Tuesday, May 22, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Mirror Dance (Vorkosigan Saga) by Lois McMaster Bujold



Mirror Dance is the fifth (chronologically) novel in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga to star Miles Naismith Vorkosigan.  It is essentially a sequel to "Brothers in Arms" (Review Here) even though it was published 5 years and 2 books later and so it's not an appropriate place to start the series.  It's a first for the series, as far as I can recall, in that it is the first book in the Saga to alternate between point of view characters - we spend as much time if not more time in this book following Miles' clone brother Mark as we do Miles and this is very much Mark's story.  And it works really well for it - helped along by the amazing dialogue that I think of as Bujold's signature, the amount of moments that caused me to crack up while listening in the car or on a jog were way too numerous to list.

That said, Mirror Dance is almost certainly the darkest Vorkosigan novel yet, featuring some disturbing issues.  One of our two heroes has a moment where he essentially attempts the cosmic equivalent of statutory rape (there's consent and he never goes through with it due to medical issues, but he is aware that the girl, who is in the body of a 20 year old, has the mental state of a 10 year old) and one of the villains engages in sexual torture of one of the protagonists.  The former is not considered by the characters in the book to be acceptable by any means, but your mileage may vary about how the book treats the subject - I'll talk more in depth about this with some spoilers after the jump.

With those major issues aside - to the extent that's possible - Mirror Dance is yet another excellent addition to the Vorkosigan Saga, which is a joy to read absent those issues, due to its hilarious dialogue, great guile heroes, and well built scifi world.

Trigger Warnings:  Rape and Sexual Abuse is present in this novel (as mentioned above).  It's not gratuitous, although whether it's a problem is another question, which I'll try to tackle after the jump.  If you like the series and these things are a problem, skip Mirror Dance and wikipedia it to know what happens and move on to the next book, Memory, which doesn't feature anything of the sort.  

 Note:  Again, I listened to this book as an audiobook, and the audiobook reader is again excellent, particularly at differentiating between the voices of the characters.  For some reason, the pronunciation of Dendarii reverts back to how it was before the last audiobook ("Den-Dare-ee") which is annoying, but otherwise it's an excellent way to read the series.  

 More after the jump:

---------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------
When Miles and Elli are off on vacation from the Dendarii, Miles' clone brother Mark takes the opportunity to impersonate Miles and take control of a detachment of the Dendarii Mercenaries, namely Bel Thorne's ship the Aerial and a Commando Squad, for the purpose of freeing and saving the lives of innocent clones on Jackson's Whole.  But Mark isn't Miles, and the mission goes horribly wrong.  And Miles can't leave his brother behind, so he takes another squad in for a rescue mission that goes horribly wrong when Miles is killed and Miles' cryogenically frozen body is lost somehow on the criminal planet, leaving Mark and the Dendarii lost.

With seemingly no clue as to where to find Miles, the Dendarii are forced to turn to ImpSec for help, resulting in Mark's first time actually visiting Barrayar and meeting his "parents."  There, the planet and the Countess ask Mark the question he couldn't possibly answer: "Who exactly is Mark Pierre Vorkosigan?" Because aside from Mark knowing he doesn't want to be Miles, Mark doesn't really know anything else, and his abusive childhood still haunts him.

Still, in order to be able find himself, and to get the chance to be something more than Miles' replacement, Mark will have to do one thing:  Find and Rescue the body of Miles Vorkosigan.....alive.  But doing so may put him at more risk than anything he's tried before - even counting the original rescue mission......
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The Vorkosigan Saga should be known for its incredibly sharp and incredibly witty dialogue, with its main hero being a guile hero who quips relentlessly both outwardly and inwardly, and it can be really damn funny even in a dark dark book like this one.  The new hero of this book who shares the book, Mark, has a very different more troubled personality (see below), but also has a mastery of irony and sarcasm that is simply amazing at times.  And the rest of the cast is excellent as well - Miles' and Mark's mother, the Countess Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan (heroine of prior books "Shards of Honor" and "Barrayar") is utterly amazing in every scene she appears, and I really really wish we'd get more novels starring her as a main protagonist than those two books (and part of Jole, I guess).

SPOILER PARAGRAPH DUE TO A NECESSARY DISCUSSION OF WHAT I TALKED ABOUT BEFORE THE JUMP:

That said, there's a squicky moment in this book about a 1/3 of the way through.  The clones rescued by Mark were created for the sole purpose of having their brains replaced by those of their progenitors, so their creators can extend their life-spans indefinitely (and possibly find themselves in bodies more to their liking).  As a result, their bodies are "grown" at a faster rate than normal, resulting in clones who appear to be 20 year old, fully mature men and women with 10 year old minds.  And Mark is well aware of this disturbing fact.  And yet when Mark goes with one such girl, whose body has been sculpted to be oversexualized, to take her back to safety in the ship, instead he leads her to his cabin and starts trying to make advances on her (to which she doesn't know why she should say no), only to be stopped by flashbacks to a time when his creator, Sir Galen, brutally abused him after a previous (consensual) attempt to lose his virginity.

The book attempts to - well not excuse Mark - but explain Mark's behavior as being caused by the incredible abuse he suffered in childhood causing him to be seriously messed up.  And there's no question Mark is fucked up - aside from his own identity issues, Mark was raised essentially to be a spy/assassin by an abusive "father" who did not attempt to instill in Mark any sort of morality.  But the book wants you, the reader, to root for Mark as a hero and I'm not sure this explanation really makes it better - it's not helped by Mark never really publicly atoning but instead being forgiven and by Mark's identity-searching being helped by him being picked up by a love interest. I did like Mark in the end, but had serious reservations which color this book.  It's only the fact that Mark is stopped from actually doing it that makes this book still overall enjoyable for me, but it still feels....wrong to root for him.

Miles incidentally has a similar opportunity later in the book and does kiss a similar clone, but he refuses to go further and is creeped out at the idea that one of our villains HAS gone further.  Of course, by contrast to Mark, Miles did grow up with parents who instilled a sense of morality in him and he did not suffer such abuse.

This isn't the first book in the series to feature rape/sexual abuse - Shards of Honor features it in the series' very first published book, and the character of Bothari shares similar issues to Mark.  The difference however, is that Bothari is never treated as a hero by the story whereas Mark is.

SPOILERS END HERE 

This book spends a lot of time on Jackson's Whole, which has been featured previously in small parts in The Vor Game and the novella "Labyrinth" and it's a fascinating contrast still to the rest of this universe.  Jackson's Whole is a combination of the standard SciFi criminal planet (think Star Wars' Nar Shaddaa) and a libertarian dream/nightmare, a world where the only thing that matters is money and self dealing.  The various barons from Labyrinth return here in a big way, and they're all menacingly creepy and excellent antagonists, although one of them relies on torture in a way that is deeply disturbing and may not be what readers are willing to read about, even if the book is good about not going too specific about what is happening.

In short, Mirror Dance would be an excellent addition to the Vorkosigan Saga, with some excellent parts and dialogue, but has some very problematic elements.  Fans of the Saga - and the Saga is generally well recommended for people who want lighter and more amusing scifi that still maintains a somewhat serious attitude and deals with some serious issues - may want to skip this one and rely on wikipedia instead, but those who are willing to deal with these issues may enjoy Mirror Dance.
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