Miles, Mystery & Mayhem | Lois McMaster Bujold

Miles, Mystery & Mayhem | Lois McMaster Bujold | The third compilation book based on the Vorkisigian Family

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Miles, Mystery & M...

	Miles, Mystery & Mayhem Lois McMaster Bujold Baen, 2003 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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Excellent Writing!

I hate to see reviews from older fans marking this book down just because the stories are reprints. I am new to the series, and I thought this made a pretty good introduction in general, and the writing in all three stories was very good. I wasn't really sure which books in the Vorkosigan Saga to read first, and I couldn't find any consensus choice online, so I just grabbed this and jumped in. It was very enjoyable.

Cetaganda, the first and longest, involves Miles in Interstellar intrigues and a murder mystery. Ethan of Athos doesn't include Miles directly, but involves his Dendarii Free Mercenaries and the Cetagandans again. Labryinth, the shortest, has Miles's and the Dendarii Free Mercenaries in a covert op. By the end of all three, you will have a pretty good idea of Miles place in the world and his relationship with the DFM.

All three have a very high standard of writing. Bujold has a very effective way of rendering genuine characters. There is little emphasis on technology or Sci-Fi baubles; the real meat of the stories are the real, deep motivations of the characters themselves. It's very engrossing, and a joy to read. I highly recommend this collection.

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The third compilation book based on the Vorkisigian Family

Miles is safely graduated from the academy, but also firmly entrenched in Security. This is 2 novels and 1 short story. The first, Cetaganda, is Miles at his operating without a net best. He and his cousin are sent to Cetaganda, the evil home of the Cetaganda Empire, for a funeral of the Dowager Empress, the mother of the current Emperor. Now if you remember Earthly kingdoms histories these aren't, generally, powerful positions; but in the case of the Cetagandan Empire, the Dowager Empress is co-ruler of the Empire, because she controls the genetics of the Empire. This is a murder mystery with potentially disastrous Galactic consequences. Miles is only 2 steps in front of disaster through the whole book.

Next comes Ethan of Athos, Lois McMaster Bujold's third novel. This is a spy novel without the chief spy Miles. Ethan is from Athos a planet settled by a brotherhood that elimates women as the root of all evil. Unfortunately, the ovaries that they use to produce sons are breaking down and they need a new supply to keep the planet going. Ethan, a reproduction specialist is sent get the new supply. The enemy is a group of Cetagandan spies who are after Terrance Cee, an escaped experimental project of the Cetagandan gene spicing experiment for mindreading spies. In the end, Ethan lives up to his sobriquet with the help of Terrence and Elli Quinn an operative of the Dendarii Free Mercenaries. This has a more than satisfying end to a real adventure story.

In the short story "Labyrinth" Miles returns to the Dendarii Free Mercenaries on a mission to free a bio-engineer from an onerous contract. Miles runs into a teenage werewolf genius who wants him to prove that she is human, and a Quaddie musician with rival criminal syndicates fighting over her. This is a fun short story that also looks at bio-experimentation and gene-splicing and this is what really ties all three stories together. An interesting look at how science can effect the future of mankind.

These are also 3 good nexcuses to read the Queen of Science Fiction (4 Hugos and 2 Nebulas and still counting, almost every book gets nominated for 1 or the other or both). This is a great way to get classic works for less.

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Good Miles Vorkosigan Omnibus

MILES, MYSTERY & MAYHEM (2001) is an omnibus edition, featuring three stories related to the "Miles Vorkosigan Universe". These series of stories can best be described as Science Fiction Murder Mysteries - with Miles Vorkosigan usually being at the center of attention in the stories, to play a kind of "Columbo in Space"... Miles was born with a number of birth defects caused by his mother being exposed to poison during her pregnancy with Miles - which have basically left him as "a weak runt"... however, Miles is quite intelligent, and is usually able to work within his limitations to get to the bottom of problems which crop up in his work.

These are the first full length Miles Vorkosigan stories I've read... I was first exposed to an excellent short story featuring Miles, WEATHERMAN(1990), which was part of the recently published SPACE OPERA RENAISSANCE short story collection. The back of MILES, MYSTERY & MAYHEM features a chronology of the Mile Vorkosigan Universe, but oddly enough, the excellent story WEATHERMAN is not mentioned in the list.

Following are brief reviews of each of the individual stories from MILES, MYSTERY & MAYHEM:

CETAGANDA(1996)**** - Miles and cousin Ivan are dispatched to the heart of the Cetaganda Empire (a former bitter enemy of the Barrayar Empire of whose space military Miles and Ivan serve), where they are to attend a series of formal gatherings to honor the recently deceased Empress... all sorts of intrigue follows, including a murder of an androgynous high-level servant, of which Miles had been intended to be framed for. Great fun, with a few laughs interspersed thoughout.

ETHAN OF ATHOS(1986) **** - Similar in many ways to A. Bertram Chandler's John Grimes tale SPARTAN PLANET(1968), about an isolated planet made up purely of males who reproduce using artificial wombs. In this story, one of the main characters comes from the all-male planet Athos, from which he has been sent on a solo mission on a shoestring budget to acquire a fresh batch of producing overies, as the planet's producing ovaries have been overly-cloned, and are no longer viable... of course, intrigue and murder insue. Miles himself is not an active participant in the story - with the main character being played by Mile's #1 spy Ellie Quinn.

LABYRINTH(1989) ***** - Short story, but best of the batch. LABYRINTH has great characters, high adventure, strange romance, believable genetic technologies, and even has a wild chase scene near the end.

These stories are great entertainment, I will certainly be reading more, and don't doubt at this point that I'll end up reading most of the whole series.

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well worth reading

Much better than the estrogen drenched Brother in Arms. Rivals, albeit in different fashion, gender challenges of William Barton's novels.

Another Omnibus edition representing the best and worst of the series.

Miles, Mystery & Mayhem is the third omnibus (collection of works combined into one book) in Bujold's Vorkosigan series. These collections feature events that take place in chronological order but were written in non-chronological order. Many debates have arisen regarding the best way to read Bujold's Vorkorsigan adventures but I agree with the overwhelming popular choice of reading them in the chronological order of events. This collection features Ceteganda, Ethan of Ethos and the novella The Labyrinth.

Ceteganda is an example of Bujold at her best. Miles quickly finds himself in a diplomatic dilemma after landing on Ceteganda for a funeral. Political intrigue and mystery abound as Miles finds himself in the familiar situation of having to use hits wits to manipulate people and discover information in order to save his skin. This is where Bujold shines as she mixes delicious political intrigue with clever and likeable characterization. Miles is smart and witty and I found myself smiling in awe as he unravels mysteries and talks himself out of every situation. On top of that Bujold creates one of the more interesting alien societies in her portrayal of the complex Cetagandans.

"Ethan of Athos" falls in the Vorkorsigan series although Miles doesn't really appear in the story at all. In instead follows the adventures of displaced man from an all male planet, and the feisty Ms. Quinn, Miles's future lover. Therein lies the biggest problem that also plagued Falling Free. A story that takes place in the Vorkosigan series that doesn't include Miles is equivalent to a movie that takes place in Gotham without Batman. While the all male Athos society was an interesting, everything else was mediocre at best Bujold should of replaced with Quinn with Miles in this story.

"Labyrinth" is a fantastic short story that comes out of the gate at a shotgun's pace and never lets up until the end. Again it's Miles overcoming his physical differences and using his amazing understanding of the human psyche to overcome impossible odds. It's worth going to the bookstore and reading this there since many will already have read the other two novels.

Finally, I've seen a lot of negative reviews about people complaining how this collection is just reprints of older books. It upsets me that Amazon allows these idiots to post these negative reviews which are solely the results of losers whining because they bought something without even reading the back of the cover.

Bottom Line: Another must read in the fantastic world of Vorkosigan. Skipping Ethan of Athos wouldn't be unforgivable by any means.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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