Lois McMaster Bujold

Cordelia Naismith, Betan Survey Captain, was expecting the unexpected: hexapods, floating creatures, odd parasites... She was not, however, expecting to find hostile humans on an uninhabited planet. And she wasn't really expecting to fall in love with a 40-plus barbarian known to cosmopolitan galactics as the Butcher of Komarr.--From source other than Library of Congress.

Shards of Honor

Vicky  Nuñez 

I saw someone's review of this series and immediately I was intrigued. And i am so happy I was. I was a little bit put off by the amount of books in the series, but thankfully I ignored it. And really by what I've heard they are different series with different characters all tied up in the same universe.

I started with Falling Free and although I wasn't super excited about it and it definitely gave me an idea of what Bujold's writing is like. 

Shards of Honor is about about two people from different planets and cultures and how they fall in love. Cordelia is from Beta Colony a desert planet that is very technologically advance and its people are huge about democracy. And Aral Vorkosigan who is from Barrayar, a planet obsess with violence and shady politics. Basically Romeo and Juliet during an interstellar war filled with cool weapons and people.

Bujold is an amazing worldbuilder giving you in-depth knowledge of several planets and their cultures without been overwhelming, instead teasingly letting you know there is so much more out there.

Gavin

Good lord, it’s Danielle Steele crossed with Gene Wolfe. Good Wolfe too. Military science fiction romance novel. And the lovers are enemies! Who repeatedly strategise against each other! What saves it is that they are dry as fuck.

  “I thought I was being subtle."
"Not noticeably.”

“It's too bad we couldn't meet again under more auspicious circumstances," she said carefully.
"There are no auspicious circumstances here.”

Cordelia is unbearably posh; I love it. Some of this is worthy of bloody Wodehouse:

  “I only hope I don't get myself locked in a padded cell. I'm a bit off cells at the moment”

One of the few portrayals of an important type: the strict honour-bound deontologist who lies and kills when they have to, when the world is at stake.

  “Suffering bastard."
"I thought you saw meaning in that sort of thing," said Vorkosigan.
"In the abstract. Most days it's just stumbling around in the dark with the rest of creation, smashing into things and wondering why it hurts.”

“I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days."
"Yes, I have often felt the pull of it myself.”

Cordelia is a master of the dark arts (“jesuitry” as Bujold calls it), fast talking conman logic.

On top of all that it's a moving and uncliched war story. Every bit of technology here has an emotional heft, from the nerve ray to the artificial wombs. 

Also it's a furious, vengeful Szaszian critique of medicalisation. (No one is worthy of this degree of power over another mind. We need to give it to someone, but no one’s worthy.)

  “Mehta seated herself on the bed, watching her specimen, perhaps, as it wriggled on its pin. Her triumph of logical deduction. Are you planning to write a paper on me, Mehta? wondered Cordelia dourly. Paper wraps stone.”

There are many atrocities, but all just offscreen like Reservoir Dogs. (Except one, the Szaszian one.)

  “He made me feel like I'd met the ultimate in evil. I don't think anything will really scare me, after him."
"Ges Vorrutyer? He was just a little villain. An old-fashioned craftsman, making crimes one-off. The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present—they are real”


  “From spaceman to caveman in three days," she meditated aloud. "How we imagine our civilization is in ourselves, when it's really in our things."
Vorkosigan glanced with a twisted smile at the carefully tended Dubauer. "You seem able to carry your civilization on the inside”

Bujold is telling me something new and important about duty. I don’t know what that something is, but it’s there.

  “I've always thought—tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune”


The real deal. Only make it past the cover and the first couple of pages, as your Mills and Boon alarm shrieks a false positive.

Ryan LaFerney

Holy Sandworms! Now THIS is what I call a proper space opera! Shards of Honor, the first published novel in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga is a masterpiece (and I hear it only gets better) albeit a strange one. It introduces the universe in which all the books in the series take place. But it couldn’t be less like a standard first novel in a series. The main character (of the series) isn’t even born and this story is about how his parents met. Major events happen which apparently do cast their shadow a long way, but here they are mostly interesting in the context of Aral and Cordelia, who are minor characters in most of the subsequent books. 

Reading this book felt more like reading a regency romance in space than it did a sci-fi book. I don't mean a bodice-ripping (space bodice!) romance, but a realistic, measured and mature romance (aka Jane Austen). There are no sex scenes here, just a character study of two people, each slowly being drawn into the other's orbit despite social (planetary) differences. Despite galactic war! Separated by wormholes, their love bound them together! This book literally read like Jane Austen's attempt at writing a Star Trek episode and I mean this as a HIGH compliment. Shards of Honor is simply an engrossing read.

This is partly because of our protagonist, Cordelia. The book is written in a very tight third person in Cordelia’s point of view, and Cordelia is a wonderful character. She’s empathic and practical and she’s from no-nonsense egalitarian Beta colony. She is the commander of the exploration starship Rene Magritte, when on a newly discovered planet she encounters the aggressive forces of Barrayar.
It is on this planet where she meets her future husband Aral Vorkosigan, the captain of a war cruiser from the imperialist planet of Barrayar. Cordelia's team has been attacked by the Barrayarans, and at first her reaction to Vorkosigan is naturally hostile. Barrayar and Beta are not, after all, in a state of war so far as she knows.

Cordelia soon learns that Vorkosigan is as much a victim as she is. A group of his men have mutinied; the idea was for Vorkosigan to get killed in the attack on the Betans. Vorkosigan, who already has a checkered reputation as a war criminal, has been a vocal opponent of a proposed Barrayaran invasion and annexation of the world of Escobar. His enemies, among whom is the prince, would like him out of the picture.

In the days Cordelia and Vorkosigan spend together finding their way to where they can be rescued, the two form a bond of mutual respect. Cordelia learns Vorkosigan's violent reputation is undeserved; that he is indeed a man of integrity, of honor, who treats even his enemies with respect. Vorkosigan even goes out of his way to help Cordelia care for one of her wounded crewmen, when most enemies would have abandoned or killed him outright. In the ensuing months, as the war between Barrayar and Escobar progresses and Beta is forced to choose sides, Cordelia finds her own sense of honor tested as she realizes that her government at home is every bit as willing to treat her like a pawn as is Vorkosigan's. And the political machinations on Barrayar go even further than she realized; the pretext for the invasion of Escobar hits much closer to home for Vorkosigan, in a way from which his honor may never recover.

Bujold's skills at characterization shine and propel the story as this is a primarily a character-driven story. Most sci-fi is plot-driven so its refreshing to read something so focused on the characters. The romance is handled with care. Bujold makes sure to keep it realistic and unsentimental. There is enough snarky and witty dialogue as well to please the biggest aficionado of Joss Whedon's oeuvre. 

Shards of Honor is a fine debut for Bujold and a damn fine space opera. Forget your laser swords and sandworms. Give me the Vorkosigan Saga!

Shards of Honor is followed by the Hugo-winning sequel, Barrayar, which I plan to read soon.

Sarah Escorsa

Actual rating: 2.75 stars. And a half.

💌 This non-review dedicated to my Dearest Wife Maria, who kinda sorta loves this series, and will most assuredly ask for divorce after she reads what follows.

Be glad and rejoice, my Comely Decapods, because I have neither the time nor the energy to write a Crappy Yet Never-Ending Non-Review (CYNENR™) for this book! Ergo, dramatically the crap I shall cut! Yay for you and stuff!



Damn, do you really have to be so enthusiastic about this? You could at least pretend you’re hopelessly crushed or something. What a bunch of ruthlessly heartless arthropods. I am deeply hurt. I think.

So. Here’s why this book didn’t exactly knock my pincers off:

① It is naught but romance in disguise. Ew and stuff. Silly naïve little me most sillily and naively expected this story to be a Super Extra Cool Space Opera Type Thingie (SECSOTT™) fraught with yummy battles, deliciously treacherous schemes and vile double-crossers aplenty, so when I got to 30% and the male MC asked his female counterpart to marry him (they’d known each other for a least a whole day, you see), I went all…

 

② It is somewhat boring as fish. A little. The book is mostly blah blah blah, and there is little violent, bloody action to be had. I don’t mind books with lots of dialogues but the two MCs are such headache-inducing chatterboxes they should come equipped with extra strength aspirin. Their endless conversations as they “trek across dangerous terrain” (dangerous according to the blurb, that is. It seems clear that whoever wrote it has never set foot in my Mariana Trench Dominion, and therefore has no bloody shrimping idea what “dangerous” really means) nearly killed my two little grey cells dead. Which would have been a shame because no grey cells = no crappy non-review = depressed Little Barnacles everywhere. Obviously. 

③ It was written in the late 1980s. And it shows. I have nothing against ancient old school stuff (being quite ancient old school myself) but there’s a difference between old school and outdated, methinks *pretends she can’t hear Maria scream her sexy little lungs out in the background* Okay, so the book is not BAD, but it’s not what you would call supremely exciting and original, either. Also, it’s kind of decaf. And sort of diet. And a little gluten-free, too. Let’s just say it’s not as fresh and thrilling as more recent SF series like Linesman and stuff.

④ It tackles the subject of rape much too casually for my taste, as if it was no big deal. I mean, given the lack of gravity with which the author deals with the issue, she might as well have been talking about growing anemic seaweed as a hobby or something. Also, there’s the slightly problematic issue of a baby being entrusted into the tender loving care of a psychotic ex-rapist. 



My thoughts exactly, dear little Gustav.

Okay, if I’m to be completely and most disgustingly honest here, there is one thing I did like about this book: its main protagonists are nearly as ancient old and wise as I am. And that, my Decapodic Arthropods, is most refreshing indeed. To bloody fishing hell with all those SF and Fantasy MCs who are so revoltingly young they are barely out their stinking diapers, I say! 

➽ And the moral of this Please Please Please Maria Don’t File for Divorce Just Yet I Promise I’ll Be Good From Now On and Will Read All the Books Right I’ll Even Give You A 24-Hour Pass to the High Security Harem If That’s What It Takes to Preserve Our Nefariously Blissful Union Crappy Non Review (PPPMDFfDJYIPIBGFNOaWRAtBRIEGYA24HPttHSHIFWITtPONBUCNR™) is: even though it seems I didn’t like this book very much (I think), I intend to continue with this series anyway. Because I’m bold and brave and audacious and adventurous and also a little masochistic like that. 

P.S. Yes, I was joking when I said I was going to cut the crap dramatically. A good thing you know just how full of fish I am, and know better than to trust me when I say stuff like that, right? Right (view spoiler)[
  muahahahahahaha
 (hide spoiler)].

· Book 4: Falling Free ★★

 

Pre-review nonsense

This book in a nutshell:



➽ Full Oh No Maria Will Never Forgive Me For Not Lurving This One She's Probably Filing For Divorce As We Speak Crappy Non Review (ONMWNFMFNLTOSPFFDAWSCNR™) to come.

P.S. Yes, I know this one has a 4.12 average star rating. So what? Is it my fault if you People of Despicable Book Taste (PoDBT™) always read stuff wrong?

Scordatura

Magnus Dahl

Terry Thomas

Alost

Bill Mazza

Amy Troschinetz

Isa s

Cordelia Naismith, Betan Survey Captain, was expecting the unexpected: hexapods, floating creatures, odd parasites ... She was not, however, expecting to find hostile humans on an uninhabited planet. And she wasn't really expecting to fall in love with a 40-plus barbarian known to cosmopolitan galactics as the Butcher of Komarr.--From source other than Library of Congress.

Shards of Honor

Reviews