Sunday, December 06, 2009

Book Review: Barrayar

Barrayar (Vorkosigan)Lois McMaster Bujold
1991
Awards: Hugo
Rating: ☆ ☆ – – –

I never really got caught up in this story. It had too many echoes of The Quantum Rose for comfort.

This is one of the early books in Bujold’s Vor Saga. The main character, Cordelia, is a practical, modern-minded Betan starship pilot who marries a Barrayan Vor count who becomes regent to the five-year-old emperor. There is a coup by another Vor count and a subsequent war, during which the "feisty" Cordelia breaks into the usurper count's palace and kills him.

For me, there was too much of the fantasy world of flashing eyes and swirling skirts and unbendingly loyal manservants/armsmen and calling people "Milady." Cordelia was always drawing criticism from the backwards Barrayans with her modern Betan views and then of course always turning out to be right.

One interesting twist is that her baby gets damaged with nerve toxin during a terrorist attack and has to be gestated in a uterine replicator. He has to have bone re-calcification treatments and is always frail but becomes a hero on his own nevertheless.

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