The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold

I pulled this off the shelf to loan it to a former student - and started reading. Such fun! Miles is one of the most entertaining characters I've ever encountered. I hope the student likes it. Anyway I had to borrow someone else's copy to keep reading - and the ended up putting it on my Kindle anyway.

At the end of the book, Bujold has an article putting the Vorkosigan books into their internal chronology - which has little to do with publication order. Going back to the beginning would mean rereading the double book Cordelia's Honor which consists of Shards of Honor and Barrayar. It looks like quite a bit of her stuff is available for Kindle now - the catch (and I guess it isn't a huge catch) is that Cordelia's Honor is only available for Kindle as the two separate short books. A sort of one for the price of two deal.

In The Vor Game, Miles really grows up, I think, and the contrast between his fragile body and his unflinching character becomes more than a matter of childish "I'll show them." He (and Emperor Gregor) face the facts of their inherited responsibilities and the responsibilities that they take on themselves. Each finds his own way of dealing with the knowledge that people live and die because of them - because of who they were born and what they have become and the decisions they make.