Book Review Lois Macmaster Bujold Barrayar

BOOK REVIEW – LOIS MACMASTER BUJOLD – BARRAYAR 1986 IN CORDELIA’S HONOUR BAEN BOOKS

Stunning follow up to Shards Of Honour, this was a deserved Hugo award winning science fiction novel.

Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan is finding her role as the wife of a leading politician on another World increasingly demanding. People try to use her for information and to influence her husband, and her pregnancy at least helps limit her part in her husband’s public and political duties. 

Matters intensify with the death of the Vor World Emperor, leaving a child as his heir. Aral Vorkosigan is assigned the role of regent, and soon finds himself the target of assassins. Is security officials are lax enough to visit brothels, and a dangerous gas attack puts Cordelia’s unborn son, Miles in danger of being born with liquefied bones.

To save the infant, Cordelia has him temporarily transferred to a mechanical uterus flask devise, something all foetus’s are transferred to on her own World, but despite high security measures, revolutionaries trying to seize the Barrayanan capital, take the capsule hostage. Cordelia, and her allies embark on a dangerous rescue mission in a city plunged into chaos.  It’s an astonishing heart wrenching read about ordinary people pushed into extra-ordinary situations.  The sequels will be fuelled by repercussions of events in this book.

 Arthur Chappell