Teaser Tuesday: Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I am in the middle of a massive re-read of the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. I am reading all of these again because I just read the eARC of the most recent book in the series - Cryoburn - and wanted to revisit the world and the characters. I have all of these books in multiple editions and am currently reading them on my Kindle.

I am about in the middle of the series and reading Brothers in Arms which was originally published in 1989. Because I am reading on the Kindle, I chose to grab my two sentences from location 1000.

He had to restrain himself from skipping down the steps of the Palais de London in the ambassador's wake. Genius. He was a frigging genius.

The he in question is Lord Miles Vorkosigan son of the Prime Minister of the planet Barrayar and a lieutenant in Imperial Security. He is also Admiral Naismith who is the commander of the Dendarii Mercenary - a secret arm of  Barrayar's intelligence division (secret even from the Dendarii!) 


All his identities are gathering in the same place in this adventure on Earth which is very dangerous for Miles and for Barrayar's interests. Miles needs to find a way to convince everyone that he is at least two separate people since Naismith cannot be seen as a tool of the Barrayarans. So he floats the idea that Naismith is a clone of Vorkosigan. Only Miles discovers that he really does have a clone. His clone-brother Mark is a part of a massive plot that Miles must foil.   


The Vorkosigan Saga is space opera with a very human touch. Lois says that she doesn't do themes - that she just tells stories. But the stories do tend to allow for exploration of several themes - honor, loyalty, and many others.


I have lost count of the number of times that I have read this series. Each time I find something new and get lost in the excellent storytelling.