Shards of Honor

Read for the Military Spec Fic Reading Challenge, the Second Best Reading Challenge, the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge, the Hard Core Sci-Fi Reading Challenge, and the Space Opera Reading Challenge.

This book was nominated for the Locus Award.

My opening salvo in this year's reading challenges! This was a re-read. I am a dedicated fan of Lois McMaster Bujold, and her awesome Vorkosigan Saga has been a powerful influence on me and my own writing. I love her characters. I love their essential humanity, and how they react to their unusual and vast world and conditions will forever be how I prefer to handle space opera.

Cordelia Naismith, soon to be Cordelia Vorkosigan, is perhaps my favourite space opera female badass (maybe even beating out Ripley). The beautiful thing about her is that she is a powerful, matronly vision of femininity and loses none of her toughness or strength. I like this vision that we don't have to try to be something we are not to be strong. Cordelia is never anything but exactly what she is.

Bujold has also directly inspired me. This is a science fiction romance. It makes no pretense at being anything else. Yet it's also a kickass space opera and hard sci-fi piece. It taught me a few things: 1) romance doesn't have to suck 2) romance can be an important part of another story 3) romance can be worthy of respect. Because of this and some of her later works in the Vorkosigan Saga, I dared to contribute a sci-fi romance of my own to an anthology called Chasing Fireflieslast year.

I don't want to tell you anything else because it's actually a fairly simply plot and I don't want to spoil it. If you like space opera OR romance, you'll like this. Give it a try!