Audiobook read by Grover Gardner
This is a re-read or rather a re-listen to the audible version. I read this book many years ago, and loved it. On reviewing it for the second time I still love it. In the previous book, Shards of Honour, Captain Cordelia Naismith met and fell in love with enemy officer Admiral Aral Vorkosigan. Against all odds they married, but their happy ever after gets a bit complicated in Barrayar. It's a follow-up book, but written out of chronological order and now it forms the second half of the omnibus volume Cordelia's Honour which combines the first two books. Cordelia has to get to grips with Barrayaran customs and politics which are lodged firmly in 18th century Earth. Barrayar has an emperor and a council of counts who each rule their own slice of the planet. They have only recently come out of the Time of Isolation, when access to the rest of the human-settled planets was lost via their unstable wormhole. Aral's father Piotr, the current count, remembers the time he went into battle on horseback, not in a wormhole-capable space ship.
The current emperor is dying. His son, Prince Serg, a thoroughly reprihensible character, was killed in Shards of Honour, so the heir to the Empire is Serg's son, the five year old Gregor Vorbarra. Arral, rather than the retirement-into-obscurity he had planned with Cordelia, is called on to become regent, thus annoying other counts, particularly Vordarian who feels his own bloodline makes him at least Aral's equal. There are a couple of attempts on Aral's life, the second one involving soltoxin gas, which misses Aral but catches Cordelia and, unfortunately, her unborn child. The soltoxin and its antidote damage the foetus, but Cordelia is determined the baby will have every chance at life. Unfortunately the damage is likely to affect the child's skeletal development, but Cordelia insists on decanting the child into a hi-tech uterine replicator for experimental therapy. The rub here is that all of Barrayar, and especially Aral's father, Piotr, have a morbid fear of producing mutants. In Barrayar the ideal is to have six foot militaristic sons and this baby has no chance of growing up as Barrayar's ideal son. In fact, having been unable to persuade Cordelia to have a termination, Piotr actually tries to have the baby killed while still in his unerine replicator. And then there's a military coup, later known as Vordarian's Pretendership. Aral and Cordelia and those who are loyal to them must protect the young Gregor and oust Vordarian.
In many ways this is a set-up book for all the later Vorkosigan novels. We meet Gregor, the fledgling emperor, Miles and his cousin Ivan (often referred to as 'that idiot Ivan' in later books) are born. We meet a cast of secondary characters, some from the first book, Bothari and Kou, and some new such as Drou and Alice Vorpatril, Ivan's mother. Even though Miles isn't born (recovered form his replicator) until almost the end of the book, stunted and brittle-boned, we can alrady see future clues as to his character. I would usually say start reading from the beginning of the series, but Bujold is such a skilled writer that this book fits neatly into the Vorkosigan sequence, but can easily be read as a standalone. Highly recommended.
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jacey
