- Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
- Publisher: Baen Books; Reprint edition (Aug 1 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0671578855
- ISBN-13: 978-0671578855
- Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 10.5 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 240 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (189 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #31,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
If you relish costume adventure in an intergalactic society starring strong, convincing male and female characters, you'll adore the Vorkosigan Series. If you haven't met Miles Vorkosigan, whose brilliance, manic energy, and unstoppable determination make him a larger-than-life hero despite his dwarfish stature, pick up Komarr and A Civil Campaign. Read them, and then go back and catch the previous nine books (10 if you count Ethan of Athos, which features not Miles but his partner, Ellie Quinn); or read the series in order, starting with the romance of Miles's parents in Shards of Honor.
A Civil Campaign opens where Komarr ends, with Miles determined to court Ekaterin. Unfortunately, his approach is described as "General Romeo Vorkosigan, the one-man strike force." By his father. The potential for comic disaster increases when Miles's clone brother Mark arrives. He's brought a brilliant but scatterbrained scientist who's created a bug producing a perfect food: bug butter. They set up a lab in the basement of Vorkosigan House. Mark has also found a nice Barrayaran girl--she even likes the bugs--with whom he got together on the sexually liberated world of Beta. But now Kareen's living at home. Naturally, disaster strikes, repeatedly and on all fronts.
Bujold unfolds her comedy of manners while continuing to explore familiar themes: the difficulties in becoming a strong adult woman in a patriarchy, the need for trust and honesty in relationships between the sexes, the difference between appearance and identity, and the impact of advanced biotechnologies on society. A Civil Campaign is a sure-fire Hugo and Nebula nominee, likely to add another statue to Bujold's already full shelf. It's charming, touching, and quite funny too. --Nona Vero --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Bujold dedicates her new novel to the Bront?s, Georgette Heyer and Dorothy Sayers, which gives a pretty good indication of the territory she's staked out in this well-done addition (after Komarr) to her popular Miles Vorkosigan series. Miles, forced by ill heath to give up his military career and having embarked on a second career as an Imperial Auditor (a kind of peripatetic judge and ambassador), is madly in love with the beautiful and brilliant Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Unfortunately, Ekaterin is the recent widow of a crooked government official whose death Miles holds himself partially responsible for. Their courtship is made even more difficult by a series of interrelated events. First, Emperor Gregor is getting married, and Miles, like everyone else in the government, is caught up in the complex social and diplomatic whirl surrounding the impending nuptials. Second, Miles's disaster-prone clone brother, Mark, has concocted a scheme to make a fortune marketing "butter bugs," unattractive, cockroachlike creatures that secrete a bland tofulike food product. Worse, Mark has set up his laboratory in Vorkosigan House, the bugs have gotten loose and Miles's parents, Lord Aral and Lady Cordelia, are due home any second. And then there's the dirty infighting going on in the Council of Counts over who should inherit two vacant districts, plus an attempt to frame Miles for murder. Through all these often hilarious and occasionally dangerous incidents, Miles strives heroically to keep his eye on the prizeAthe winning of Ekaterin's hand in marriage. Bujold successfully mixes quirky humor with just enough action, a dab of feminist social commentary and her usual superb character development in a sprightly SF romance that her many fans will find enormously satisfying. (Sept.) FYI: Bujold has won four Hugos and two Nebulas for books and stories in the Miles Vorkosigan series.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful novel, and a guide to it,
By Dr J. C. Lennard (Cambridge, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Civil Campaign (Mass Market Paperback)
I'd strongly endorse all the positive comments in the many reviews here -- *A Civil Campaign* is not just a good book but an excellent, funny, and very intelligent one, a great novelist at the top of her form and a lasting joy. It's also even cleverer and subtler in its generic engineering of SF and Regency romance than even those who love it sometimes appreciate, and to celebrate the Silver Centenary of the Vorkosiverse (1986-2011), the members of the official LMB mailing-list compiled and edited a *Reader's Companion to a Civil Campaign*, which has some introductory mini-essays on the novel's dedicatees (Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Heyer, and Sayers), and on Shakespeare, as intertexts, and on the subtitle ("A comedy of biology and manners"), as well as chapter-by-chapter annotations. There are also numerous quotations from posts LMB has made to the list and at Baen's Bar, about her art and craft of writing, and about details of characters and events, which will enrich anyone's reading not only of *A Civil Campaign* but of all her work.The *Reader's Companion to A Civil Campaign* is available as a free download from the Bujold Nexus, at [...]
5.0 out of 5 stars
Going on "A Civil Campaign",
By Gregory Bernard Banks ", author" (Atlanta area) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Civil Campaign (Mass Market Paperback)
For fans of Ms. Bujold in general, and her highly popular character Miles Vorkosigan in particular, this book takes her writing to a new level as we go on a highly entertaining adventure, following Miles Vorkosigan as he wages war against an enemy unlike any he's ever faced before--Love.For those unfamiliar with this series, "A Civil Campaign" is set on the planet Barrayar, a conservative, militaristic society with a turbulent past. It's slowly being transformed into a modern, liberal society, much of which is caused by Miles' mother, Cordelia Naismith, who comes from the highly liberal society of Beta Colony. The relationship that formed over thirty years ago between her and Miles' father, Aral Vorkosigan, the legendary war hero often referred to as "the Butcher of Komarr," resulted in an upheaval that over the years has opened Barrayar's once closed society, a transformation whose growing pains still show today. Miles Vorkosigan is a member of the powerful Vorkosigan family. He's a living example of Barrayar's violent history, having been poisoned while still in his mother's womb. The attack resulted in Miles being being born with many handicaps, including dwarfism and extremely brittle bones. Driven by the desire to live up to his father and grandfather's military legacy, Miles managed to over-achieve, using a combination of strategic brilliance, indomitable spirit, and more than a little luck to carve out his own legacy as a member of the Barrayan secret service. After an incredible galactic military career, Miles is discharged, having survived death itself, but resulting in crippling seizures, a result of being frozen and later revived. He then finds himself grounded on Barrayar, but still highly involved in the inner intrigues of the government, serving as a Lord Auditor, one of the legal justices of the Emperor. After his first task as Lord Auditor in the book Komarr, where he meets Ekaterin. Miles later returns home, and in A Civil Campaign, launches his greatest strategic assault ever, to win the love of the recently widowed Ekaterin, who's currently struggling to find her own identity after years with a domineering husband. Of course, nothing ever comes easy for Miles. In the course of trying to win Ekaterin's heart, they both become embroiled in political intrigue and a wild business venture by Miles' clone brother Mark, who's also pursuing a lady love of his own. This book has romance, politics, humor, and above all, characters that you'll fall in love with in just a few pages. The book stands well on it's own, but if you ever pick this one up, you'll find yourself in the bookstore looking for the rest of the series. I'm a long time reader of SF, and this is one of the most creative and fun series I've ever read. Give A Civil Campaign a try!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Read,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Civil Campaign (Mass Market Paperback)
A bit less action then the other books
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