Book Note: Lois McMaster Bujold, Brothers In Arms

This is book 4 of the "Miles Vorkosigan" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

This is where Mark pops up. Mark Vorkosigan. Miles' brother. Clone-brother, that is. Created by an enemy, and intended eventually to assassinate Aral. You thought you'd seen sibling rivalry?

It's also where Duv Galeni is introduced; he's working in the embassy on Earth at the moment. So is Ivan. Miles ends up there trying to get paid for a Dendari mission.

It's Duv's father who had Mark created. Duv's father isn't, actually, a terribly sensible or nice person.

Much confusion ensues. Miles has already had a certain amount of trouble keeping people from associating Admiral Naismith (his alias in the Dendari) with himself; there aren't that many 4'9" hunchbacks running around the galaxy. He leaps on the clone idea with cries of joy. It starts to look to some people like there are three of him (which they mostly consider an extreme surplus).

Unfortunately, this book propagates the error that clones would have identical fingerprints. Identical twins don't. (Also retina patterns, and I think those also differ in natural clones.)