Cordelia's Honor

http://www.fantasyliterature.com/fantasy-author/bujoldloismcmaster/

Full review:
http://fantasycafe.blogspot.com/2008/04/review-of-cordelias-honor.html

Cordelia's Honor contains the first two chronological novels in Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series, Shards of Honor and Barrayar. These books could also be viewed as prequels to the series since they are not actually about the life of Miles but instead tell the story of how his parents met and how Miles came to be disfigured before birth. Shards of Honor is Bujold's first published novel while Barrayar was released 5 years later after other books in the series had been written. The latter is a direct sequel to the former and completes the story begun in the first book, some parts of which Bujold had originally wanted to include in Shards of Honor before she realized it was too long. While the first half of the story was certainly enjoyable, it did lack polish and Bujold's extra writing experience shows in Barrayar, which is a much tighter novel and the winner of the 1992 Hugo Award.

I mentioned on twitter a little while ago that I'd never read any of the Vorkosigan books, and had a few friends admonish me over the fact. One of them was kind enough to include a link to a free ebook of this volume, so I was encouraged to give it a read.

I LOVED IT.

At first it seemed like it was going to be the typical “two radically different people are thrown together in an unlikely situation that causes them to fall in love” story. I usually hate that kind of story, with the two exceptions of The African Queen and Speed. Bujold manages to make it work, though - the romance between Cordelia and Aral feels realistic and a logical consequence of their personalities, rather than something just slapped onto the story.

Another thing that I really liked about this book was the attention given to the sociopolitical realities of the novel. A lot of the time that's something that's glossed over in SF, but here it forms a large part of the narrative. If anything I was reminded of Martin's Game of Thrones for that aspect (although admittedly it's less gory and convoluted as that book gets).

I'm really glad I checked this one out and I look forward to reading the rest of the series!