Reading: Mirror Dance

[white_hart]

After not really enjoying Brothers in Arms it has taken me a while to get back to reading Bujold. I wasn't actually planning to read Mirror Dance, but on Monday I discovered while on the bus to work that after nerving myself up to read Children of Time despite it being about spiders I didn't actually own it, and I couldn't just buy a copy there and then as my kindle is wifi-only and doesn't like eduroam, so I wouldn't have been able to download it until I got home. I was definitely in the mood for space opera, and trying to look up synposes and decide on which of the completely new to me books on my kindle I should go for seemed like too much work for 6:20 on a Monday morning, so picking up the next in a series seemed like the logical thing to do.

Mirror Dance is set a couple of years after Brothers in Arms; it alternates point of view between Miles and his brother Mark, although Miles is missing in action (literally) for a lot of the book. I struggled a bit to get into it, and actually nearly abandoned it about a fifth of the way through, at which point it had been pretty much all action sequences and bad decisions and things going terribly wrong and I wasn't sure if I wanted to carry on. I even picked up another book instead, but went back to Mirror Dance later that day, and by yesterday I found that I was completely absorbed by it and read about the last three-quarters of the book in two sittings.

I think, really, that I'd been coming at the book the wrong way. The early Miles books had set me up to expect a space-opera romp: fun, some mild peril, possibly some unpleasant-but-not-terminal violence and the regrettable deaths of a few redshirts. Mirror Dance is not a space opera romp; it's a complicated, serious novel about identity and consequences which just happens to be set in space (and on non-Earth planets). I was really struck by how much the structure and imagery echoes the mirror theme; there are lots of actual mirrors, and lots of moments which mirror back thoughts and actions from earlier in the novel (and I think from earlier books in the series, too - the central section seemed to echo Barrayar in places), which made me wish I had a paper copy and not a kindle edition so I could easily flick back and forth to check. I liked it a lot, but it wasn't the uncomplicated read I was expecting, and I think I'll need to approach the later books in a slightly different frame of mind if I want to get the most out of them.

Comments

[mountainkiss]

I read this book a lot but I always start it at the point when Mark arrives on Barrayar. The early stuff is what I now call “too old for me”, a description conned from a Weezie.

[oracne]

I think Mirror Dance was a leap forward for Bujold.

[white_hart]

The Barrayar section definitely feels much lighter than the Jackson's Whole bits.

[mountainkiss]

I agree and also, as you say, has captivating themes.

[white_hart]

Looking at the publication dates, instead of internal chronological order, explains the very uneven feel of the books up to this point. I see that this one was next after Barrayar, which I think is similar in terms of complexity, though that was the second one I read. (The return of at least some of the focus to Cordelia also seems to link the two.)

[alithea]

The next one, Memory, is also definitely not a romp but then they get lighter again and A Civil Campaign is a homage to her love of Georgian romances.

[white_hart]

I am a bit nervous about A Civil Campaign, because I don't get on with romance in general and the Aral/Cordelia romance in Shards of Honour is the reason it took me a long time and multiple tries to get into the series...

[clanwilliam]

When I first read A Civil Campaign, I’d borrowed a friend’s copy. They all waited around at Reading train station until I finished it. It also has a massive empathy embarassment scene that hits every button for those of us who suffer from it and that scene still manages to be hilarious. And you will have a crush on several Koudelka siblings by the end. As well as Aunt Alys.

[antisoppist]

A Civil Campaign has lots of excellent people in it and is worth it for that but hell none of them are Miles trying to do relationships. And after the first reading, I tend to skip That Bit.

[antisoppist]

I like Mirror Dance, but my reading order was weird because The Warrior's Apprentice was too much young bouncy Miles and spaceships and I stopped for 2 years until I happened to find Komarr in a charity shop, then read Civil Campaign and then worked backwards in loops of about three books at a time, finally ending with WA, which I could cope with by then in the light of the others. So Mirror Dance for me was more like the later ones. I can see it's a jump if you're coming at it in the other direction like you're supposed to.

novel about identity and consequences which just happens to be set in space
That's a good distinction. I wasn't a SF reader when I was young apart from Wyndham and LeGuin, which are much more books about something else that happen to be set in space/the future/somewhere else.

[white_hart]

I think all the really good SFF is basically novels about Something which happen to be set in space/have dragons/etc. Which doesn't mean that there isn't also room for the fluffy stuff.

When I read The Warrior's Apprentice I thought Miles was like Francis Crawford in space, and the first quarter of Mirror Dance actually felt a lot like the bits of Dunnett I felt I wanted to read with my eyes shut (if you see what I mean). Which is not something I dislike, but just wasn't what I was expecting!

[antisoppist]

I thought Miles was like Francis Crawford in space
That is exactly why I can't stand him in it :-) Ages ago ankaret said young Miles might give me "an attack of the Lymonds", by which she means "run away screaming after one chapter" and she was very right. It is good for novelists that we are all different.

[alithea]

It's a Mark centred romance, I suspect you'll have less issues with it than Aral/Cordelia. Although I loved Aral/Cordelia so am not the best judge... But they do meet under much more equal terms.

[alithea]

Lymond is a good comparison actually. The series has the same thing for me of the main character growing on me, but reading them for the secondary characters. And yes, I believe Bujold is another Dunnett fan.

[white_hart]

I love both Aral and Cordelia (especially Cordelia) as people, and I like their relationship once it’s established. I just didn’t like their initial romance at all!

[perennialanna]

I am fairly sure I emailed caulkhead halfway through my first reading of The Warrior's Appearance saying pretty much "This is Francis Crawford in space and I have to keep putting my hands over my eyes to read it".

See also the bomb on the tube train episode of Sherlock. That was Francis Crawford in a fancy coat.

[sam_t]

I came to the Vorkosigans after reading AJ Hall's fanfic, so for me quite a lot of the series suffers from Not Enough Ekaterin, or at any rate not enough humour plus emotional complexity. If I'm re-reading, I tend to start at Mirror Dance, or maybe the latter half of Brothers in Arms.

I'm starting to suspect I may want to stay away from Francis Crawford, if he's like early Miles.