44. The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold (and the preceding Novella, Mountains of Mourning) (#4 in the Vorkosigan saga)

The Becky Chambers book got me into a sci-fi mood.  Because they are so hard to find and to remember the order, I had bought in advance several of the Vorkosigan saga books at Dark Carnival just so I would have them at hand and this was the perfect moment to dive back in.  The novella, Mountains of Mourning and the book The Vor Game were both in the same physical paperback where I read The Warrior's Apprentice.  I thought I was just going to read the novella and count it as a book, but calling it a novella is really stretching it.  It's closer to a short story.  So I felt it fair and wanted to stay with Miles so I simply continued on with The Vor Game.

Mountains of Mourning has Miles get sent deep into the heart of his home country Barrayar to investigate the murder of a "mutie" baby.  Born with a hare lip, the child is found dead by her mother in the crib.  The town wants to move on as this practice, though technically now illegal, is deeply woven into the military Barrayan culture. For Miles it is a challenge of leadership and ethics.  This is a tight, enjoyable story where we get to see him use his intelligence and charm to somewhat win the locals over and figure out the case.  Very enjoyable.

The Vor Game starts out similarily, this time with Miles graduating from the academy hoping for a posting on a ship but ending up getting sent to a frozen training island to be the local weatherman.  Here he encounters his drunk predecessor, hazing colleagues and the aggressively old school possibly psychotic colonel Metzov who runs the place.  This looks to be a murder mystery and then a similar ethical challenge when the colonel goes too far, when Miles is suddenly whisked away (because of the outcome of the ethical challenge where he stood up to the colonel with the other men whom he was forcing to clean a dangerously toxic accident) and joins Imperial Security to become a spy.  We are thrust back into space politics and Miles' old Dendaarii fleet.  This was a really tone shift (and Bujold acknowledges it, saying she wished they could have been two separate novels).

The second part was fun but it reminded me where these novels can require a lot of generosity from the nerdy reader.  There are a lot of wild coincidences that drive the plot forward.  Once I accept them, then I can get into the spirit of the story (and she also said she deliberately wanted to make it somewhat of a comic space opera), but one feels a bit of "come on!" when he not only runs into his old fleet who are involved in a imbroglio that may threaten Barrayar, but also the emperor himself when he is arrested!

The characters are quite fun and Miles is so likable that I can excuse some of the forced plot machinations.  Ultimately we are here for Miles to brilliantly and narrowly drag himself out of the fires, take advantage of his galactic old boy status and screw over some great badguys (Colonel Metzov returns, another coincidence and we also get a new villain platinum blonde manipulatrice Cavilo).  The Vor Game reminded me of Georgette Hayer's books, but in space.