Shards of Honor. Chapter 1. Part 1.
UARTman
Flat Snark
- Location
- Russia, unfortunately
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I've actually first read about Vorkosigan Saga 4-5 years ago, on a Russian TVTropes knockoff - as an example of having a disabled protagonist, I think. I filed it away as something to maybe someday read, and, as I usually do, promptly forgot about it. I've seen it mentioned multiple times on English-speaking internet, almost always positively, and promised myself to read it, and never did. Then, about a year ago, on what was supposed to be a parent-teacher conference for a school my little brother was transferring to (I was sitting in for the parents, who were away), someone recommended it to me, in person, and I decided to finally get to it.
I've downloaded the audiobooks, started listening, and fell in love. I've listened and re-listened to them to the point of being able to finish some passages from memory when hearing them. But I didn't read the books until very recently, when I got curious about a Russian translation of Komarr. I found the translation underwhelming - it sanitized both the clumsy Russianisms in Barrayaran linguistics and the little witticisms in Miles's narration for ease of translation, and lost a bit of book's spirit with it. Point being - I haven't read the books in English yet, and that seems like an excellent excuse for a let's read thread. In fact, I distinctly remember people wanting one for Vorkosigan Saga.
I aim this at both people who read Vorkosigan Saga and are interested in a beat-by-beat reaction and on people who haven't and are willing to bear a few vague spoilers in my more meta sections.
Without further ado, let's begin with the first book I listened to - Shards of Honor.
The first paragraph usually says a lot about the book in a variety of suble ways. Most sci-fi I've read usually begins with a plot hook, or some musing of the protagonist, or a catchy witticism, or maybe an ominous epigraph. The first thing Bujold shows us in Shards of Honor is the protagonist stopping a moment on her trail to enjoy the beauty of nature. Then, as she continues on her climb, we get a bunch of information - that her name's Cordelia Naismith, that she holds the rank of a Commander, and that she's surveying some foreign planet for her homeworld of Beta Colony. She's accompanied by Ensign Dubauer, a botanist, on some mountain science trip thingy. We get a bunch more paragraphs just describing the nature, reinforcing the feeling of calm before the storm. Then this calm is abruptly disrupted, for us as well as for Cordelia.
She sees smoke rising from where her expedition has made camp, hears their shuttle abruptly take off, and, upon failing to contact them, she rushes back to see what's happened. She finds the base thrashed, ransacked, and set on fire. A bunch of science equipment is scattered around, broken. You get the idea. Dubauer is understandably shocked and distraught, but Cordelia hold her shit together. She reminds him to stay put and hidden, and goes to investigate the ruins.
She comes up with a bunch of implausible ideas - an attack by some aboriginal population of aliens (unprecedented in the entire history of human spaceflight), or an incredibly sudden outbreak of disease. Then, she finds the missing puzzle piece, and it all makes sense.
Cordelia finds a body of one of her comrades, Lieutenant Rosemont, with some very characteristic injuries - he's been killed by a nerve disruptor shot in the head - a distinctly human weapon. Some other human polity has also found this planet, independently, and is violently defending their claim. She permits herself a single moment of mourning, and then goes to search for a long-range communicator, joined by Dubauer. They discuss who could have done it, and Cordelia names her personal suspects - the Barrayarans, the Cetagandans, and the Nuovo Brasilians. There's apparenly no shortage of militarist polities ready to gun down peaceful explorers. We will see plenty of Barrayarans and Cetagandans in the books, and a lot less Nuovo Brazilians, interestingly enough.
Eventually, they rescue one communicator from a melted drawer, and Cordelia contacts her ship. They confirm her guess in both the nature of the attack and its perpetrators - the Barrayarans, and a small argument ensues - her people want to launch a daring rescue, but Cordelia wants them to run, notify the government, and rely on diplomatic channels to get her and Dubauer back from captivity. It's a sound plan, and she's their commanding officer, so they reluctantly agree to her. Whether they are gonna hold to this course of action, well, it's another story altogether.
Just as she ends the communication, her little party is finally noticed and attacked.
In the process of taking a nerve blast for her, Dubauer sends Cordelia falling into the ravine. She hits her head, loses consciousness, and awakens some time later, with a different Barrayaran soldier watching over her, armed only with her stun gun and looking scarcely better than her. After a few false starts and vomiting sessions (concussion is, in fact, bad for you), they get to talking. The Barrayaran, Captain Aral Vorkosigan, proceeds to gently but effectively pump her for information, but his questions reveal that he himself is not in a favorable position - he's actually Cordelia's counterpart, the commanding officer of the Barrayaran expedition here, and has been stunned by his own side during the shoot-out. Dubauer has been hit by disruptor fire, and Vorkosigan doesn't think there's anything to be done. He plans to return to his base on foot (about two hundred kilometers), and Cordelia reluctantly agrees to accompany him (since it's her only ticket to civilization), but only if he helps her bury her dead comrades first.
The conversation is actually very fasinating - there's an underlying thread of antagonism between them - Cordelia doesn't hold back her opinion on the Barrayaran barbarism, and Vorkosigan makes dry remarks about the Betan lack of warrior spirit or discipline - but their mutual antagonsim draws parallels between them. They even both get their share of information by taunting the other into bragging! I don't think anyone reading this doesn't know this is, in fact, an enemies-to-lovers romance novel with Cordelia and Aral as main leads. So they get to have a meet-cute full of vomit, migraine, and seemingly irreconcilable cultural differences. The way they build the personal relationship despite those differences is one of my favorite elements of the book, and the "Wilderness Hike With My Enemy Counterpart" is gonna play a big part in it!
An interesting thing I've noticed is that Bujold is very consistent with Cordelia's characterization from the very early on - her reaction to any adversity is to get her shit together and do something about it. She's very relentless that way - something Miles will inherit from her and refine into his famous forward momentum, but hers is a lot more grounded and sane, as opposed to the manic-depressive attack jester routine of her son's turbulent youth. But she still sweeps people away in her wake, especially verbally. Her ability to bulldoze people into going along with her will be referenced and explored time and time again in the series.
You might have noticed that I've taken a maybe a bit too-detailed approach, and I'm not very comfortable with it myself. My justification for doing so is that Vorkosigan Saga is incredibly dense with character and plot beats. Everything Cordelia and Vorkosigan do and say, especially this early on, is foundational to who they are as people and characters. We'll see how well this approach works as I progress further into the book. On that note, I'm going to leave for now. The next post will be about the second half of the chapter, where Bujold will begin exploring the contrasts and similarities between the leads.
I've downloaded the audiobooks, started listening, and fell in love. I've listened and re-listened to them to the point of being able to finish some passages from memory when hearing them. But I didn't read the books until very recently, when I got curious about a Russian translation of Komarr. I found the translation underwhelming - it sanitized both the clumsy Russianisms in Barrayaran linguistics and the little witticisms in Miles's narration for ease of translation, and lost a bit of book's spirit with it. Point being - I haven't read the books in English yet, and that seems like an excellent excuse for a let's read thread. In fact, I distinctly remember people wanting one for Vorkosigan Saga.
I aim this at both people who read Vorkosigan Saga and are interested in a beat-by-beat reaction and on people who haven't and are willing to bear a few vague spoilers in my more meta sections.
Without further ado, let's begin with the first book I listened to - Shards of Honor.
The first paragraph usually says a lot about the book in a variety of suble ways. Most sci-fi I've read usually begins with a plot hook, or some musing of the protagonist, or a catchy witticism, or maybe an ominous epigraph. The first thing Bujold shows us in Shards of Honor is the protagonist stopping a moment on her trail to enjoy the beauty of nature. Then, as she continues on her climb, we get a bunch of information - that her name's Cordelia Naismith, that she holds the rank of a Commander, and that she's surveying some foreign planet for her homeworld of Beta Colony. She's accompanied by Ensign Dubauer, a botanist, on some mountain science trip thingy. We get a bunch more paragraphs just describing the nature, reinforcing the feeling of calm before the storm. Then this calm is abruptly disrupted, for us as well as for Cordelia.
She sees smoke rising from where her expedition has made camp, hears their shuttle abruptly take off, and, upon failing to contact them, she rushes back to see what's happened. She finds the base thrashed, ransacked, and set on fire. A bunch of science equipment is scattered around, broken. You get the idea. Dubauer is understandably shocked and distraught, but Cordelia hold her shit together. She reminds him to stay put and hidden, and goes to investigate the ruins.
She comes up with a bunch of implausible ideas - an attack by some aboriginal population of aliens (unprecedented in the entire history of human spaceflight), or an incredibly sudden outbreak of disease. Then, she finds the missing puzzle piece, and it all makes sense.
Cordelia finds a body of one of her comrades, Lieutenant Rosemont, with some very characteristic injuries - he's been killed by a nerve disruptor shot in the head - a distinctly human weapon. Some other human polity has also found this planet, independently, and is violently defending their claim. She permits herself a single moment of mourning, and then goes to search for a long-range communicator, joined by Dubauer. They discuss who could have done it, and Cordelia names her personal suspects - the Barrayarans, the Cetagandans, and the Nuovo Brasilians. There's apparenly no shortage of militarist polities ready to gun down peaceful explorers. We will see plenty of Barrayarans and Cetagandans in the books, and a lot less Nuovo Brazilians, interestingly enough.
Eventually, they rescue one communicator from a melted drawer, and Cordelia contacts her ship. They confirm her guess in both the nature of the attack and its perpetrators - the Barrayarans, and a small argument ensues - her people want to launch a daring rescue, but Cordelia wants them to run, notify the government, and rely on diplomatic channels to get her and Dubauer back from captivity. It's a sound plan, and she's their commanding officer, so they reluctantly agree to her. Whether they are gonna hold to this course of action, well, it's another story altogether.
Just as she ends the communication, her little party is finally noticed and attacked.
In the process of taking a nerve blast for her, Dubauer sends Cordelia falling into the ravine. She hits her head, loses consciousness, and awakens some time later, with a different Barrayaran soldier watching over her, armed only with her stun gun and looking scarcely better than her. After a few false starts and vomiting sessions (concussion is, in fact, bad for you), they get to talking. The Barrayaran, Captain Aral Vorkosigan, proceeds to gently but effectively pump her for information, but his questions reveal that he himself is not in a favorable position - he's actually Cordelia's counterpart, the commanding officer of the Barrayaran expedition here, and has been stunned by his own side during the shoot-out. Dubauer has been hit by disruptor fire, and Vorkosigan doesn't think there's anything to be done. He plans to return to his base on foot (about two hundred kilometers), and Cordelia reluctantly agrees to accompany him (since it's her only ticket to civilization), but only if he helps her bury her dead comrades first.
The conversation is actually very fasinating - there's an underlying thread of antagonism between them - Cordelia doesn't hold back her opinion on the Barrayaran barbarism, and Vorkosigan makes dry remarks about the Betan lack of warrior spirit or discipline - but their mutual antagonsim draws parallels between them. They even both get their share of information by taunting the other into bragging! I don't think anyone reading this doesn't know this is, in fact, an enemies-to-lovers romance novel with Cordelia and Aral as main leads. So they get to have a meet-cute full of vomit, migraine, and seemingly irreconcilable cultural differences. The way they build the personal relationship despite those differences is one of my favorite elements of the book, and the "Wilderness Hike With My Enemy Counterpart" is gonna play a big part in it!
An interesting thing I've noticed is that Bujold is very consistent with Cordelia's characterization from the very early on - her reaction to any adversity is to get her shit together and do something about it. She's very relentless that way - something Miles will inherit from her and refine into his famous forward momentum, but hers is a lot more grounded and sane, as opposed to the manic-depressive attack jester routine of her son's turbulent youth. But she still sweeps people away in her wake, especially verbally. Her ability to bulldoze people into going along with her will be referenced and explored time and time again in the series.
You might have noticed that I've taken a maybe a bit too-detailed approach, and I'm not very comfortable with it myself. My justification for doing so is that Vorkosigan Saga is incredibly dense with character and plot beats. Everything Cordelia and Vorkosigan do and say, especially this early on, is foundational to who they are as people and characters. We'll see how well this approach works as I progress further into the book. On that note, I'm going to leave for now. The next post will be about the second half of the chapter, where Bujold will begin exploring the contrasts and similarities between the leads.
