panguitch's Full Review: Lois Bujold - Brothers in Arms
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books are highly entertaining character-driven space opera of the first order. Unfortunately, Brothers in Arms is the weakest link.
Premise
After being chased all over the galaxy by angry Cetagandans, the Dendarii Free Mercenaries are happy to come to rest on Earth, where they receive some overdue R&R—refitting and refinancing. This also provides Admiral Miles Naismith an opportunity to check in with his real bosses, Barrayaran Imperial Security. Because of the Cetagandan bounty on Admiral Naismith's head, ImpSec decides it best for Miles to revert to his true identity of Lieutenant Vorkosigan and stay put in the Barrayaran embassy. Needless to say, Miles isn't happy to be grounded.
By startling coincidence, Miles's cousin Ivan is currently stationed on Earth. In another coincidence, members of the Komarran resistance, forced from their homeworld by the Barrayaran occupation, have also set up shop on Earth. Miles's arrival is wonderfully convenient for them, since they happen to have spent the past years preparing a clone to secretly replace him with.
This dependence on coincidence, plus the mounting implausibility of Miles's carrying off both his personas without arousing suspicion, are only the beginnings of this book's problems.
Characters
Mark, the name Miles gives his clone, is character with a lot of potential. He has been trained to hate Miles, to murder and replace him. But he also feels a deep fascination for his template. Molded as a tool, he is forced to face the question of just who he is as an individual, apart from Miles. Unfortunately, we never really get inside his head, and our sympathy for him is never as strong as it could be.
Instead we see Mark through Miles, who hardly wrestles with the notion of having a clone. He instantly accepts him as a brother and feels only concern for him, mingled with some annoyance at the difficulties Mark helps cause. In fact, Miles-as-older-brother is so self-assured that I began to wonder if Miles himself is played out. Without his frenetic improvisation and self-doubt is there anything left of interest?
As lackluster as Mark proves to be, and as staid as Miles is becoming, it is actually in a third character where Bujold makes her greatest mistake. Elli Quinn, so fresh and delightful on her own in Ethan of Athos, is reduced to little more than a prop. In Ethan of Athos her worship of Miles is an interesting quirk, substantiated by the backstory provided in The Warrior's Apprentice. But this infatuation, which did so much to make her sympathetic despite her extraordinary beauty and bravado, is exchanged in Brothers in Arms for a romance that lacks any tension, and therefore any interest. In fact, it must be wondered if she has been reduced to a replacement for Elena Bothari in Miles's life, an indulgence for a protagonist who is becoming overly precious.
The one character who does succeed is Galeni, the embassy staffer who represents the best of Barrayar's efforts to integrate Komarr with the empire. Beneath his initial stiffness is a rich set of conflicts, and the difficulties of his relationship with his father are better rendered than is Miles's relationship with Mark.
Double Trouble
The surprising disappointments in characterization are this book's underlying flaw. The second problem it faces is a storyline that lacks the excitement and suspense typical of Bujold's Vorkosigan books, even while it duplicates so many of the same motifs. Sneaking around, mistaken identities, assassination attempts, and political plotting all somehow fail to come together here is a way that might elevate the story above the ordinary. Even the depiction of Earth seems less impressive or thoughtful than this important planet deserves.
It is true that attention to Komarr is long overdue, but the intrigues of the Komarran resistance are less interesting than Galeni's own navigating through the Barrayaran system as a collaborating Komarran. The central features of the novel, the dilemmas faced by Miles and his clone and the conflicted emotions they experience, are not without merit here, but they are presented far better in the next book, Mirror Dance.
Recommendation
I'm surprised by Bujold's uninspired storytelling and characterization in Brothers in Arms. While not a particularly bad book, it falls far short of the rest of the series. There is little to recommend it beyond its place as a necessary introduction for Miles's brother Mark.
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