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.