The Vor Game
by Lois McMaster Bujold
Summary
Miles Vorkosigan graduates from the Imperial Military Academy near the bottom of nothing, since he is four foot nine with brittle bones in a culture that kills visibly damaged infants, and is posted as far from the capital as the service can manage.
He lasts a few weeks before the base commander, who murders his own men through negligence, gives Miles the choice between silence and mutiny, and Miles chooses the third option, which is worse for everyone.
Exiled again into military intelligence, he is sent to find a missing person and ends up in the Hegen Hub, where four polities are converging on a war, his old mercenary fleet has acquired a new admiral who is trying to have him killed, and the young Emperor of Barrayar has run away from home and is working as a labourer under a false name.
Miles talks, improvises, lies brilliantly and nearly dies repeatedly, which is the formula of the series and is executed here at speed.
The Kyril Island section is the best part and reads almost as a standalone novella about institutional rot: a base where nobody is watching, a commander who has never been contradicted, and a young officer who has to decide what an order is worth.
Gregor, the Emperor, is the surprise. Removed from his throne and dropped among mercenaries who have no idea who he is, he turns out to be a genuinely interesting person rather than a plot token, and his friendship with Miles is the series' quiet backbone.
Around three hundred and fifty pages, comic, tightly plotted and only lightly concerned with plausibility.
It follows Brothers in Arms and is not the place to start. Best for readers who want a hero whose only real weapon is his mouth.
Historical Context & Significance
The Vor Game won the 1991 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the first of four Best Novel Hugos for Lois McMaster Bujold, who took the award again in 1992 for Barrayar, in 1995 for Mirror Dance and in 2004 for Paladin of Souls.
The Vorkosigan Saga was published as mass market paperback space adventure by Baen Books, a house not much attended to by literary critics, and accumulated its awards through the popular vote of Worldcon members rather than juries.
Miles was created from a specific decision. Bujold gave her hero a disability that his society considers grounds for infanticide, in a culture obsessed with physical perfection and military honour, and then made him funnier and more capable than everyone around him. She was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2020.