Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

[lightreads]

Shards of Honour by Lois McMaster Bujold

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
First book in the Vorkosigan series. Cordelia Naismith, high-tech surveyer, meets and becomes romantically and politically entangled with a controversial military officer from the backward planet of Barrayar.



Hmm. First time through I found this book divertingly readable but ultimately clumsy. Second verse, same as the first. The romance interested me more this time, I think because I was in a better frame of mind to accept the way it happens in that sudden, regency romance way. I still winced when the epilogue dropped on my head like an anvil. I mean, it has its politics in the right place, but Bujold could deliver that same sermon later in her career as part of the . . . mechanism of the book, instead of doing a dropkick at the end. And I still think the last quarter of the book doesn't really hold together as a thematic movement.



But, you know, first novel. And it's a good story anyway.




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