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that was the proper medium for a particular thing that they had to write. Lewis further pointed out that only bad children's stories were read by children exclusively. Nevertheless many adult readers eschew all such works. Lois writes science fiction and fantasy, and so her talents are concealed from the many readers who similarly "don't read that sort of thing." We cannot avoid classifying literature into genres, but we should recognize that a single work can be classified in a number of different ways. Shards of Honor is science fiction. It is also a romance, a military adventure, a political novel, and a study of the morality of war. All her works cross genres in this way—all her novels are SF and fantasy but she has written romances, military adventures, espionage thrillers, mysteries, and a comedy of biology and manners. I should love to see her write a Western set on Barrayar—or Sergyar.

If I had to sum up Shards of Honor in a sentence I would recall a conversation between two minor characters at the very end of the book. In the aftermath of battle they are recovering frozen corpses, of both sides, from space, for burial. "Is it true," asks the pilot, "you guys call them corpse-sicles?" "Some do," the medtech replies. "I don't. I call them people." This is a book for people.

—

James M. Bryant

Midsomer Norton—England

August 1999 (amended October 2007)

"More Than the Sum of His Parts":

Foreword to The Warrior's Apprentice

Douglas Muir

An angry young man perches at the top of a wall. Should he climb carefully down, or save a few seconds by jumping? He makes his decision, he jumps . . . and we're off on a high-speed adventure that will take us through space battles and murder plots, unrequited love and bloody death, laugh-out-loud fun and hair-raising horror, and finally to the private audience chamber of the Emperor of Barrayar.

It's not giving too much away to say that Miles Vorkosigan has a great fall. Unlike Humpty Dumpty, Miles's problem is that he can't stop putting himself together again. Smuggler, would-be soldier, unrequited lover, con artist, space commander, entrepreneur . . . Miles Vorkosigan, you'll soon find, is a young man of parts. And his story is just as complex as he is, for The Warrior's Apprentice is at least three books folded into one.

Running up the middle of the book, as it were, is the central plotline, a story of high adventure and a young man's coming of age under several different sorts of fire. There are combats and ambushes, plots and pursuits, and a final twist that loops the story around to—almost—where it started. It's a ripping yarn, a classic example of the genre that was once known as "space opera" and now seems to be called "Military SF," and by itself it's a perfectly good reason to buy and read this book.

But there's so much more. Twining around this central plot, like vines up a tree or the twin serpents around a caduceus, are two other stories—one a comedy, and one a tragedy.

People tend to talk about Lois's complex and believable characters or her richly detailed worlds. Well, they are terrific characters and the world is so deep and so plausible that people have gotten lost in it. Lots of other people have already written essays on these things, and I just think it's really nifty the way she puts her plots together, the skeleton working smoothly under the skin. If you're one of those people who are just bored to tears by reading about plot structure, please, skip to the section marks. Or you could even go right ahead to the book—it's a very good book, and my feelings won't be hurt a bit. I might even talk about symbols, too, so don't say you haven't been warned.

The comedy lies in the story, as old as Aristophanes, of the little white lie that grows out of control, the plot that accelerates until the plotter is desperately scrambling to keep up with it. It's about good intentions gone wildly awry, salesmanship run out to its logical conclusion, and the dangers of picking up strays.

And it's funny—funny in all sorts of ways, from dry irony to wild slapstick.