Borders of Infinity

Product description

Fans of the bestselling Vorkosigan Saga can get this limited edition volume for a great low price. The series has won the Hugo and Nebula awards and has been called “space opera at its best” by “Publishers Weekly.”

From the Author

Author’s Note:
 

The Vorkosigan Saga Reading Order Debate: The Chef Recommends
 
 
Many pixels have been expended debating the ‘best’ order in which to read what have come to be known as the Vorkosigan Books, the Vorkosiverse, the Miles books, and other names, since I neglected to supply the series with a label myself.
  The debate now wrestles with some fourteen or so volumes and counting, and mainly revolves around publication order versus internal-chronological order.
  I favor internal chronological, with a few caveats.
 
I have always resisted numbering my volumes; partly because, in the early days, I thought the books were distinct enough; latterly because if I ever decided to drop in a prequel somewhere (which in fact I did most lately with
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance) it would upwhack the numbering system.
  Nevertheless, the books and stories do have a chronological order, if not a strict one.
 
It was always my intention to write each book as a stand-alone so that the reader could theoretically jump in anywhere, yes, with that book that’s in your hand
right now, don’t put it back on the shelf!
  While still somewhat true, as the series developed it acquired a number of sub-arcs, closely related tales that were richer for each other.
  I will list the sub-arcs, and then the books, and then the caveats.
 

Shards of Honor and
Barrayar.
  The first two books in the series proper, they detail the adventures of Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony and Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar.
 
Shards was my very first novel ever;
Barrayar was actually my eighth, but continues the tale the next day after the end of
Shards.
  For readers who want to be sure of beginning at the beginning, or who are very spoiler-sensitive, start with these two.
 

The Warrior’s Apprentice and
The Vor Game (with, perhaps, the novella “The Mountains of Mourning” tucked in between.)
 
The Warrior’s Apprentice introduces the character who became the series’ linchpin, Miles Vorkosigan; the first book tells how he created a space mercenary fleet by accident; the second how he fixed his mistakes from the first round.
Space opera and military-esque adventure (and a number of other things one can best discover for oneself),
The Warrior’s Apprentice makes another good place to jump into the series for readers who prefer a young male protagonist.
 
After that:
Brothers in Arms should be read before
Mirror Dance, and both, ideally, before
Memory.
 

Komarr makes another good alternate entry point for the series, picking up Miles’s second career at its start.
  It should be read before
A Civil Campaign.
 

Borders of Infinity, a collection of three of the five currently extant novellas, makes a good Miles Vorkosigan early-adventure sampler platter, I always thought, for readers who don’t want to commit themselves to length.
  (But it may make more sense if read after
The Warrior’s Apprentice.)
  Take care not to confuse the collection-as-a-whole with its title story, “The Borders of Infinity”.
 

Falling Free takes place 200 years earlier in the timeline and does not share settings or characters with the main body of the series.
  Most readers recommend picking up this story later.
It should likely be read before
Diplomatic Immunity, however, which revisits the “quaddies”, a bioengineered race of free fall dwellers, in Miles’s time.
 
The novels in the internal-chronological list below appear in italics; the novellas (officially defined as a story between 17,500 words and 40,000 words, though mine usually run 20k – 30k words) in quote marks.
 
 

Falling Free

Shards of Honor

Barrayar

The Warrior’s Apprentice
“The Mountains of Mourning”
“Weatherman”

The Vor Game

Cetaganda

Ethan of Athos