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 "Manners", Indeed
A Civil Campaign
Lois McMaster Bujold, et al
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To fully appreciate this book, it helps to have
read Miles's previous adventure, "Komarr", which ends just about exactly
where this one picks up. However, Ms Bujold does include enough backstory
in this volume to get by on.
The author's dedication includes several ladies listed only by first names
-- among them "Jane" (Austen) and "Georgette" (Heyer). Certainly, the ladies'
spirits are hovering close ocer this story, because it is a thoroughly enjoyable
Comedy Of Manners from start to finish.
Part of the fun, though one tends to cringe as one looks ahead, is in watching
the step by step manner in which Miles Vorkosigan, the resourceful former
covert ops whiz and youngest Imperial Auditor, who always comes out ahead
no matter how hopeless the situation, meticulously setting up an Inevitable
Hideous Flaming Social Disaster for himself. Only the Truly Brilliant can
be Truly Stupid when they Miss The Point and Push On Anyway, and Miles is
beyond brilliant.
Miles, you see, has Fallen In Love. For real and for permanent, this time,
it looks like. And he has no clue at all as to how normal people connect
up and pair off in the Real World.
Of course, he has helpers, partners and accomplices in setting up his own
humiliation -- his clone-brother Mark arrives with a true Mad Scientist in
tow and sets up a lab in Miles's basement -- but Miles, as always, is Captain
of His Fate.
Only this time he's on a lee shore and a gale is
rising.
Three beautiful sisters with conflicting motives and plans for various of
the male characters help to stir the brew.
And then there are the butter bugs... but we won't talk about the butter
bugs here, except that they are Rather Important to the plot.
"Mother, Father, I'd like you to meet... She's getting *away*!"
If you enjoy a romp through society's ins and outs; if you have enjoyed Georgette
Heyer's wonderful Regency romances, then you must try this book.
And if you like it as well as i think you will, and decide you *must* know
more about Miles and his family and Barrayar, then either jump *all* the
way back to "Cordelia's Honor", which is the two novels that are earliest
in series order ("Shards of Honor" and "Barrayar"), or you might want to
jump back to "The Warrior's Apprentice", which is the beginning of Miles's
adventures.
Or you might just want to pick up any of the series and enjoy yourself.
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