Book III of the Vorkosigan Saga, Apprentice starts twelves years after Barrayar finishes. Miles is now 17yrs and preparing for his entrance exams to the Imperial Military Academy.

Born a brittle-boned cripple, Miles is the brilliant son of Admiral Lord Vorkosigan, Regent of the ultra-conservative planet Barrayar. When he fails his entrance exams on the physicals, Miles goes into self-imposed exile on his mother's home planet.
And immediately finds himself adopting a Barrayan deserter, buying a derelict jump-ship (and it's drug-addled pilot) and winning an arms-smuggling contract into a galactic war-zone.

And that's before he has to win over the mercenaries who hi-jack his ship, and the mercenaries who try to hi-jack the hi-jackers' ship, and the hermaphrodite who isn't sure if it should kill or kiss the newly self-promoted Admiral Miles Naismith.

Space opera fans and anyone with a sense of humour, but particularly for people who like a breathless (and hugely sarcastic) pace.

Note for Game of Thrones fans; Miles is the original Tyrion Lannister. In a spacesuit.

Any scene where someone actually gets the better of Miles (there are one or two) and the viciously sarcastic dialogue.

..........I'll get back to you when I think of something.

Read the next Vorkosgian novel. And the next.

Exhausted. Even third person Miles is breath-taking.

Lois McMaster Bujold has written several sci-fi novels (The Vorkosigan Saga) and a number of fantasy novels (inc. The Sharing Knife series, The Spirit Ring, and The Chalion series).

Bujold's characters are vibrant, intense and intelligent. She has the ability to take the most ludicrous storyline (see summary) and make it not only plausible, but somehow the ONLY viable option.

Although Apprentice is book III of the saga, it can be read as a stand alone or as the first of the Miles books (books I & II, Shards of Honour and Barrayar respectively, follow the story of Miles' parents).

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Created Oct 12, 2013 at 3:43pm • Submit your own review...