Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
This was the first-written Vorkosigan book, and (if you ignore prequels set well before the main series), it's also the first chronologically. Yet I chose to read it third, treating the first two Miles books, The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game, as a duology, and then moving backwards to read the two Cordelia books as a prequel duology.
 |
|
Originally published: 1986 Acquired: January 2022 Read: March 2023 |
It certainly was not intended to be read as a prequel, but I found that it worked quite well. Shards of Honor is told from the point-of-view of Cordelia Naismith, the captain of a science vessel from Beta Colony, who becomes entangled with Aral Vorkosigan, commander of a warship from Barrayar; they are the future parents of Miles. Cordelia is an important presence in the first two Miles books, but admittedly not much of a presence, in that she plays little role in those books, so it's nice to see her here. It's also good to get a perspective on Aral more sympathetic than the one we usually get from Miles, for whom his father is a principled but stern authority figure. Reading Shards of Honor this way, it does what the best prequels do: fill in and enhance our understanding of the later-set stories. I found a lot of little moments where one could aha! in seeing how Warrior's Apprentice and Vor Game were set up, not just with the characters of Aral and Cordelia, but also with Bothari, the damaged sergeant who comes across as more villainous in Warrior's Apprentice, but who turns out to have been kind of a victim here.
Like previous Vorkosigan books, this reminded me of the Hornblower series by C. S. Forester. Not so much in terms of content (this was much less of a Hornbloweresque military escapade than the Miles books, it's more of a combination survival-thriller-and-romance), but structure: Shards of Honor was originally published as a single novel, but it was clearly written as three novellas, one about Cordelia and Aral's original meeting and survival trek, one about them meeting again in a war zone, and one about the consequences on Beta Colony of Cordelia's adventures. Each (especially the first two) has a clear beginning and end, and clear character arc all of its own, and could be read entirely satisfyingly without the others; the second even contains bits of dropped-in exposition for people who hadn't read the first part! It's a little jarring in that the book doesn't even use something like "Part Two" to make the transition; you turn a page and suddenly you are months later in a different place reading about a different thing. But aside from that, the device worked for me—nothing in this book wears out its welcome, nor does it feel underdeveloped. Instead you get three solid stories for the price of one!
In terms of series chronology, Shards of Honor is followed by a short story called "Aftermaths" which is available in Cordelia's Honor, the Baen omnibus of Shards of Honor and Barrayar. I was prepared to track it down (it is, for example, available as a free episode of the Escape Pod podcast), but was pleasantly surprised to find it was included in my NESFA Press edition of Shards, a fact completely unmentioned on the NESFA website or the cover or in the introduction of my actual book! I'm glad it was; it's not essential to the ongoing story, but it is an effectively written story of those left behind by war.
Next up in sequence: Barrayar
No comments:
Post a Comment