Welcome to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Each month, we invite you to join us in reading a book that is voted on by YOU, our readers. Following a short review, please feel free to discuss the book in the comments!
Shards of Honor (1986)
Written by: Lois McMaster Bujold Genre: Science Fiction Pages: 255 (paperback)
Publisher: Baen
Premise:
When Cordelia Naismith and her survey crew are attacked by a renegade group from Barrayar, she is taken prisoner by Aral Vorkosigan, commander of the Barrayan ship that has been taken over by an ambitious and ruthless crew member. Aral and Cordelia survive countless mishaps while their mutual admiration and even stronger feelings emerge. A science fiction romance by a Hugo and Nebula Award winning master. Bujold’s SHARDS OF HONOR is the first book in her SF universe to feature the Vorkosigan clan, followed by the Hugo award-winning BARRAYAR. The Nebula award-winning FALLING FREE precedes it by internal chronology in the same future history.
Spoilers, of course
Discussion: This book has been on my radar for so long that I can’t remember the first person who recommended it to me. I feel like I’ve started a lot of book club discussions this way, but I have no excuse for why I haven’t read this one yet.
Sometimes these posts are harder when I don’t have anything to complain about, because I’m not really trying to convince anyone to agree a particular thing was bad. So here’s where we are right now: I liked it a lot and have very few complaints.
I love a good romance that starts out the way this one does, Romeo and Juliet on opposite sides of a war but without the tragedy at the end. Aral Vorkosigan was an interesting character to get to know, especially as so many details of his life were doled out so sparingly, as if they were tales about someone else’s life. I loved the dichotomy of his public persona with who Cordelia discovered him to be.
I was really, really sobbingly grateful that I didn’t have to read an onscreen rape, and I was really intrigued by the mechanical womb they gave the rapists at the end of the war to take the babies home in. Seems almost cruel to the children involved, but also sort of elegant? That whole section about Vorrutyer and his tortures was really imaginative? Which seems like the nicest thing I can say about it. It made the stakes of the novel a lot higher, since a lot of the space battles happened “off screen.”
If I have one complaint, it’s that even though I knew where the relationship was going, the beginning of it very much felt out of the blue. I’m assuming his initial offer of marriage was to protect her? I guess? And the feelings grew from there? But the beginning felt a little muddled. Which I guess could have contributed to the realism for some readers. It’s not a big complaint, but it’s there.
In conclusion: Definitely going to keep going in this series!
book clublois mcmaster bujoldmerrinshards of honor