Mirror Dance

Mirror Dance is a science fiction novel by the author Lois McMaster Bujold.

A friend gave this to me to read after I had given him Use of Weapons by Banks, and again I'm positively surprised at how many excellent writers there are out there - all of which have written tons of books, just waiting for me to read them.

The front page of Mirror Dance has a banner on it that says "A Vorkosigan Adventure" and in the back of the book there's a time line that describes the life of Miles Vorkosigan and where various books fit into this time line, but it dosen't seem to be a serial and it's not necessary to read the books in any special order for them to make sense. But it has the background of a well thought out universe and it will probably have the added value of character recognition, when the other books are read. Mirror Dance is about Miles and his clone-brother Mark; Mark was the first born and Mark was secretly cloned from him to be an instrument against Miles's father. This plan fails and most of this book is about Mark and his struggle to find his own place in the universe. His has been trained as an assassin, with the sole purpose of killing Miles's father, but (for reasons I not going to releveal here) this isn't that interesting anymore.

Mirror Dance takes place in an universe with faster than light travel (FTL), private armies, one man planet wide dynasties, laser guns, mutants, clones and real heroes - all the stuff of a good space adventure, but this book manages to be a bit more. It's not deep, but the characters have depth and the writing is good and overall the book is a joy to read. I will be getting back to Bujold, first chance I get.