This review is pretty long, so here's the short version: Mirror Dance is really good. Go and read it.

Here's the only slightly longer version: Mirron Dance is really good, but ...

It's not simply a sequel, it's a middle volume in a fairly extensive series of books and one that relies rather more than most on some knowledge of the preceeding volumes. In theory, it's possible to follow all of it without any of that prior knowledge, but I don't believe I'd recommend trying to do so. Instead, I'd suggest it's best to have read the immediately prior book in the series, Brothers In Arms (my review of which can be found here) - and at least a couple of a list that includes Barrayar, The Warrior's Apprentice, The Vor Game and Cetaganda (Barrayar is probably the best of these, but The Warrior's Apprentice is undoubtedly the most important). If you've tried these before and hated them, Mirror Dance is unlikely to be the book for you. But if you felt they were just "okay" - fun in an escapist sort of way but nothing special - then this volume might just pleasantly surprise you.

Anyway: onto the full, probably too long and (more than slightly) rambling review.

If you haven't read any of the books above but were planning on following my advice and you're also the sort of person who worries about plot spoilers, now would be a good place to stop.

Despite reading plenty of space opera and science fiction as I grew up, I was never a SF fan in the traditional sense; I never felt the urge to attend conventions or check to see what had won the year's big awards, and generally never really had any sense of who the big names in modern genre circles were. This is probably the only way I was able to make it through the 1990s without hearing of Lois McMaster Bujold. Since 1989 she's written four books that have won the (fan-voted) Hugo Award for best novel, and four others that have been short-listed for it. Three of those four winners (six of the eight in all) have been books in her Vorkosigan Saga, a space opera sequence depicting the life and world of Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, a brittle-boned and unusually short lordling from the interplanetary feudal empire of Barrayar who (when he's not foiling plots against his father among the the aristocracy of his home world) moonlights as 'Admiral Naismith', mercenary commander and military genius.

Over the course of the series, Miles - whose unusual phsyical stature is the result of a failed assassination attempt on his then-pregnant mother - struggles to prove his worth to the Barrayaran military service and the 'mutant'-fearing and culturally backwards people of his home world, even as his parents are attempting to transform that society towards the more civilised ideals epitomised by his mothers' birthplace of Beta Colony. His efforts to join the service ("ImpSec") seemingly thwarted, Miles spends some time offworld, during which time he is caught up in a sequence of events that sees him forming the Dendarii Mercenaries (while posing as a Betan native called "Miles Naismith" and awarding himself the title of Admiral).

Ultimately, Miles' efforts to join ImpSec bear fruit, and the Dendarii are quietly and secretly absorbed by Barrayan High Command ... in a purely unofficial capacity. Only a select few among either the Dendarii or the Barrayarans know that Miles and Naismith are in fact one and the same. In the years that follow, while Miles Vorkosigan slowly works his way up the career ladder in Barrayar, Admiral Naismith and the Dendarii conduct a number of daring and sucessful missions on behalf of the Barrayans, making enemies of the Cetagandan Empire, rebel groups from Barrayan-ruled Komarr and the rich and amoral geneticists and traders of Jackson's Whole in the process. Eventually Miles and the Dendarii wind up on Earth, where they discover that Miles has a clone, whose growth and appearance have been artificially altered to make him resemble Miles as much as possible as part of a plot to switch the pair and have the clone trigger a civil war on Barrayar. Thanks in part to the clone's help, the plot is undone. Miles insist that the clone is legally and morally his younger brother, and dubs him Mark, yet he is unable to convince him his 'older brother' can be trusted. As reward for helping to prop up the illusion that Miles and Admiral Naismith are really two distinct people, Miles lets Mark go, though - essentially in captivity since his 'birth' - the younger Vorkosigan has little idea of what it is he wants from life.

It's at this point that Mirror Dance begins. (I did warn you it depended on a lot of prior knowledge, didn't I?)

It's also at this point that I should make a confession. The summary above probably makes the series sound like silly, light-hearted escapist fluff ... and really, that's because it is. Sure, it's reasonably well-written fluff, the background contains a few neat SF ideas and the characterisation is better done that you might guess, but it's still, when you get down to it, fluff. In the last few years I've read quite a few of Bujold's books, and while I enjoyed them well enough to keep doing so, a part of me kept wondering what all the fuss was about. Sure, I'd also take issue with some of the more recent Hugo Award winners, but it was difficult for me to imagine the modern award being won by something so ... well, so pulpy. I'd always subconsciously felt that Bujold's later awards were more a sign of fan loyalty than literary appreciation, while the earlier awards were simply a sign of how much the state of SF had improved in the last twenty odd years. (Yeah, I can be a partronising smug outsider when I really put my mind to it).

Having read this book I'm forced to admit I was wrong. On its own merits, Mirror Dance is an excellent work of SF and one that it's hard not to imagine as a worthy strong contender for the Hugo in any year.

The story picks up a few years after Brothers In Arms ended, with Mark once again up to his old habits. Assuming the identity of Admiral Naismith, he commandeers a ship and a squad of Dendarii commandos with the aim of leading them on a rescue mission to save a batch of young clones from the labs of Jackson's Whole (suffice to say that these clones are not otherwise destined for a pleasant fate). Things pretty soon go badly wrong, but fortunately the real Miles is in hot pursuit, and on hand to launch a second recue mission to save Mark and the other Dendarii. Somewhat less fortunately, in the course of this second rescue a Jacksonian sniper fires a grenade that tears apart Miles' chest, killing him almost instantly.

Only it's not quite that straightforward: death in the universe of Barrayar is not necessarily the final end, and there's a chance that Miles can be revived if medical experts get to his body soon enough. But while Mark and (most of) the Dendarii manage to escape, they do so without the cryochamber that Miles' body was placed in ... and after the battle, nobody else can seem to find it either. While the search continues, Mark must travel to Barrayar to meet his Betan mother and the man he was brought up to hate as the "Butcher of Komarr".

What makes Mirror Dance such a marked improvement on earlier works in the sequence?

Yes, it's rather darker than they were - not only does Miles 'die', Mark is also a far less upbeat protagonist than his older brother, and there are some scenes depiciting serious physical and emotional torture in a fairly graphic way in the latter half of the book. But it's not a forced attempt to write 'grittier' material that makes this book succeed. Indeed, rather than by trying to change the universe the series describes, it's by taking everything that went before seriously and allowing events to develop naturally that Bujolds succeeds as she does.

In part, Bujold is helped by the timing of this book: Mark's creation having allowed her to address the rather implausible issue that nobody had hitherto proved a connection between Admiral Naismith and Miles, she can now dream up new cases of mistaken identity based on the fact that it is believed Miles has two clones (Naismith and Mark) rather than just one. And in part, the fact that the book is substantially longer than previous installments helps as well - there's no longer a sense that the author is artificially hurrying things along or that the ending comes too quickly and neatly, and this is really only possible because there is more time for things to develop organically.

The real secret, though, is characterisation, which in this book shifts from 'better than you'd guess' to 'actually very good indeed'.

You don't win any prizes for guessing that this is a book about identity.

Bujold shows not only Mark, but also Miles and even Barrayan society as a whole - via a series of scenes at formal dances in the Barrayaran court, one of which gives the novel its name - questioning their identities and forging new ones. Mark is instantly one of Bujold's stronger characters (which of course only highlights how superfically the supporting cast had been characteristed up to this point). His crusade to save the other clones of Jackson's Whole could be seen as an attempt to whitewash the characters' actions from the previous book, but Bujold firmly avoids this, leaving him a sympathetic character but at the same time one who is prone to do stupid and even at times evil things. As the book progresses, Mark struggles to reconcile his past, his status as a clone and the possibility of acceptance into Barrarayan society. Miles too continues to be torn between life as a low-ranking member of ImpSec and the more exciting life of Admiral Naismith and the Dendarii.

I believe this is also the first book not to feature only Miles' point of view - in any event, Mark's perspective does help cast some familiar faces in a new light. The whole effect is just to make things seem rather more serious than they did in earlier books, somehow - suddenly this is a world in which actions can have real consequences. The fate of even minor characters like the rescued clones and some of the Dendarii becomes more compelling, as do the health problems of Miles' father Count Aral Vorkosigan later in the book. And while I never felt Miles's "death" was likely to be permanent, his loss and recovery aren't events that will be lightly shrugged off either, but will instead go on to have profound effects on the series as a whole.

I don't want to get carried away here: Mirror Dance isn't any dramatic subversion of the subgenre that previous volumes occupied, but rather an example of that subgenre done very, very well. Despite the occasionally darker tone, it's still essentially a light-heartedspace opera adventure story. If you pushed me on it (and, apparently, even if you didn't) I'd admit that, yes, it's probably still fluff, too. But if you're looking for well-written fluff of this sort, and you don't mind flicking through some earlier entries in the sequence, I can't imagine you finding anything better. And if you've enjoyed those earlier books already, you just don't have any excuse to pass this up.

This is the best of the Vorkosigan series so far. Bujold has taken the evil twin sci-fi concept and given it a twist. Miles' "evil" clone Mark causes havoc for Miles with serious consequences for all.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Miles is in fact absent for much of it and Mark takes centre stage. And I ended up liking Mark a lot, so much so that my heart was in my mouth at the end.
A good book is one you don't want to end and I didn't want this one to end. ( )

Another excellent book in this series. Miles meets his clone-brother Mark again, and they almost ruin each other. As is often the case in Bujold's universe of separate cultural petri dishes, this book explores new ground -- the metastatic capitalist culture of Jackson's Whole. This is probably the darkest book in the series, mostly because Jackson's Whole is a pretty horrific place. Ultimately, the brothers rescue each other and both get the chance to go home.

The Barrayar world is all about Miles Vorkosigan - he's the frenetically bright star around which all the other characters orbit. So what happens when Miles is gone?

He spends most of this book dead. Well, mostly dead. He's killed, and then put in a box frozen, and then the box gets lost. And the most fascinating part of this book is the story of all of Miles' supporting cast trying to find out who they are - without Miles. Especially his clone-brother Mark, who has spent his whole life with Miles looming over him.

I'll be honest - this is one of the two books in the Vorkosigan series (along with the next book, Memory) that I find it impossible to be objective about, because for the first half of the book, I sit there watching the characters making mistakes that will lead them inevitably into disaster - and they're the exact same mistakes that I would have made - that I *have* made - and Bujold portrays it so realistically that it's painful to read.

Also, talk about your ugly covers! ( )

One deadsicle, one schizo.

Mark impersonates his brother to take the Free Mercs off on a liberation mission. A bit of an understatement to say this doesn't go well. The original version is killed and frozen, and Mark is tortured until his not so stable personality fragments into many.

The M & M show has to someone get out of this and wreak some havoc on bad Barons.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/08/mirror-dance-lois-mcmaster-bujold.html ( )