Barrayar

Like the first book in this series, this is a really good science fiction culture clash book that is somewhat marred by some dated and naive treatments of SA.

On the whole, Cordelia is one of my favorites of old school SF heroines. She is a scientist, an adventurer, a sometimes soldier, and in this book she is also a wife and mother, and she holds all these identities without sacrificing a one of them. Her impressions of Barrayar still ring as a commentary on our barbaric world today even thirty years later. God reading older science fiction can really show you how little has changed. Bujold is a great writer who balances political intrigue and action fairly effortlessly.

But again, it's hard to gloss over the way SA and mental health in general are treated. It feels like dated misunderstanding more than anything, but it definitely requires a big old content warning at the top not for any sort of graphicness but just for how casually it is treated. I don't think Bujold would write this way anymore, but it does dampen an otherwise wonderful adventure read.

A solid continuation of Shards of Honor. While the first felt like a series of short stories, detailing the developing relationship between the main protagonists, Barrayar is a more traditional beginning/middle/end story. I have not yet read any of the other books in the Vorkosigan Saga, however this introduction did make me intrigued to see how things develop from here.

The story is told from the viewpoint of Cordelia, who arrives on the planet Barrayar for the first time as a foreign bride. She comes from Beta Colony, which is technologically and socially more advanced than Barrayar, and her new home wasn't likely to suit her well at the best of times.

This is not the best of times. Soon after her arrival, civil war breaks out, and most of the book is painful, arduous, and dangerous not only for her but for everyone else.

It's a well-executed book, but I suffer with the characters, and I really don't respond well to downbeat stories. At first reading, I gave it two stars. I find it more bearable the second time, knowing what to expect, and I suppose I can bring myself to give it three stars this time.

Its underlying purpose is to set up the leading characters for the rest of the Vorkosigan Saga, who will be with us for decades to come. It explains how Miles is born crippled, Ivan is born and loses his father on the same day, Gregor the boy emperor loses his mother (having already lost his father), and so on.

Bujold usually provides a happy ending (for which I'm grateful); a truly happy ending isn't really feasible here, but at least the ending has positive aspects: things turn out relatively well, could have been worse.

For me, this book is worth reading not so much for its own sake as for its role in the series as a whole.

I read this book right after Shards of Honor because it picks up where the first book leaves off, and apparently all the other Vorkosigan books are about Cordelia & Aral's son, so it seemed like a logical step.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first. I felt like I didn't fully understand who Cordelia was–she felt so different than in the first book. She spends the first 80 percent of this book contemplating what it means to be a wife and a mother before she finally gets around to speaking out and taking charge. Once she gets there, the book is action-packed again, but for me it dragged in the getting there.

Knowing that the other books in the series are about another character, I'm not in a hurry to get to them. But I'm sure I'll pick them up the next time I get a sci-fi craving.