literally nothing to do with backwater Barrayar who would waste them. (The next book even lampshades how similar they are.) Sure, Elli is a spacer who wants nothing to do with planets and Elena is a childhood friend (that Miles is still secretly in love with) but they feel like similar letdowns and character arcs on Miles' end.

One thing I do like is that Miles has had enough character development by this time that he can more meaningfully address the question of why he doesn't just run off and become a space mercenary and divorce himself from Barrayar and his Lord Vorkosigan identity. Even if you ignore the money aspect of the backing from Barrayar, his roots and his family and his responsibility are on Barrayar. Elli only wants Admiral Naismith and dislikes Lord Vorkosigan, but Miles needs somebody who wants both.

"You are what you do. Choose again, and change."

The other big piece of this book is the introduction of Mark, Miles's secret clone who replaces Miles in an infiltration plot. I love Mark as a comedic foil for Miles; he is the younger brother forced to live in and chase the shadow of somebody who is impossibly great. Mark barely keeps up with Miles as Lord Vorkosigan, but then also finds out Miles has a second identity on the side that he now has to learn too.

I appreciate that this clone story is not a one-off pulp joke. From the start, Miles treats Mark seriously as his brother and even tells him his name should be Lord Mark Pierre Vorkosigan, since Barrayaran names are a fixed hereditary pattern. Rather than running some scheme for his own benefit, Miles mostly thinks about Mark here, to give him a chance to be his own person and live his own life, even when absolutely everybody else sees him as disposable.

I added this to the SFFBookClub poll for the month of January because I super enjoyed it.

If you don't know about it, the SFFBookClub is our informal fediverse science fiction and fantasy book club. I figure that folks from bookwyrm probably might be more interested in reading and talking about books so I wanted to post this here as well. We vote, read a book together, and then discuss via the #SFFBookClub hashtag over the course of the month. Take a look if any of these books sound interesting to you and you want to read along with others.

See: weirder.earth/@picklish/113660284130610947 for January poll

See: sffbookclub.eatgod.org/ for more general details

This novella opens right in the middle of the story, with Miles entering a top security prison on Dagoola IV, while the reader is largely left in the dark as to why he's there and what he's up to. It's pretty clear that Miles is trapped there and cannot escape, but Miles being Miles, he's clearly got a plan and the whole setup works as effective storytelling.

Overall, I think this is just a quintessential Miles story, well told. Even if Miles is wandering around a prison naked, he can charismatically convince others to believe in something. He can get them to organize and set themselves to it happily, even if it's intangible. Miles even says directly here that "men may move mountains, but ideas move men", and that thought is Miles exemplified.