Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Hardcover, 422 pages

English language

Published Nov. 6, 2012 by Baen Books, Distributed by Simon & Schuster.

ISBN:
978-1-4516-3845-5
Copied ISBN!
Goodreads:
12998057

View on OpenLibrary

View on Inventaire

4 stars (3 reviews)

"Book Fourteen in the best-selling Vorkosigan series. Captain Ivan Vorpatril is happy with his relatively uneventful bachelor's life of a staff officer to a Barrayaran admiral. Ivan, cousin to Imperial troubleshooter Miles Vorkosigan, is not far down the hereditary list for the emperorship. Thankfully, new heirs have directed that headache elsewhere, leaving Ivan to enjoy his life on Komarr, far from the Byzantine court politics of his home system. But when an old friend in Barrayaran intelligence asks Ivan to protect an attractive young woman who may be on the hit list of a criminal syndicate, Ivan's chivalrous nature takes over. It seems danger and adventure have once more found Captain Vorpatril. Tej Arqua and her half-sister and servant Rish are fleeing the violent overthrow of their clan on free-for-all planet Jackson's Whole. Now it seems Tej may possess a hidden secret of which even she may not be aware. …

10 editions

A new Vor in town?

4 stars

I was torn between three and four stars. Finally ended up giving four, since I honestly enjoyed the book so much three would have just been being a sourpuss. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance is a lot of fun.

It has its problems - the middle part sags, and I'd rather have been spared the Vorkosigan's Greatest Hits section, where characters from previous books are paraded out just so that the present protagonists can gawk at the awesome stuff they've done. Problem is, the reader already knows all this, so the whole section comes off a bit as "you thought this was great the first time, so let's go over it again". Which is really unnecessary. As much as I love Miles Vorkosigan - particularily the young, over-energetic, forward-momentum-and-damn-the-consequences Miles, his cameo here doesn't add anything to the book.

But enough grumbling. Ivan Vorpatril makes a nice protagonist, and the twin plots …

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

4 stars

"I, Ivan Xav Vorpatril, ..., do take thee, uh ... what did you say your name was, again?"

If I had to rank books in this series by their comedy, this book would be up there right behind A Civil Campaign. Ivan Vorpatril has always had a long series of girlfriends but has dodged marriage as much as he's dodged extra work. The plot hook here is that in an attempt to save two women who are on the run from bounty hunters, immigration, and the local police, Ivan comes up with the idea to marry one of them in a rush (temporarily, of course!). Comedy ensues.

I love that there's a lot of ambiguity about how everybody else reacts to this "temporary" marriage. You get the feeling that everyone is sort of raising their eyebrow at Ivan, but also taking it seriously and are waiting for Ivan to come …

avatar for dare

rated it

4 stars

Subjects

  • Miles Vorkosigan (Fictitious character)
  • Alliances
  • FICTION / Science Fiction / General
  • Fiction
  • FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera
  • FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure