Vorkosigan Saga: where to start, with 9 award-recognized books
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga follows Miles Vorkosigan, a brilliant, fragile and endlessly improvising nobleman, and his family. The series can be read in several orders; here is the simplest way in.
If you read just one: The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold, because it shows Miles at his best and works as a first book.
Start here
1. Barrayar
Won the Hugo and Locus Awards; finalist for the Nebula Award (1992) ·
Miles’s mother, Cordelia, survives a civil war on her husband’s militaristic home world.
Good to know: Follows Shards of Honor, which is not listed here because it was not an award finalist.
2. The Mountains of Mourning
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards; finalist for the Locus Award (1990) ·
Young Miles investigates a crime in a remote mountain village. Short and moving.
3. The Vor Game
Won the Hugo Award; finalist for the Locus Award (1991) ·
Miles bluffs and improvises through a military disaster.
The heart of the series
4. Cetaganda
Finalist for the Locus Award (1997) ·
Miles and his cousin Ivan solve a mystery at an alien empire’s imperial funeral.
5. Mirror Dance
Won the Hugo and Locus Awards (1995) ·
Miles’s clone brother, Mark, sets out on a mission of his own.
Good to know: Some of the darkest material in the series.
6. Memory
Finalist for the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1997–1998) ·
Miles’s career collapses, and he has to work out who he is without it.
7. A Civil Campaign
Finalist for the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (2000–2001) ·
A comedy of manners as Miles tries, badly, to court the woman he loves.
Side stories
8. Falling Free
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo Award (1989) ·
Two centuries before Miles, an engineer helps genetically engineered four-armed workers escape the company that owns them.
Good to know: Stands alone.
9. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
Finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards (2013) ·
Miles’s cousin Ivan stumbles into a romantic comedy and a heist.
How we chose
Every book in this guide won or was a finalist for at least one of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus or Arthur C. Clarke awards. Each book page lists its full award history with sources. Page counts come from English print editions and vary by edition. 9 books in all.