His PI ones are good, too. And he's not as depressed or invested in the "when you have to kill every motherfucker in the room," as Dennis Lehane. I love a tormented hero, you know I do, but yikes. It's weird to know how many parts a human body can make.

Excellently, I just yesterday caught up on a hell of a lot of posts in this thread, and made some notes while I was doing it, so went to the used bookstore today and picked up "Shards of Honor" (which I know I've read, but not in the last ten years), "Ill Wind", and "The Rift", along with a couple other things.

I'm sure this has come up umpteen times before, but...

I just reread the first of the Vorkosigan books last week (the two-in-one dealing with Cordelia and Aral) and I'm wanting to jump into the Miles saga, but I'm confused as where to start. Should I follow the listed order in the front of the book? It seems, from a few of the trade paperback compilations, that another order might be better? This is looking even more complicated than Firefly.

ION, today's Get Fuzzy made me chuckle: [link]

Ooh yeah, let me know too, on that--I just re-read "Shards of Honor", but am not sure where to go from there, after the other Cordelia one.

Bwah. From Shards of Honor, read Barrayar. After that, the sequence should be:

The Warrior's Apprentice
The Vor Game
Borders of Infinity
Cetaganda
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance
Memory
Komarr
A Civil Campaign
Diplomatic Immunity

Borders of Infinity is a short-story collection, which covers a time range between Warrior's Apprentice and Brothers in Arms. Ethan of Athos also follows The Vor Game but has no real relation to the rest of the series, and Miles doesn't even appear.

Under no circumstances should you read the sequence of novels that starts with Brothers in Arms out of order. There is a fairly large amount of HSQ that would be ruined if you were to do that.

Under no circumstances should you read the sequence of novels that starts with Brothers in Arms out of order.

This this this this this.

The early ones can be tricky to find on their own because they've been republished in a few different compilation volumes. Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game are in Young Miles, Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos are in Miles, Mystery and Mayhem, and Borders of Infinity, Brothers in Arms, and Mirror Dance are in Miles Errant. And I think there are a few extra short stories thrown into the comp books, too.

"Mountains of Mourning" in Borders of Infinity goes right after The Warrior's Apprentice. The Warrior's Apprentice, "Mountains of Mourning," and The Vor Game were put together into Young Miles. "Labyrinth" in Borders of Infinity and the framing device for the stories is set after Cetaganda. I think Ethan of Athos is really set after Cetaganda. Elli Quinn, who's a character in a number of the Miles books, is in Ethan of Athos, but it doesn't otherwise relate to the action in the series.

(edited because the italics were winning)

Excellent, thank you. Will start looking for those after I finish what I've got! Of course, some of the HSQ may be ruined already...sort of. I know I read SOME of the books about ten or twelve years ago. I know Shards of Honor and Barrayar were two of them, but what else I read? I have no idea. So we'll see if anything seems weirdly familiar. :)

Having just bought ALL the books, I'll say this: Several of the books individually are out of print, specifically, "Warrior's Apprentice", "Vor Game" and "Mirror Dance". I got WA and VG relatively cheaply from used book vendors online, but it'd have been cheaper just to buy "Young Miles". Also, "Mirror Dance" alone is deuced hard to find at a reasonable price (even through Bookfinder.com, where all available copies were $15+), so get "Miles Errant" instead. I actually had bought "Borders of Infinity" and "Brothers in Arms" *separately* before I realized this, so now I have two copies of those two books....

I'm starting to find the joys of this being a big, sprawling series. Haven't read "Ethan of Athos" yet, but when I got the book in mail, I did a Snoopy Dance when I realized that one of the main characters in that book was someone I already met (briefly) in "Warrior's Apprentice".

On a related note: That fantasy casting game thing? Ever since Shaye mentioned Hilary Swank as Bel, I have been unable to picture anyone else in the role. It's kind of disturbing, because everyone else's face remains blurry and amorphous, but there would Bel be, with that wide mouth and angular jaw and short brown hair, sharp as you please.

According to the BBC [link] a secret staircase matching the one described by Bronte has just been found in a house that was believed to have been part of the inspiration for Jane Eyre. Now if they find the bones of a demented relative ...