Cordelia's Honour

[danieldwilliam]

I have recently finished Cordelia’s Honour, an omnibus of two Lois McMaster Bujold science fiction books. The omnibus contains Shards of Honour and Barrayar. These are the first two “space ship books” as MLW calls them that I’ve read in a while that actually involve space ships. Galaxy spanning space opera ahoy. I enjoyed both books very much. Both books are part of the LMB Vorkosigan series but as a pair they stand alone. The books are about the relationship Cordelia Naismith, an explorer and scientist from a Greenish social democracy and Aral Vorkosigan, an aristocratic politician and soldier from a militaristic feudal monarchy. They follow this relationship from their first meeting through their marriage and the birth of their child. I’d forgotten how much I like space opera. I like the clever, clever socio-economic stuff that crops up in near future sci-fi like Accelerando but I will always love a good romp with hyper drives and ion canons. I’d like to see something that contains them both but I guess I’ll have to write that myself. I think these are chronologically the first books in the Vorkosigan series and Shards of Honour was the first that LMB wrote. I found the books arch and sexy and full of ripping adventure and very enjoyable. I think these are also the first sci-fi books that I’ve read that touch on rape and rape culture, which makes them interesting. Very grateful to star_tourmaline for giving them to me for my birthday. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of them in order. .

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Okay, you are in business and can open this up to the rest of the world. (Virginia for one will be interested to read this.)

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Thanks for checking and thanks again, so very much for the books.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Delighted you liked them - I've been. Is the other one of any interest?

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I have not yet started on the other one yet. MLW appears to be holding it to ransom.

[coughingbear]

I love this series, so am pleased to hear you liked these. Barrayar in particular is one of my favourites, so that it took me a while to accept the shift of emphasis to Miles in Warrior's Apprentice. One of the things I like about Bujold is that things continue to have ramifications, sometimes several books later, while at the same time most of the books are very readable stand-alone adventure stories.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yes - I think I'm going to love it to. It's more humourous than Aubrey Maturin and much less smug than the Stainless Steel Rat.

I struggled slightly with Barrayar but that was a self-inflicted wound. I chose to read the section with a lot of introductions of characters and their political starting point in a time and place were I was likely to be interupted.

I was so enjoying the story that I was reading very very quickly and not paying as much attention to the language or character names as I ought.

As these characters were all Vors and therefore had very similar names I got a bit lost and had to go back 50 pages and re-read. Which was no hardship.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Hooray for Space Opera with Space Ships. That's the sort of thing my friend Mike Cobley has been doing for a couple of years. If you get a chance, pick one up. I'd be interested in a third party view on his stuff. And, for this one time, I'm taking my icon back.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Is this Mr Cobley a close friend of yours?

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

He was at one time - we don't see much of each other since he moved down the coast.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think I've read one of his books.

I wasn't a huge fan of it to be honest.