Unfortunately, there was little in the book that excited me. Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan are thrown together right from the beginning, but because neither of their characters was clearly established early on, their travails in the first few chapters failed to have any urgency. How they fall in love is also a joke, and hardly convincing. Even by the end of the book I had only the faintest of interests in these two characters and in their relationship.
Much of the plot is political: Barrayar, Vorkosigan's home planet, has some of the most arcane politicking that I have ever read. Unfortunately, this confusion made much of the political machinations seem contrived; furthermore, Vorkosigan's often extreme responses to certain political moves seemed unfounded when I didn't understand what was going on. The tragic thing is that the book doesn't have enough cool ideas to sustain the narrative otherwise, and so the plot slowly began to drag.
The one exception to all of this is Chapter 13, when Cordelia returns to her homeworld. For some reason I found that chapter captivating and almost unbearably intense. What made this chapter even more impressive was that I still didn't give two hoots about her character. Hopefully this is a sign of Bujold's true skills. But after Chapter 13, things fall apart again. The epilogue (entitled "Aftermaths") was an especially needless addition to the book.
I'm likely to continue on to the second book, Barrayar, mostly because it is included in the Cordelia's Honor omnibus in which I found Shards of Honor. Hopefully it will improve over Bujold's first novel. If it does not, I may give up on the Vorkosigan series for good.
Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu 