List $29.95

Written by Lois McMaster Bujold - Audio book performed by Grover Gardner - Unabridged Fiction - 1 MP3 COMPACT DISC

Publisher, Blackstone Audio (September 2005)

ALERT! YOUR CD PLAYER MUST BE MP3 COMPATIBLE! MP3 audiobooks on compact disc can be played on newer CD players that support MP3 technology and accept a 4.75" diameter disc, and on any personal computer that has Microsoft's Media Player or similar software.

This is the second book in the saga of the Vorkosigans and introduces Miles Vorkosigan.

Miles Vorkosigan makes his debut in this frenetic coming-of-age tale. At age seventeen, Miles, four-foot, nine inches tall, and brittle-boned, after great effort is allowed to take the entrance exams to the elite military academy; he passes the written but manages, through miscalculation in a moment of anger, to break both his legs on the obstacle course, washing out before he begins. His aged grandfather, General Piotr, gradually reconciled to his “mutant” grandson, dies in his sleep shortly after, for which Miles blames himself. Miles is sent to visit his grandmother Naismith on distant Beta Colony, accompanied by his bodyguard Sergeant Bothari and Bothari’s daughter Elena, with whom Miles is secretly in love. Elena’s missing mother is a mystery to them both.

On Beta Colony, Miles rescues a distraught jump ship pilot named Arde Mayhew, whose neural implants and ship are obsolete and slated for scrap, by buying the ship against a mortgage on some (unknown to the lenders) worthless radioactive land back on Barrayar. He also picks up a Barrayaran deserter, Baz Jesek. With this unlikely crew, he must now leverage a profitable cargo to cover his loan before the truth comes out. He finds it in a load of weapons its owner wants smuggled into a war zone, passes himself off to his new employer as a mercenary leader, and the lot of them take off in the creaky old ship for Tau Verde. At Tau Verde, Miles almost manages to talk their way through the enemy’s hired mercenary blockade when the enemy captain captures the blockading ship.

With this little convoy, they arrive at their destination, an asteroid-belt ore refinery, only to find it has been captured by the opposing side. Miles flimflams the mercenaries into fighting on his side and recaptures the station, but his cargo ship is damaged in the fight, trapping him in local space. His charades as “Admiral Naismith, Mercenary Leader” must continue, getting larger and more out of control on each round and the title’s pun on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice starts becoming apparent.

Recruiting for the imaginary, but becoming less so, Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, Baz and Arde pick up, among other persons, a beautiful Escobaran woman whom Miles figures out may be Elena’s lost mother, Elena being the product of a wartime romance. He’s half right. Elena was conceived in the long ago attack on Escobar but by rape and was taken back to Barrayar in a replicator. Confronted with Bothari, Elena’s mother (also named Elena) shoots him dead. Elena Bothari is shattered. Miles can do nothing and falls into a near fatal depression.

Kicked out of his funk by Elena, he comes up with one last desperate ploy against the opposition, parting the enemy mercenaries from their erstwhile employers by screwing up their pay by covert operations. The mercenaries come over to his side, and he finds himself, alarmingly, in command of a real fleet.

At this point, Miles’s cousin, Ivan Vorpatril, tall handsome, and feckless, arrives in search of him. Ivan had actually missed his ship, which disappeared en route, and Miles deduces sabotage. Miles’s father Aral is under political attack back home as garbled rumors of Miles’s mercenary operations trickle back. Miles must abandon his new fleet and dash back to Barrayar with Ivan to stop the plot. Elena meanwhile has fallen in love with the deserter, Baz Jesek. Heartbroken, Miles sees them married before he leaves.

Miles and Ivan arrive back at a session of the Council of Counts just in dramatic time to thwart the plot against Aral. The conspirators are stampeded into incriminating each other. The whole tale of Miles’s adventure comes out. It’s decided to admit Miles into the military academy after all, not least because it’s obviously too dangerous to leave him running around loose. Miles fulfills his promise to Bothari to bring him home for burial.

About the Author: LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD burst upon the science-fiction world in 1986 with Shards of Honor, the first of the Vorkosigan Saga novels. She has won the Hugo Award four times and the Nebula Award twice. The mother of two, she lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.