Review: Miles, Mystery and Mayhem by Lois McMaster Bujold

Title: Miles, Mystery and Mayhem
Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Summary: This is an omnibus collection featuring two novels, Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos as well as the novella “Labyrinth”>

At this moment in my life, I am a complete, total and irredeemable Lois McMaster Bujold fangirl. The woman could write the phone book and I would probably read it as long as it had a listing for Miles Vorkosigan in it somewhere.

The first novel, Cetaganda describes a diplomatic mission. The Empress of Cetaganda has died, and Miles and his cousin Ivan attend the funeral. As usual, nothing goes as planned, and soon Miles is embroiled up to his eyebrowws in Cetagandan intrigue.

To be honest, I thought this was the weakest story in the collection. I’m not sure what didn’t work for me, but, unlike with the other two offerings, I actually did manage to leave the book voluntarily for as long as hours at a time. Maybe it’s just that so far I prefer Miles and his adventures with the Dendarii Mercinaries.

I really expected not to like Ethan of Athos because, well, there isn’t any Miles anywhere except offstage. Ethan is from, as you might surmise, the planet Athos, which is a society free of women. They use uterine replicators in order to bring children into the world, but their original materials aren’t producing viable offspring. When the shipment of ovary samples Athos has purchased arrives and turns out to be completely fake, Ethan goes to Klein station himself to sort out the matter, and meets Ellie Quinn, whom we first met back in Warrior’s Apprentice .

I loved Ethan as a character. Fish out of water stories are my favorites, and I loved watching Ethan struggle to deal with life outside Athos. He is especially unsure what to make of Ellie Quinn, who is the first woman he’s ever met.

I was very satisfied with the way the story turns out. And since I warnned you there’d be spoilers, here they are. Ethan and Ellie do not end up together, a fact which startled me, even though I know Bujold doesn’t generally take the easy way out for her characters. In fact, there’s no chemistry between them at all, which I wasn’t expecting. And that worked for me. I mean, Ethan comes from an all-male society. Of course he wouldn’t naturally be inclined to (as Atalanta Pendrag said on IRC) embrace the poon. I just wish I were aware of characters from female separatist societies in books I’ve read who fail to embrace the cock, too.

“Labyrinth”, the last piece in the collection, has Miles and Bell Thorn, who is a Betan hermaphrodite and one of the Dendarii captains, taking a trip to Jackson’s Hole. Their fairly simple mission, of course, gets complicated, and Miles ends up[ rescuing Taura, a genetic experimental supersoldier, from one of the major syndicates on Jackson’s Hole.

Taura, in truth, totally made this story. But then, anyone who knows my taste in characters would fail to be surprised. I love big, awkward, amazon women. I loved Taura’s vulnerability, and I loved that she could be competent when she needed to be. I understand that there is more Taura goodness in future Miles stories, and if I didn’t already love them to the point of obsession, this would be a definite reason to keep reading.

My verdict: Bujold at her worst pwns some writers at their best. A for this one!