After finishing Ethan of Athos yesterday, I have read all the Vorkosigan books stories (I think) and, as a lot of the books and series I read, it proved to be an obsession. I read sixteen books, three novellas and a short story in less than a month, something I hadn’t done since I finished The Wheel of Time last May. And, as with any good obsession, I’m having a post-series depression of memorable proportions.
What makes this series worth picking up is the characters, especially Miles, the main lead for 11 of those 16 aforementioned books. They feel like real people, not only in the way they act but also in the way the evolve through time (the story spans over four decades). They don’t just grow and mature, they also change while still remaining true to themselves, which is easier said than done. Miles is among my favorite characters ever and others like Cordelia and Ivan I got really attached to as the series went on.
Another aspect I loved about the series was the romance, which was reminiscent of the work of Jane Austen, especially in “A civil campaign”, which is basically a regency romance set in space and also my favorite book in the series and, maybe, my favorite book ever (I haven’t read anything that made me that happy in a very, very long time). It was well-developed and not the insta-love that palgues most sci-fi/fantasy books.
The final aspect I loved was the exploration of progressive ideas with regards to family and sexuality from a point of view that I don’t usually see. Books like “Mirror dance”, “Diplomatic Immunity” and “Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen” put forward a lot of interesting ideas with regards to friendship and romance that reminded me of the likes of “Saga” (by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples), “On a Sunbeam” (by Tillie Walden) and “The Ballad of Halo Jones” (by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson), all of which are worthwhile sci-fi comics.
Overall, I’d recommend this series to anyone looking for a character-driven sci-fi saga, especially if romances, friendships and character growth are important to you. If you are looking for something with a big focus on worldbuilding and themes, then I’d recommend reading something else (maybe Herbert’s Dune) as they really aren’t the focus of these novels.
Reading order:
I followed the reading order proposed by this article https://bookriot.com/vorkosigan-saga-reading-order/ which wasn’t too bad, though I felt it could be improved with a couple of changes.
Here’s the reading order for the main series (the novels that either follow Cordelia or Miles):
- Shards of Honor
- Barrayar
- The warrior’s apprentice
- The Vor game
- Cetaganda
- Brothers in arms
- Mirror dance
- Memory
- Komarr
- A civil campaign
- Winterfair gifts (this one is actually a short story but it just fits so well here)
- Diplomatic immunity
- Flowers of Vashnoi (also not a novel but it only really fits here)
- Cryoburn
- Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen.
I recommend reading Falling Free either before or after Diplomatic immunity as it adds some background to the setting of that novel.
Ethan of Athos is harder to place; maybe after Cetaganda (which fits with its internal chronology) or maybe after Brothers in arms (to add to Elli’s character).
The three novellas I’d recommend either reading all three (as all three are collected in Borders of Infinity) before Memory or reading them in chronological order:
- The mountains of mourning after The warrior’s apprentice
- Labyrinth after Cetaganda
- Borders of Infinity after Labyrinth
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