So exciting. I didn't even know how to track down news about this, since I didn't know the author's non-Archive of Our Own name. Stumbling across this info was a pleasant surprise. I still have the original free download on my phone and definitely plan on picking up the new version once it's available. The only thing I don't like about the announcement: it doesn't include any dates.

Edit: I found it on Amazon! It says February 2, 2021, not that their dates are always accurate.

Alternate history Regency mystery. I read this a few years ago and didn’t quite enjoy it. But this time I loved it; loved Sarah and her integrity, her desire to do the right thing and also her mistakes and blind spots. Robins also writes about the London underworld without seeming gratuitous or voyeuristic, which is all too rare.

I’m bringing back an old feature I did a few times–reading notes! I tend to use these when I’m re-reading a book and having Thoughts that aren’t quite a review. In this case, I’m taking a look at the first two books in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, handily collected into an omnibus and titled Cordelia’s Honor. Spoilers for the first two books should be expected.

On to Barrayar!

Again with Simon described as puppyish. No, my brain just refuses to give me that image.

Ah, of course–Aral is dismantling the Ministry of Political Education, ergo it doesn’t appear in the later books. It is interesting, though, how completely it disappears even as a bogey-man. (Imp Sec serves that function.)

Little Gregor! With a robot stegosaurus. Awwww. And charming his mother out of cream cakes–I love that little glimpse, but given what’s about to happen, what he’s about to lose, it makes me so sad at the same time.

The few years between the writing of Shards and Barrayar actually show up pretty clearly. Re-reading with the grace of hindsight, you can see how LMB wove in the thread of Barrayar’s reaction to physical and mental difference, from Koudelka and his sword-stick to Aral and Cordelia’s conversation about him and Bothari and Barrayaran customs. That is, her ability to set up the plot has improved. This shows up later too, when a key point of the plot hinges on that moment–forgotten except by Bothari–when Aral gives Cordelia the authority of his voice.

I didn’t expect the emotional blow of seeing what Miles’ name should have been, because of course at this point he’s just Miles and has never been anything else. But ‘Piotr Miles’–ow, ow, ow. And then continued blows in a one-two of Padma Xav Vorpatril (gives Tej’s Ivan Xav a different shade of meaning) and Cordelia’s imagining of herds of little Vorkosigans. This book is turning out to be much more traumatic than I expected.

The awful part is, I like Kareen. She comes through a marriage to someone awful in a remarkably sane way (even with Ezar’s help) and is then thrown into this probably sometimes uncomfortable relationship with Aral and Cordelia and deals with it with a lot of grace.

When I read this the first time, my sympathies after the soltoxin attack were entirely with Cordelia. And they still are, but I also see the conflict for Aral–wife, or father. Actually, it’s not a conflict exactly; he always chooses wife, but it’s hard to do so. It’s breaking his heart in two. (Or perhaps three, when you consider how quickly he’s forced to use his position as Regent in a personal matter.)

“The chill of the Dendarii night.” Oh. Well, there’s echoes for you. (Gives a new shade of meaning to Miles’ choice of names–rebellion, homage, ?)

I suspect the thread that ties this story together is Cordelia’s moving from a passive ‘just a wife and mother’ model (which of course, no one ever is) to, well, herself. The Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan that we know and love, where being a wife and mother is part of who she is, but not the sum of it. It starts becoming apparent when she and Gregor are hiding out in the mountains.

Oh, Kareen.

I’m bringing back an old feature I did a few times–reading notes! I tend to use these when I’m re-reading a book and having Thoughts that aren’t quite a review. In this case, I’m taking a look at the first two books in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, handily collected into an omnibus and titled Cordelia’s Honor. Spoilers for the first two books should be expected.

Today: Shards of Honor

It is quite strange to re-read these earliest of books; the Barrayar that is shown in the beginning of Shards of Honor is so manifestly not the Barrayar that we see later on. Of course, we are very much in Cordelia’s point-of-view, and yet there are also things like the Ministry of Political Education which I don’t remember seeing in any other book. On the other hand, there are tantalizing glimpses of things like the importance of spoken oaths in Barrayaran culture (which later translates into Miles’ authority as the Imperial Auditor).

I think what I continue to admire and value in both Aral and Cordelia (and their subsequent offspring) is the sense of duty and trying one’s best. It’s not as simple as patriotism, and especially not the unthinking and uncritical variety. But it’s the duty of care to those around the characters which drives them forward, and which is often rewarded.

Ugh, Vorrutyer is so awful. How is By related to him? (By is awful in his own way, but it is decidedly NOT this Vorrutyer’s.)

I think partly, dovetailing off of this and also Prince Serg, I’m so used to the fearsome and sometimes questionable but also sympathetic grouping of The Gregor, Miles, Aral, and Simon that I forget what a dark period Barrayar had just passed through. Serg and Vorrutyer are the last hurrah of the old bad times, in a way.

ILLYAN!! It’s so fun meeting the people who become important later on, this time knowing who they are, or rather who they will be. Also, Simon with a bland puppy face is almost unimaginable. But for that matter, Simon spying on, instead of for, Aral is almost unimaginable.

Part of what’s interesting to me is Cordelia’s journey from seeing Barrayar as completely evil, to understanding it a bit better, to going home and seeing the flaws in her own society. Although she’s quite a bit older than a teen, it has a kind of YA coming-of-age feel to it.

“We’re going to have a family. I’ll not risk them in those gladiator politics.” Oh, ow.