Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold

After two Vorkosigan books that are outliers in the larger series — Shards of Honor because it was the first; Ethan of Athos because it’s about an unusual planet — Brothers in Arms returns to what I think of as the main sequence of the saga: books about the life of Miles Vorkosigan. Brothers in Arms begins just after the operation that was told in “The Borders of Infinity.” I haven’t read that work yet, so the beginning was a little awkward for me. Bujold gives enough background that I wasn’t completely lost, but the characters are reeling, and it was much less immediate for me than it was for them. Miles is also half of a shipboard romance that blossoms in the first few chapters, and here again I felt that I was entering in the middle of the story. The romance felt hasty to me, but if I had read the stories that precede Brothers in Arms, it probably wouldn’t. Nevertheless, because in his guise as Admiral Naismith Miles he is commander of the entire Dendarii mercenary fleet, any romance will perforce be with a subordinate. For both of those reasons, I did not initially see the blossoming of the romance as the triumph of happiness that it’s meant to be for the characters.

That said, this is not a book about exploring the ramifications of power differences in intimate relationships. It’s a book about unexpected developments, staying one step ahead of disaster, and improvising in the face of deadly danger. Admiral Miles Naismith commands the Dendarii mercenary fleet, a freelance group that plies military trades among the competing polities of galactic civilization. Just before Brothers in Arms they completed a mission that had nearly gone pear-shaped, and even after its success it has left the fleet in need of repairs to its ships and its people. The Dendarii fetch up on Old Earth, which is a backwater, but a rich, populous and technologically advanced backwater. Soon after their arrival, Miles receives orders to send Admiral Naismith on incognito leave — a practice established in previous books — and to attach himself under his true name and rank to his homeworld’s embassy on earth.

Arriving at the Barrayaran embassy, he finds one of his cousins among the small staff. He also finds an ambassador who’s a rising star with an extremely awkward background. He’s from a planet called Komarr. Before Miles was born, his father was in command of a military action there, and events led to his becoming known as the Butcher of Komarr. Needless to say, the ambassador is less than pleased to find himself suddenly saddled with a Vorkosigan. Any Vor — a member of Barrayar’s noble caste — would be a nuisance. Miles’ family is the worst possible match, and Miles’ irregular situation as a sometimes mercenary admiral and sometimes military lieutenant only irritates the ambassador further. Then of course things get worse.

Brothers in Arms is a story of action, reversals, of fast-thinking characters trying to get out of the scrapes their previous escapades have gotten them into. Some thirty-five years after publication, it’s probably fair to add “old-fashioned” in between “good” and “adventure tale.” It’s not pure competence porn when Miles takes center stage — sometimes he’s a jerk, sometimes he gets in over his head because he assumes he’s the smartest in the room — but it’s awfully close. Bujold has set him up well as a sympathetic protagonist, so it’s fun to see him escape and triumph. The intrigues are reasonably well done. The glimpses of diplomatic life are not as solid, but then they are brief and mostly inconsequential. What matters for a story like this are the suspense and the revolution, and Bujold pulls both of those off with aplomb.