Shards of Honor

2022 reread:

I've been fascinated by the Vorkosigan series for a long time, I think because it has all the elements of things I feel I should like, but I find all the books but this one irritating to the point of unreadability. Miles is not really someone I can stand in prose, and the female characters all feel toothless from his limited perspective. To a certain extent, I've heard this is subverted later in the series, this review isn't about those books. It's about this one.

When I first read Shards of Honor, after reading several Miles-focus books, I found it light and sharp in its perfection, at least in comparison to books I really disliked. It felt like this book questioned the premises I found so grating later in the series - the whole-sale veneration of monarchism and militarism, the refrains of 'necessary evil' and 'just following orders', the lackluster female characters - but reading it now, and judging the book on its own merits, I do see the awkward outcroppings of those failings that will only mount with time.

Does that make this book a failure? No. The entire series isn't required to hew to my political particulars. But it does mean I like it less, and all I have to do is justify that.

The most interesting thing to me, on this reread, is in contrast. The text purposefully contrasts Beta Colony with Barrayar. Beta Colony is well-meaning but laughable, a parody of American liberalism (and, I think, America's complicity in wars while pretending not to, though this particular spike isn't driven hard enough to be more than a fleeting idea, briefly entertained). Barrayar is brutal but honorable, and you never really get the sense LMB thinks this brutality is bad beyond the abstract tally of bodies the two protagonists discuss. Barrayar eats its children, we're told, but constantly we are shown its virtues though Aral Vorkosigan, who is positioned as both exceptional and also the true heart of Barrayar. This is a lovely literary sentiment, but politically neutered. The true heart of any government or culture in military power - and in this book, all forces are very much defined by their military power - is what they do to others. Aral Vorkosigan feels bad about his butchery, but we, the readers, through Cordelia's sympathetic point of view, are asked to sympathize, because he feels bad about it and wants to stop.

This contrast is made even more explicit, in every sense of the word, by the villainous actions of Vorrutyer. Vorkosigan has Cordelia as his prisoner, but never harms her; Vorrutyer has Cordelia as his prisoner, and tries to rape and torture her. Vorkosigan has the soldier Bothari under his command, and tries to treat him well; Vorrutyer has Bothari under his command, and treats him poorly. This poor treatment ends in Vorrutyer's death. The wound cauterizes itself.

This contrast between 'old, bad' Barrayar (in Vorrutyer) and 'good, honorable (new?)' Barrayar (in Vorkosigan) is the biggest failing of the book, I feel. Ostensibly, the theme of this book, beyond the romance (which is very, very good; the themes of love and longing in this book are impeccable and earn it every star I give it), is about the horrors of war, and if we can keep our 'honor' (which here I will define as empathy and mercy, but the book fails to explicitly ever define) during these horrific events. Much talk is dedicated to numbering the dead, giving them their due, the casualties and the innocent bystanders, the needless waste of human life. Yet we only see the war from Cordelia's perspective, and she never encounters any of these losses, save one at the very beginning. As far as books about war go, this is a fairly bloodless choice. There is no time to consider that maybe Aral Vorkosigan feeling bad about himself isn't enough to redeem him, if we never see his atrocities on the page, only hear about them from a deeply sympathetic perspective.

(And how are we to judge Barrayar's worst horrors, when the closest we get to them - in Vorrutyer's menacing and brief single appearance - is fixed by a Barrayaran who he overlooked and mistreated? The problem will fix itself, the text inadvertently says. So too with monarchism, and the coup. This is not something to confront. This is something to accept.)

So, maybe it's better to focus on this book as a romance. That is what it is. But it tries to float higher ideas, the contrast of cultures, the horrors of war and trauma, and at that, I think it really, really fails. But it's still the best book in the series by far.

2017: How is this book so much better than literally every other book I've read in this occasionally mediocre, occasionally godawful series? I'm so sad the entire series can't have this feeling of political weight, tension, and heft, but at least this book does.