The Warrior's Apprentice

A Miles Vorkosigan Novel

By: Lois McMaster Bujold

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

Miles Vorkosigan makes his debut in this frenetic coming-of-age tale. At age 17, Miles is allowed to take the entrance exams to the elite military academy; he passes the written but manages, through miscalculation in a moment of anger, to break both his legs on the obstacle course, washing out before he begins. His aged grandfather dies in his sleep shortly after, for which Miles blames himself. Miles is sent to visit his grandmother Naismith on distant Beta Colony, accompanied by his bodyguard, Sergeant Bothari and Bothari's daughter, Elena. Miles passes himself off as a mercenary leader as he picks up a ragtag crew, and soon Miles' father Aral is under political attack back home as garbled rumors of Miles' mercenary operations trickle back. Miles must abandon his new fleet and dash back to Barrayar to stop the plot.

©1986 Lois McMaster Bujold (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"The pace is breathless, the characterization thoughtful and emotionally powerful....Highly recommended." (Booklist)

great characters to follow in a series

can't wait to audible next book... just ordered...start with Shards of Honor,...it's when main character parents meet...

A good port of entry

This is generally considered the best starting point for reading the Vorkosigan series. It introduces Miles Vokosigan. It is a very-good novel. It is not the best in the series.

I highly recommend the series. The people are real and I always anticipate the next book. A few are better than mediocre, most are good to very good, and a few are great!

A surprisingly strong sci-fi and love story

what a pleasant surprise this sci-fi holds up immensely well considering when it was written. is a wonderful well thought out world with good basis of technology which of course is very necessary for any sci-fi to hold up. but along with that it has undertones and undercurrents of service and love are equally as thought out and with an immense long-term payout.

not great, not terrible

This book really tries to do a historical fiction sort of thing, but it just doesn't do it well. I don't know if it's just written poorly or what, but it just doesn't work. All of the details for this book are put into historical figures, references, events, etc but nothing like really sticks. I don't know if it's just because the author tries to do too much too quickly or what. If this was a world I already knew and understood, then this book would have been better, but not great. The characters aren't very well fleshed out, which is forgivable for me. I know many people won't like Miles, but I thought he was okay and mostly consistent (except for one really strange part in the middle). He definitely gave me Tyrion Lannister vibes. The thing I think this book lacked the most was detail when it came to any of the space stuff. None of the battles were very exciting because almost no detail or time was spent on what was really happening or the imagery. Something really important happened in one of the battles, but because there was only a sentence spent on it, I missed it. I was really hoping for more detail in the space stuff. It felt like it wasn't in space, and the narrator made it feel old, but wasn't terrible.

worth it!

The warrior's Apprentice is the start of the Vorkosigan Saga in audio. Louis McMaster Bujold has created a fasinating new universe of diverse worlds and an endearing character in Miles Vorkosigan. I have listened to all the audio books in this series and found each to be very entertaining.Each book is complete, not like some series books where you have to wait for the next book to see what happens. Yet, I found I couldn't wait to listen to the next one. At first, I questioned the tone narrator, Grover Gardner used to portray Miles, but as you learn about Miles, Grover Gardner's narration is spot on; He truly is one of the great narrators. This is one of the best sci-fi series ever written.

With Thanks to John's review of Jan. 2009.

I can now follow the series. Thank You John.
What a fantastic listen! Grover Gardner reads well.
Lois McMaster Bujold has opened the galaxies, provided the stellar maps, terra formed the worlds,in process or complete, populated the systems and given us Miles. Rethink 'Mercenary'.
I listened, I laughed, I thought.
Don your 'Willing Suspension of Disbelief', take the jump through the wormhole and enjoy this young Warrior's initiation.
I will be listening to all the Miles stories I can. John gave the sequence in his review, so for me this is going to be one wild ride.

We finally meet Miles

In The Warrior’s Apprentice, we finally get to meet Miles Vorkosigan, one of the most famous characters in all of science fiction. He’s not the kind of hero you’d expect, but he’s tons of fun. Always trying to compensate for his deficiencies makes him little manic and that creates chaos….

The audio here is superb. I love Grover Gardner in this role.

Great Listening, the miles flew by

Had no idea what to expect, could not even recall why I downloaded it, but very glad I did. I didn't want my trip to end, I find the book and the narration so engrossing! Thanks so much for another great Audible experience! I'm hooked - I will now have to pick up all the rest of the titles in the series!

Coming of age story hero with physical challenges

If you could sum up The Warrior's Apprentice in three words, what would they be?

Witty, clever, entertaining

Who was your favorite character and why?

Myles, The young adult son of very talented powerful noble couple in a modern warrior culture and the main protagonist. Myles is both a smart young hero and a physically maimed person. The injury occurs because of an assassination attempt on Myles in utero because his legendary and heroic father was regent for the then newly appointed child emperor at the time. As far fetched as all this context seems, it is written believably and well. This tale is a great story in its own right but it also provides a great example of a hero who is a better, more creative person because of how he overcomes his physical differences and the deeply ingrained social predjudices his native culture hasagainst them. I want to stress that though the hero has physical difference and some negative bias he must overcome, the story is not focused on that part of the plot aspect, nor is it preachy when that facet of Myles factors in. It simply provides great backstory and impetus for Myles being a more interesting person that is believably more self aware than a character his age would be. It gives him more depth than simply explaining his good qualities as the product of his great genetics, terrific family upbringing and superior education. You are able to see that Myles was able to creatively game and ultimately excel in the very physically demanding warrior culture because he was always acutely aware of his special and separate status within it. More importantly it is an enriching factor that helps to set the stage for an extraordinary coming of age story.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Yes, the narration is good, not awesome but good. For me, it neither took away from Nor did it greatly add to the quality of story.

Any additional comments?

Classic soft scifi story that is a great adventure story that explores many human dilemmas in the quest setting. Great human insights into overcoming many real obstacles beyond the obvious ones that only apply to a fictional context and yet the story's are entertaining exciting and you do end up caring about the characters and get some good laughs too. Also it is worth noting that though this is a scifi story you see signs of the author's ability to write genuinely beautiful and lyrical prose not typically found in such faire. Overall this is a the fourth good book in a series of books about heroic men in a top noble family in futuristic Spartan global government, in an interstellar age. The fourth book is actually the first book that features Myles as the main protagonist in the family's saga and is as good a place to start as book one because this book reads the way Star Wars episode Three film played when it opened that saga up. Both start with a son's tale only to also have the first three books describe the full first person account of the mother and father in a very exciting fashion as well. Bottom line, the book is part of a beloved Science Fiction series and this book is one of the only other books in the series that acts as a good starting point for immersing yourself larger saga. The narrator is strong though not amazing. He is very good at delivering the humorous dialogues at points, but his voice is not like some other performances that seemed to actually elevate the material. That said, the narrator Grover Gardner certainly did not detract from the story either and is overall a good narrator. So If you're looking for a soft science fiction adventure book that's well written by an author who can both tell a good story as well as write beautiful prose, and you want that book to be a part of a much longer and strong epic narrative, then "The Warriors apprentice" by Lois McMaster Bujold, would be a very good audible book selection.

Plenty of Action, Roaring Humor, & dose of Drama

Would you consider the audio edition of The Warrior's Apprentice to be better than the print version?

I did not read the print version

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Warrior's Apprentice?

Well that would involve spoilers, wouldn't it? And who wants spoilers in a book review?

What does Grover Gardner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Grover was quite good. His voice is very sharp (for the sound engineers: his voice contains a lot of rich harmonics) and easy to understand. He was able to vocalize some of the speech antics in a way that I probably would not have done if I'd read the book.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Certainly it moved quickly enough and was tightly-written enough that one could listen to it in one sitting, but I also found that it had good stop points that let you put it down when necessary.

Any additional comments?

Warrior's Apprentice was far brighter and funnier than I expected based on the two previous books. Ms. Bujold's humor was brilliant at times and had me laughing out loud; it was even lightly peppered with literary and cultural references. Her writing is top notch. The author writes as tight as a drum for the most part. Her one weakness is excessive dialogue. Where some authors get lost in move-by-move battle sequences, Bujold instead gets deep into conversations between the characters that don't always move the story. The author has a particular fascination with relationships as the male and female characters always seem to be struggling to deal with the opposite gender, which is certainly different from what you get in most sci-fi / fantasy. At the same time she's deftly able to use character dialogue to further the world-building immersion that is so important to the genre.

Story-wise the characters experience an inordinate amount of luck and coincidence relative to effort, not too much that it detracted from the fun, but close. I would have loved to have seen a young Robert Downey Jr. or Brendon Fraser play Miles in a film. Highly recommended.