Shards of Honour (Vorkosigan Saga, #1) in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Jan 24, 2016 Christine H rated it liked it · review of another edition

Hmm, feeling very puzzled after finishing this up. Perhaps this is the best way to express my feelings: I think I just read three different stories: a short, fairly effective adventure-romance story, a less successful war and romance story, plus a rather disturbing inferred story that I guess the author never intended?

Spoiler tags from here on out. (view spoiler) Hmm, feeling very puzzled after finishing this up. Perhaps this is the best way to express my feelings: I think I just read three different stories: a short, fairly effective adventure-romance story, a less successful war and romance story, plus a rather disturbing inferred story that I guess the author never intended?

Spoiler tags from here on out. (view spoiler)[So first story - two people thrown together in a survival situation, who develop a relationship even though they hate each other at the beginning. Think anything from Enemy Mine to Romancing the Stone. It's pretty well done - you can see how each of them starts noticing qualities they admire in the other, and their predicament is intriguing. There is a bit of off-key telling rather than showing when Cordelia explicitly narrates how she is finding him attractive, but I suppose you could chalk that up to the author still getting her feet under her, as this was her first book.

Second story - here it gets a little weird and often contrived. There's a bad guy who literally idolizes the Marquis de Sade, and monologues his eeeevil plans up front. There's an escape that's dependent on a wildly implausible coincidence. Followed by an even more implausible coincidence. The character traits that made Vorkosigan appealing in the first act get muddied, even as Bujold seems to be trying to underline them. Nevertheless, there's a reveal that's quite satisfying and does set up a tension around "honor" and what it means, and it's still mostly a fun ride.

Then Cordelia goes home and the whole story goes rather bonkers, and kind of limps over the finish line.

Third story - I take it from a quick Google that Bujold intended this story to be face-value. It's a romance with a happy ending (with enough complications to set up the further story).

But from the time Cordelia is heading home until I turned the last page, I was increasingly suspicious. There seems to be plenty of textual support for the notion that Cordelia is a totally unreliable narrator, and all the facile, clunky, and convenient notes early in the story are tells that hint at her successful brainwashing.

We're told the Barrayar military can wipe memories and manufacture false memories to replace them. The Beta officials are convinced that Cordelia is a victim of this process, and perhaps that she's been made into a mole without her knowledge. Her behavior becomes more and more erratic, with symptoms that could be explained by paranoia and exhaustion, or could hint at something darker. Eventually she becomes so removed from herself that she almost murders her doctor, having strange, sadistic flashes of thought that could indicate a meditation on what war can do to good people, or could indicate programming by the enemy.

Taking the latter view makes some earlier "mistakes" and strange details fall into place - the weirdly emphatic internal monologue notes about her attraction, the sudden marriage proposal, the mustache-twirling villain, the convenient reappearance of known characters, the issue of where Vorkosigan got his intelligence, the "benevolent and self-sacrificing" reason why she must resist Betan psychological probing at all costs, and finally her sacrifice of her entire identity without a look backward.

Please tell me I'm not the only one seeing this? (hide spoiler)]

...more

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Aug 28, 2013 Christina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Lots of good stuff in this, and lots of hints of good stuff to come that made me want to continue reading the series (a proposition made more difficult by the next book being nowhere to be found in the entire BPL system (really, library, not even one stashed away in Roslindale?). There were a few moments that made me squirm: the "bad guy" characters were written in a way that made them impossible to take seriously - terrible dialogue, TERRIBLE dialogue, unclear motivations and even worse dialogu ...more

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Sep 09, 2013 Sarah rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, humble-bundles

I'm finding it hard to pin down a rating for this book. I'm going with 3 stars, although I think it's more like 3.5 if I could have half stars.

Let's start with the good... I found the writing style enjoyable and easy to read, so when I picked it up I tended to get through a good chunk at a time. The universe was interesting and engaging, and I liked that the author didn't spoon-feed everything to the reader. New things/concepts were often thrown in with minimal explanation, but the context was o I'm finding it hard to pin down a rating for this book. I'm going with 3 stars, although I think it's more like 3.5 if I could have half stars.

Let's start with the good... I found the writing style enjoyable and easy to read, so when I picked it up I tended to get through a good chunk at a time. The universe was interesting and engaging, and I liked that the author didn't spoon-feed everything to the reader. New things/concepts were often thrown in with minimal explanation, but the context was often enough so you understood what was being talked about. A deft authorial skill.

Despite my issue below with some aspects of Cordelia's character, I felt the characters were generally very well portrayed. Intricate and complex interactions or emotional journeys were powerfully portrayed without leaving you feeling like you'd been beaten over the head with it. To pick out a few highlights: (view spoiler)

On the downside I found the characterisation a little odd, especially of Cordelia. The way she acted often didn't gel for me with the background she was described as having. (view spoiler) This all struck me as inconsistent with what I'd interpreted as her background and character. Especially as all her conversations with and observations of Vorkosigan always come back to how different/more military Barrayaran* culture is.

*Note to the author - it took me many readings of the word Barrayaran to get my head around how many syllables it had and how it should probably be pronounced. Somehow I kept wanting to put an 'i' or 'y' after the final 'r', adding another syllable that isn't actually there (in fact I still do it in my head sometimes and keep tripping myself up on it). I read plenty of fantasy and sci-fi with weird names for everything so I don't generally have any trouble with "made up" names, but if one of the major races in your book is going to be mentioned by name repeatedly and it's that hard to get your head round, it might be worth reconsidering whether it's the right name. Or maybe that's just me! But it did pull me out of the story on plenty of occasions.

The development of the relationship between Cordelia and Vorkosigan just didn't quite sit right with me either. (view spoiler)

Finally, I felt a bit awash in the political and military wranglings both prior to the events of the book and those that happened during. I think the problem was a lot of exposition, the reader is told a lot of stuff (via Vorkosigan telling it to Cordelia) rather than being shown it. That info-dump style never sinks in with me, it tends to just slide off and I get lost in a mire of names and allegiances swimming round my ankles.

I dunno, somehow despite all the above niggles I did find it enjoyable in a pulpy kind of way and I may well put the next one on my speculative To Read list. ...more

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Apr 30, 2015 Nadine in NY Jones rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-and-sci-fi, sf-romance, spacey-space-future, audio, 70s-80s-sff

One of "The 23 Best Sci Fi novels by women" http://best-sci-fi-books.com/23-best-...

(Although I generally don't go in for space operas)

*****

Maybe I've heard too much about how awesome Bujold was, and got my expectations way too high, because this book was not all that. This was just So Massively Disappointing. It feels like a sorry product of its time, the story is full of unintentional sexism and gender rules, and it's almost apologetic about the commander being (gasp) a woman.

The opening chapt ...more

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