Astrocartographer Cordelia Naismith is leading a team from the Betan Expeditionary Force on a routine survey of a newly discovered planet when her group accidentally stumbles into a messy bit of infighting among soldiers from Barrayar, another interplanetary neighbor. Separated from her team, and in a strange place with danger all around, Cordelia is forced to ally herself with the Barrayaran captain, Lord Aral Vorkosigan, against whom a mutiny appears to be in progress. The two escape to safety together, discovering along the way that despite profound differences in background and culture, they are kindred spirits. They track down the remnants of Vorkosigan’s company. The mutineers are dealt with. And then things start to get interesting.

That’s the first half of Cordelia’s Honor, a Baen Omnibus Edition comprising two classic novels, Shards of Honor (1986) and Barrayar (1991), by Lois McMaster Bujold. In the second half, newlyweds Aral and Cordelia are acting as regents for Gregor, the five-year-old Emperor of Barrayar, when civil war threatens to tear their world apart. And when a politically-motivated attack on the family endangers the life of her unborn child, a fed-up Cordelia takes matters into her own hands.

Cordelia is a great character -- an accomplished but rather lonely woman who gives up her comfortable niche in a socially liberal and cosmopolitan society in favor of what she expects to be a quiet life with her husband in what she considers a backwater. She quickly learns that she has taken on more than she bargained for… but she rises to the occasion, proving herself both wise and capable of tremendous heroism, not just once but over and over again. Her most impressive characteristic, however, is her strong sense of personal honor. In fact, a shared sense of honor is the foundation of Aral and Cordelia’s bond, and the idea of honor is a common theme in both books: How do you do the right thing when there is no right thing to do? How do you stand your ground when the whole world is telling you that you’re wrong? This is a theme that Bujold returns to frequently in the Vorkosiverse -- see, for example, the scene in A Civil Campaign in which Aral counsels Miles that reputation is what the world thinks they know about you, but honor is what you know about yourself.

Shards of Honor was Bujold’s first novel, and her evolution as a writer between Shards and the later Barrayar is evident in this compilation. Although the former is sometimes a bit harder to follow (I’m not sure I could explain exactly who does what to whom and why), the latter is longer, denser, and more complex; she successfully keeps more balls in the air. This makes it hard to read the two together as one long mega-book, as some have recommended. Still, as stand-alone novels, both of these work, featuring romance, suspense, and action, along with space battles, explosions, chemical attacks, and the odd beheading. They’re also full of compelling secondary characters, including Aral’s psychotic batman, Bothari; confused lovebirds Kou and Drou; Simon Illyan, the feared head of Imperial Security in later books, who is practically a fetus here; and many others, including adorable Emperor Gregor, slimy Vordarian, aristocratic Alys, and tragic Kareen.

And then there’s the child, of course (glimpsed briefly as a preschooler in an epilogue) -- fearless, diminutive, brittle-boned, quick-thinking, fast-talking Miles, who takes center stage in the rest of the Vorkosigan books.Miles is a trip -- among other things, he’s admiral of his own fleet before he’s out of his teens -- but it’s kind of nice to see where this prodigy came from, and to note that the apple didn’t fall from the tree. More than just being Miles’ backstory, though, the Cordelia’s Honor books are fascinating, entertaining, fast-paced, romantic stories in their own right, featuring one of the greatest heroines to come down the pike in a good long while. If you’re already familiar with Miles (or even if you’re not, but really, you ought to be), but you haven’t read these, you’ll definitely want to pick up this compilation.

  -- Kate Nagy

FURTHER READING

The Top 13... Genre Heroines Who Kick Ass, Literary Division by Kate Nagy