peregrine 's review for:

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold

5.0

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God, this book is really in the top tier of Vorkosigan stories. The structure is very elegant; it begins with a mirror and ends with a mirror, and the POV changes bounce back and forth not only character focus, but sense of self.

[Spoilers for Mirror Dance and vague spoilers for Memory:]

Spoiler

Mark and Miles don't both think of themselves by their names at the same time until after Mark kills Ryoval. Mark doesn't call himself Mark until the moment Miles dies; Miles doesn't regain his memories until Mark loses his sense of self at Ryoval's. They're both struggling to find themselves, aided and hampered by each's reflection in the other. Biology is an inescapable part of who you are, but your choices and life experiences matter just as much to your identity, and the book is full of clones wrangling with this, from the Duronas to the clone children to Miles and Mark themselves.

Both of them need to have their identities literally broken to pieces before they can start to figure out who they truly are; for Mark, this process begins with Ryoval's and progresses offscreen later in the series with Lots And Lots Of Therapy. For Miles, this is only the prequel, leading into and heavily foreshadowing the events of Memory.

This is the darkest book in the series, and also starts a run of books that are the series' peak in quality (Memory, Komarr, and A Civil Campaign.) I love Miles and Mark both and I feel like I can never get enough of reading about both of them.