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silverflight8This is one of the earlier novels that Bujold wrote, and it shows a bit in the prose, but not in the plotting. I think it’s much like Cetaganda in the premise – off-world adventure, Miles refuses to tell his superiors about what he’s doing (oh Miles). The setting of Earth I feel fairly neutral about. London isn’t that interesting, but neither is it a detriment. They’re more like Beta in terms of not letting people carry around deadly weapons, and their tube system is still very good (hooray!) Or maybe I overstate Barrayar’s allowance of lethal weapons – Miles is after all not a civilian and on his home turf.
I like the Komarran element, the peek into how Aral is trying to push his centrist political agenda by opening the Service to Komarran candidates. Duv has a much less awed and more appalled attitude towards Miles being assigned to him, though on the other hand, given that the orders were inserted by Ser Galen in the first place, I suppose it really was a shock. If it’d had been a real assignment from higher up, he’d have been briefed about Miles’s true role. He feels he should be in the pool of need to know, and he should be, so I can’t blame him for feeling slighted. “You are an arrogant little vorling”! Miles does just show up on Earth, supposedly attached to the office, and basically demand eighteen million marks for his little private army (for all Duv knows). But I love that they bond during their mutual incarceration. They’ve both got fathers that haunt them, except Duv’s is so much worse, willing to kill his own son for his ends. I can’t imagine Aral even fast-pentaing Miles. And Duv has got guts, to wait there knowing the end is soon and at whose hands it will be. Duv wishing that his father was safely dead, but in kind of a sick way; his frustration that his father can’t understand he chose his own path and knew quite clearly what it meant to apply to the Imperial Service. Then Miles trying to seize a moment when he thinks the odds are reasonable, to take the guards, Duv charging out of dead sleep to attempt to tackle one of the guards when Miles yells. I feel that cell is where they became friends, and I love that for them. Is this one of the best outcomes of Miles’s many imprisonments? I think so. As soon as they are sprung from imprisonment: ““Oh, so I'm 'sir' again, am I?” muttered Galeni.” I also like the scene where they’re trying to figure out how to deal with Mark and Ser Galen, right after this, and get to a stalemate where they just kind of stare at each other because they’re both just so tired. I like their friendship later on and I think it’s for the better when they’re not in each other’s chains of command.
Miles under fast-penta is pretty entertaining, especially since I don’t have to be in the cell while he’s reciting the entirety of Richard III while bouncing off the walls. I love how chirpy he is and that he can’t stop himself from blurting everything, not just the information they want like security arrangements, but also unsolicited opinions of everyone in the office. As much as I joke about Miles, our impression of his non-stop talking is coming from being in his head. I think he can keep his mouth shut when he needs to, he just wants to meddle and his ability to charm is one of his best tools, so we see him use it a lot. But he’s capable of shutting up, and probably mostly does. But not under the fast-penta. Mark asks about what to do about various Dendarii affairs, kicking his problem-solving system on, and Miles can’t stop himself from answering either. Loyalty is such a big deal for Miles (and Barrayar generally) and his shock and anger that Mark is going to abandon the Dendarii after all they’ve done for him is just right. I imagine Miles is a Lot especially when he’s manic, but the hyper fast-penta no-filter iteration must be nigh unbearable. Poor Duv, having to be locked in with him while it’s wearing off. (Also, poor Rowan later). I like that there are a variety of drug reactions; I guess it’s a bit of a writerly cop-out to have fast-penta be unreliable here, but it’s also medically realistic and Miles doesn’t fully beat it. It’s a truth drug, but it’s not going to solve all your problems either, because “getting witnesses to answer truthfully” is not the only factor in investigating crimes successfully; Miles runs into issues in “Mountains of Mourning” too, and there’s discussion in The Vor Game about how interrogators have to be careful how they frame questions lest they get incorrect answers.
The double-take about the clone got me. I really thought briefly that the clone mentioned in the story would simply be the rumour, which would be disappointing in an SF book, but Mark is real. Satisfyingly real and therefore also inconveniently real – with his own hangups, motivations, and disinclination to work with Miles. Miles talking to Mark, especially the conversation which Mark engineers secretly behind Ser Galen’s back, is particularly great. You can see Miles’s ability to talk people round, except he’s not even lying to Mark. I enjoyed the dual identity problems this book also produced, particularly the kidnapping angle – both ends of it, the kidnapping job offered to Naismith to grab Lord Vorkosigan, and Lt Vorkosigan accused by London police of trying to kill Naismith at the shuttleport. Plus the nested sets of Admiral Naismith, Lt Vorkosigan, Lord Vorkosigan, and then Miles and his skin. It’s interesting to me that the Admiral fits wholly within Lt Vorkosigan, for all that Miles also done non-military things, like have girlfriends, in the persona. But it’s all boxed in neatly under that one persona, which is why he’s so bereft in Memory.
With Cordelia’s education of Miles, his reaction to Mark is very un-Barrayaran. On the Betan note, I also think of Bel flatly refusing to give any Jacksonian any gene samples in “Labyrinth”, saying no clone-sibling should be born into Jacksonian slavery. Both Miles and Bel’s reactions leapfrog over our 21st century no-human-cloning kneejerks too; like Barrayar this tech is simply not available and we have no customs or laws to help shape our feelings about it. But galactics do, and Miles just skips right to seeing Mark as his brother, which is crucial. Miles is the first person ever that cared about Mark as a person, and he does so almost instantly. When he talks to Mark and offers him freedom, a career in whatever he wants, the wealth/power of the Vorkosigan name, Miles isn’t being slick to manipulate Mark. He’s just being honest, he’s more than willing to extend the wing of “being family” over Mark. And he thinks quite honestly about the problem from Mark’s point of view, i.e. someone who’s never had another person to trust, a total 180 to Miles’s own life, where the adults around him were solid. OK, Piotr took a bit, but the worst was over by the time Miles is old enough to remember.
In this novel we also get a lot of Elli, and Miles even proposes to her. Disastrously. Oh Miles, all your proposals are disasters. Actually, all of the men’s proposals in this series appear to be not very successful, especially initially. Whoops. Miles is still very bound up in his military achievement goals, and Elli is pursuing her own very successful career as a mercenary, so on paper, this works out. But mercenary is still a means to Miles’s ends, not the entirety of his identity. I love Barrayar, but I don’t have to live there. I can completely understand why someone not from Barrayar, especially one who hasn’t stepped foot on it, would run screaming. Elli thought the Barrayaran consulate on Earth was going to be like a dungeon. I suppose it’s the export of all those historical romantic histories and the last couple generations’ bloody reputations all meshing together in the general galactic osmosis. And Elli herself seems uniquely not suited for living downside. Anyone who calls regular people who live on planets “dirt suckers” is just not going to sign up for a lifetime of staying on the ground!
Oh and I nearly forgot. I did like the part where Elli explains why she felt uneasy about Mark imitating Miles. She says Miles makes her feel like she could do anything, which is completely true, and one of the things I like about him. Miles has little faith in his superiors, but in his hand-picked subordinates? Total confidence. Sometimes it’s necessity, like running galactic operatives requires you to let them act on their own because they’re just too far from command to effectively micromanage – if they’re weeks away you can’t possibly have orders loop fast enough – but it’s also one of the good things about Miles. And I could see how that would be heady. He’s also quite capable of dreaming big for others. Although he shoots down some of Mark’s clone-brain-destroying plans as a little impractical, i.e. the instinctual go in guns blazing, it’s not to knock them down to size, it’s to point out the impracticalities, and also he suggests others (attack it from the financial end, make sure you have enough resources if you do want to commit to the firefight method).
We find out Tung’s family is in Brazil, and that he has a million cousins! I wonder when he found out about Naismith? Honestly, given that Miles used his real name, I imagine a search on the equivalent of the internet would turn up Barrayaran Lord Vorkosigan pretty quick, and then a look at Miles’ unusual physiology would be adequate confirmation. Also, Tung had lunch with Aral and Miles together. Were they seated together then? Did Tung afterwards remember Miles choking on the mention of “Lord Vorkosigan” and piece it together? I can just imagine it.
My favourite part of this book, though, is still Ivan and Miles. Miles thinks that Ivan could do his job faster, but Ivan says then he’d have nothing to do all afternoon. Just two radically different approaches to life. Ivan doesn’t want to get involved with sneaking Miles out, or helping the Dendarii search for Mark, and yet he’s there making a hole in the perimeter, and pocketing the comm-link. And it goes both ways. As Mark says later, he and Galen threatened to hurt Ivan, and Miles rushed down immediately to put his head in the noose, because he can’t just abandon Ivan! I also love the moment when the three of them get pincered in the tidal barrier complex, and Miles makes them all hide in the pumping chamber, the one Ivan thought he was going to die in. Miles first points out it’s a good hiding spot, which Ivan doesn’t seem to find that convincing, but then Miles says, don’t leave him alone with Mark! “As Miles expected, this appeal for help had more impact than logic, demands, or cajolery.” Aww.
Ivan does notice that “Miles” is off the night he rooms with Mark, because his cousin is weirdly neutral/level, but doesn’t say anything because he was taken in by the clone story. Can’t blame Miles from going off the deep end a few minutes later in sheer frustration, and Ivan’s just like “yep, I am sure you are Miles now”. And – did Galeni really make Ivan count the goldfish? Because I think he did. This just makes their future friendship even funnier.
I like the Komarran element, the peek into how Aral is trying to push his centrist political agenda by opening the Service to Komarran candidates. Duv has a much less awed and more appalled attitude towards Miles being assigned to him, though on the other hand, given that the orders were inserted by Ser Galen in the first place, I suppose it really was a shock. If it’d had been a real assignment from higher up, he’d have been briefed about Miles’s true role. He feels he should be in the pool of need to know, and he should be, so I can’t blame him for feeling slighted. “You are an arrogant little vorling”! Miles does just show up on Earth, supposedly attached to the office, and basically demand eighteen million marks for his little private army (for all Duv knows). But I love that they bond during their mutual incarceration. They’ve both got fathers that haunt them, except Duv’s is so much worse, willing to kill his own son for his ends. I can’t imagine Aral even fast-pentaing Miles. And Duv has got guts, to wait there knowing the end is soon and at whose hands it will be. Duv wishing that his father was safely dead, but in kind of a sick way; his frustration that his father can’t understand he chose his own path and knew quite clearly what it meant to apply to the Imperial Service. Then Miles trying to seize a moment when he thinks the odds are reasonable, to take the guards, Duv charging out of dead sleep to attempt to tackle one of the guards when Miles yells. I feel that cell is where they became friends, and I love that for them. Is this one of the best outcomes of Miles’s many imprisonments? I think so. As soon as they are sprung from imprisonment: ““Oh, so I'm 'sir' again, am I?” muttered Galeni.” I also like the scene where they’re trying to figure out how to deal with Mark and Ser Galen, right after this, and get to a stalemate where they just kind of stare at each other because they’re both just so tired. I like their friendship later on and I think it’s for the better when they’re not in each other’s chains of command.
Miles under fast-penta is pretty entertaining, especially since I don’t have to be in the cell while he’s reciting the entirety of Richard III while bouncing off the walls. I love how chirpy he is and that he can’t stop himself from blurting everything, not just the information they want like security arrangements, but also unsolicited opinions of everyone in the office. As much as I joke about Miles, our impression of his non-stop talking is coming from being in his head. I think he can keep his mouth shut when he needs to, he just wants to meddle and his ability to charm is one of his best tools, so we see him use it a lot. But he’s capable of shutting up, and probably mostly does. But not under the fast-penta. Mark asks about what to do about various Dendarii affairs, kicking his problem-solving system on, and Miles can’t stop himself from answering either. Loyalty is such a big deal for Miles (and Barrayar generally) and his shock and anger that Mark is going to abandon the Dendarii after all they’ve done for him is just right. I imagine Miles is a Lot especially when he’s manic, but the hyper fast-penta no-filter iteration must be nigh unbearable. Poor Duv, having to be locked in with him while it’s wearing off. (Also, poor Rowan later). I like that there are a variety of drug reactions; I guess it’s a bit of a writerly cop-out to have fast-penta be unreliable here, but it’s also medically realistic and Miles doesn’t fully beat it. It’s a truth drug, but it’s not going to solve all your problems either, because “getting witnesses to answer truthfully” is not the only factor in investigating crimes successfully; Miles runs into issues in “Mountains of Mourning” too, and there’s discussion in The Vor Game about how interrogators have to be careful how they frame questions lest they get incorrect answers.
The double-take about the clone got me. I really thought briefly that the clone mentioned in the story would simply be the rumour, which would be disappointing in an SF book, but Mark is real. Satisfyingly real and therefore also inconveniently real – with his own hangups, motivations, and disinclination to work with Miles. Miles talking to Mark, especially the conversation which Mark engineers secretly behind Ser Galen’s back, is particularly great. You can see Miles’s ability to talk people round, except he’s not even lying to Mark. I enjoyed the dual identity problems this book also produced, particularly the kidnapping angle – both ends of it, the kidnapping job offered to Naismith to grab Lord Vorkosigan, and Lt Vorkosigan accused by London police of trying to kill Naismith at the shuttleport. Plus the nested sets of Admiral Naismith, Lt Vorkosigan, Lord Vorkosigan, and then Miles and his skin. It’s interesting to me that the Admiral fits wholly within Lt Vorkosigan, for all that Miles also done non-military things, like have girlfriends, in the persona. But it’s all boxed in neatly under that one persona, which is why he’s so bereft in Memory.
With Cordelia’s education of Miles, his reaction to Mark is very un-Barrayaran. On the Betan note, I also think of Bel flatly refusing to give any Jacksonian any gene samples in “Labyrinth”, saying no clone-sibling should be born into Jacksonian slavery. Both Miles and Bel’s reactions leapfrog over our 21st century no-human-cloning kneejerks too; like Barrayar this tech is simply not available and we have no customs or laws to help shape our feelings about it. But galactics do, and Miles just skips right to seeing Mark as his brother, which is crucial. Miles is the first person ever that cared about Mark as a person, and he does so almost instantly. When he talks to Mark and offers him freedom, a career in whatever he wants, the wealth/power of the Vorkosigan name, Miles isn’t being slick to manipulate Mark. He’s just being honest, he’s more than willing to extend the wing of “being family” over Mark. And he thinks quite honestly about the problem from Mark’s point of view, i.e. someone who’s never had another person to trust, a total 180 to Miles’s own life, where the adults around him were solid. OK, Piotr took a bit, but the worst was over by the time Miles is old enough to remember.
In this novel we also get a lot of Elli, and Miles even proposes to her. Disastrously. Oh Miles, all your proposals are disasters. Actually, all of the men’s proposals in this series appear to be not very successful, especially initially. Whoops. Miles is still very bound up in his military achievement goals, and Elli is pursuing her own very successful career as a mercenary, so on paper, this works out. But mercenary is still a means to Miles’s ends, not the entirety of his identity. I love Barrayar, but I don’t have to live there. I can completely understand why someone not from Barrayar, especially one who hasn’t stepped foot on it, would run screaming. Elli thought the Barrayaran consulate on Earth was going to be like a dungeon. I suppose it’s the export of all those historical romantic histories and the last couple generations’ bloody reputations all meshing together in the general galactic osmosis. And Elli herself seems uniquely not suited for living downside. Anyone who calls regular people who live on planets “dirt suckers” is just not going to sign up for a lifetime of staying on the ground!
Oh and I nearly forgot. I did like the part where Elli explains why she felt uneasy about Mark imitating Miles. She says Miles makes her feel like she could do anything, which is completely true, and one of the things I like about him. Miles has little faith in his superiors, but in his hand-picked subordinates? Total confidence. Sometimes it’s necessity, like running galactic operatives requires you to let them act on their own because they’re just too far from command to effectively micromanage – if they’re weeks away you can’t possibly have orders loop fast enough – but it’s also one of the good things about Miles. And I could see how that would be heady. He’s also quite capable of dreaming big for others. Although he shoots down some of Mark’s clone-brain-destroying plans as a little impractical, i.e. the instinctual go in guns blazing, it’s not to knock them down to size, it’s to point out the impracticalities, and also he suggests others (attack it from the financial end, make sure you have enough resources if you do want to commit to the firefight method).
We find out Tung’s family is in Brazil, and that he has a million cousins! I wonder when he found out about Naismith? Honestly, given that Miles used his real name, I imagine a search on the equivalent of the internet would turn up Barrayaran Lord Vorkosigan pretty quick, and then a look at Miles’ unusual physiology would be adequate confirmation. Also, Tung had lunch with Aral and Miles together. Were they seated together then? Did Tung afterwards remember Miles choking on the mention of “Lord Vorkosigan” and piece it together? I can just imagine it.
My favourite part of this book, though, is still Ivan and Miles. Miles thinks that Ivan could do his job faster, but Ivan says then he’d have nothing to do all afternoon. Just two radically different approaches to life. Ivan doesn’t want to get involved with sneaking Miles out, or helping the Dendarii search for Mark, and yet he’s there making a hole in the perimeter, and pocketing the comm-link. And it goes both ways. As Mark says later, he and Galen threatened to hurt Ivan, and Miles rushed down immediately to put his head in the noose, because he can’t just abandon Ivan! I also love the moment when the three of them get pincered in the tidal barrier complex, and Miles makes them all hide in the pumping chamber, the one Ivan thought he was going to die in. Miles first points out it’s a good hiding spot, which Ivan doesn’t seem to find that convincing, but then Miles says, don’t leave him alone with Mark! “As Miles expected, this appeal for help had more impact than logic, demands, or cajolery.” Aww.
"You can fool all of the people some of the time," chirped Miles, "and some of the people all of the time, but you can fool Ivan anytime. He doesn't pay attention."
Ivan does notice that “Miles” is off the night he rooms with Mark, because his cousin is weirdly neutral/level, but doesn’t say anything because he was taken in by the clone story. Can’t blame Miles from going off the deep end a few minutes later in sheer frustration, and Ivan’s just like “yep, I am sure you are Miles now”. And – did Galeni really make Ivan count the goldfish? Because I think he did. This just makes their future friendship even funnier.
