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Borders of Infinity  By  cover art

Borders of Infinity

By: Lois McMaster Bujold
Narrated by: Grover Gardner
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Publisher's summary

The popular adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, a clever and outlandish science fiction hero for the modern era, continue in these three tales. In The Mountains of Mourning, Miles is dispatched to a back-country region of Barrayar, where he must act as detective, judge, and executioner in a controversial murder case.

In Labyrinth, Miles adopts his alternate persona as Dendarii Mercenary Admiral Naismith for an undercover mission to rescue an important research geneticist from Jackson’s Whole. And in the title story, Miles infiltrates an escape-proof Cetagandan POW camp and plays hero to the most deeply distressed damsel of his colorful career.

Lois McMaster Bujold burst upon the science fiction world in 1986 with Shards of Honor, the first of the Vorkosigan Saga novels. She has won the Hugo Award four times and the Nebula Award twice. The mother of two, she lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Hi-fi sci-fi: listen to more in the Vorkosigan saga.
©1989, 2007 Lois McMaster Bujold (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Essential for all sf collections.” (Library Journal)

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From the furthest reaches of space to the microbiology of pandemics and gene manipulation, to the future implications of technology for societies similar to our own, science fiction is a fascinating genre that offers listeners a wide variety of ways to access its themes. In looking for the best sci-fi audiobook series, it can be difficult to know where to start due to the genre's sheer number of iterations and variations. But what these series have in common is an acute devotion to telling a good story, as well as fully building out the worlds therein. The writing is enhanced by the creative and impassioned narration.

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Book Order is Important!

Read this book before "Brothers in Arms!"

This a collection of three shorter stories originally published separately. To make them look like a more coherent collection, the stories are presented as "reports" Miles is giving to his IMPSEC superior.

In the grander scheme of things "Mountains of Mourning" takes place just after "Warrior's Apprentice." While fans will be interested (and if you've gotten this far, you're a fan), this is a story you can go back and catch a few books down the road. It was originally in limited publication and wasn't designed to leave anyone behind who hadn't read it.

Both "Labyrinth" and the title story, "Borders of Infinity," are stories where Miles is the main character and take place after "Cetaganda." These two stories both contain material I would have been upset to have missed if I hadn't read them in the proper order! The former introduces characters and background information that are very important to later books, and the later feeds directly into the next book in the storyline, "Brothers in Arms."

So I repeat, read this collection just before reading "Brothers in Arms!" Audible's series list for this one is a bit off, so don't be lead astray!

And as you can probably guess, I'm a HUGE fan. Love the series, love the author, and the narrator's slightly old-timey delivery is the perfect backdrop for a series that turns the early sci-fi themes on their ears.

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37 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Great Miles!

Perhaps the greatest joy I've had from joining Audible t is finding this series based on reader recommendations. I started with the Shards of Honor/Barrayar duology, finding both so good that I was afraid the series would inevitably go downhill once Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan ceded center stage. But no... enter their son Miles!

Miles is not the physically dominant fighter so often cast in the hero role. Far from it, he has severe physical disabilities. Resigned (maybe? sort of?) to his limitations, he discovers early in life that when you can't beat up on 'em, (1) charm them and (2) outsmart them. He proceeds to do both throughout these wonderful books, with an added dimension of compassion and a wry, witty humor unique in the science fiction I've read.

I'm more than halfway through the series and already dreading the day I finish and won't be able to experience them again for the first time.

This collection contains three novellas. Fortunately, the author's interview on Amazon ("The Chef Recommends") gives the order in which they fit into the longer sequence of novels. "Mountains of Mourning" immediately follows "The Warrior's Apprentice." It is a moving story that is more murder mystery than science fiction, recounting events that have a deep affect on Miles as he begins his career as a Vorlord and military commander.

"The Labyrinth" and the title story "Borders of Infinity" (along with "Ethan of Athos," a fun novel that is part of the Vorkosiverse but doesn't feature Miles) fit in between "Cetaganda" and "Brothers in Arms." These three form a kind of bridge between the first three Miles books and the next "trilogy" (Brothers in Arms, Mirror Dance, and Memory). I haven't gotten to "Komarr" yet but gather from Bujold's notes that it moves Miles into a new phase of his career.

The icing on the cake is Grover Gardner's narration, which ranks at the very top of what I've listened to (along with Simon Vance's work on the Aubrey/Maturin novels, Davina Porter's "Outlander" series, and Simon Jones's voicing of the "Bartemeus" fantasies).

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Even better than expected

Thank you Lois, you sounded like Churchill in some of Miles pep talks filled with fire and physicological wisdom. Expected some loose ends of incomplete stories but all three stories were rich, powerful Miles adventures up to your usual standards.Really enjoyed it. P.S. The book is not 7 hours but 9 1/2 hrs. of great reading

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    5 out of 5 stars

Funny, fun, interesting???

Really pleasant characters in a fleshed out universe. One of the best, highly prolific sci-fi writers I have found. These books are about people (human and otherwise) and science-fiction is only a scaffolding for the issues and actions of the characters. So far these have been quite consistently good. I really should give this 4 stars not 5 but I just can't stop myself...

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    5 out of 5 stars

Answers a couple of nagging questions

While the narrative trick that binds these three stories together seems a bit forced, the stories themselves are natural and necessary components in the development of Miles' character. You will love the story behind how the loveable Taura became a part of the Dendari Mercenaries. And, unless you are a heartless bastard, you will need to have a box of tissue beside you as you finish the title story.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Finally

Finally, some of the stories alluded to in many of LMB's stories told in full. As usual characters that you must love, Narration great!
Not a must in enjoying the series, but a treat to have some new adventures with miles before he became the Imperial Auditor!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A must

I really loved this book when I first read it, and still loved it after re-listening to it. Actually, listening to someone reading it adds a new depth to the story of Miles and I enjoyed it a lot. All the stories in this collection are not exactly "happy" stories, but leave you with something that makes you contemplate on the importance of "how" you live your life...

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

not as good

This book is not as compelling as others by Lois McMaster Bujold. It is the forth in the series (fifth if you count the prequel "Falling Free" that takes place in the same universe hundreds of years earlier), and the second one that centers around the character of Miles Vorkosigan. But it is really just a collection of three short stories about this character, with a few scenes to tie them together. It was interesting only if you care about the Vokosigan character from the last book: "The Warrior's Apprentice." I highly recommend the first two books in the series though: "Shards of Honor" and "Barrayar."

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Three Strong Novellas, One Weak Frame Story

The Borders of Infinity (1989) collects three novellas from Miles Vorkosigan's early days, connecting them via a framing 'story,' in which Miles is recovering from one of his many surgeries to repair/replace his brittle broken bones, this time in both his arms. Simon Illyan, chief of Barrayaran Imperial Security, visits Miles to get to the bottom of some dodgy accounting for some of Miles' covert operations with the Dendari Mercenaries, for a political enemy of Aral Vorkosigan would like to get at the great man through his son and is working to reveal Miles to be an embezzler of Imperial money. The three novellas, then, are supposedly Miles' explanations of unexplained cost overruns.

The first novella is the painful, moving The Mountains of Mourning (1989). Here 20-year-old Miles is a new ensign on leave after graduating from the Imperial Service Academy when he's assigned by his Count father to solve a case of infanticide and then to administer justice in a backwater hill village of his family district. No matter how difficult, Miles must do the right thing, for his district, for his empire, for his father--and for the dead baby. And it is a personal case because baby Raina's neck was broken for being a 'mutant' (whose 'mutation' was really only a treatable harelip), while Miles is viewed as a 'mutant' by too many Barrayarans (even his own grandfather tried to kill him when he was a baby). Miles finds his raison d'etre: 'Peace to you, small lady, he thought to Raina. You've won a twisted poor modern knight, to wear your favor on his sleeve. But it's a twisted poor world we were both born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation. At least I won't just tilt at windmills for you. I'll send in sappers to mine the twirling suckers, and blast them into the sky.'

Labyrinth (1989), the second novella, presents Miles at 23 in his alter-ego as Admiral Naismith, the leader of the Dendarii Mercenaries (covertly working for the Barrayaran Empire as Miles is really a Lieutenant in Imperial Security). The Dendarii have come to Jackson's Whole, the planet run by crime syndicate Houses (capitalism on steroids). The mission is simple: buy weapons from House Fell, pick up a geneticist defector from House Bharaputra, and quietly leave. Miles being Miles, things get complicated, involving House Ryoval (infamous for producing exotic sex slaves), a quaddie (four-armed) musician, a genetically engineered giant fanged super soldier (who's also a lonely, insecure 16-year-old girl), and Miles' own conflicting senses of chivalry and pragmatics and loyalties to his mercenaries and to his Emperor. Plenty of neat lines like 'God. He remembered sixteen. Sex-obsessed and dying inside every minute.' Plenty of compelling character development like Miles and Taura proving their humanity to each other. My only complaint is that Bujold does the hermaphrodite Dendari Captain Bel Thorne a disservice by--despite the neutral pronoun 'it' used to refer to Bel--making it male when attracted to a woman and female when attracted to a man rather than writing her as an ever exotic 'it' composed equally of both genders or partaking of neither.

In the last novella, The Borders of Infinity (1987), young Miles is still living his dual life as Barrayaran ImpSec Lieutenant and Dendarii Admiral Naismith when, in a rather too Captain Kirk-like way he has himself inserted alone into a hellish POW prison camp run by Cetagandans. His mission is to arrange the rescue of a war-hero human colonel, but the prison is inside a hermetically sealed and impermeable dome, the 10,214 prisoners are demoralized and disorganized, and immediately upon entry Miles is beaten and stripped naked by camp thugs. Now he must execute the mission with only his mind and charisma--and an imaginary hat to hide his privates with when dealing with female prisoners! This one is great up till the climax, which could use more cat and mouse between Miles and the Cetagandan wardens and less deus ex machina. The novella does have plenty of neat lines, like 'When you can see the color of the [imaginary hat's] feathers. . . . you'll also understand how you can expand your borders to infinity.'

Audiobook reader Grover Gardner is his usual appealing, professional, Vorkosigan self here. Perfect.

About that frame 'story' . . . it's unnecessary and contrived and skimpy. Nothing really happens in it apart from Miles supposedly telling Simon the three novellas (so as to explain the suspicious accounting) and talking a bit with his mother. I can't believe that formidable ImpSec head Simon wouldn't already have known the complete details by now. And in the first story Miles used his own graduation money instead of Empire funds, so it would seem to have no connection with the accounting business anyway. Furthermore, though Miles is supposedly telling Simon what happened in the three cases, the stories are narrated in the third person, albeit limited to his point of view, because that's how Bujold wrote them before, apparently, thinking to publish them together in this edition.

Because the three stories are fine early Miles fare, I recommend them to fans of Bujold's series--but I wish she'd published them together without the frame.

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Borders of Infinity

Borders of Infinity is a great stand alone novel for the adventures of Miles Vorkosigan during his early IMSEC missions. As usual, Lois McMaster Bujold is at her best in the world of Barrayar. After enjoying these Heinleinesque adventures of the hyperactive muteeLord Miles, I strongly
recomend them as soon to be Science Fiction Classics, much in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein and Hal Clement!

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