Rating: 
Summary: 2nd & 3rd stories in the Hugo award-winning Vorkosigan Saga
Review: "Cordelia's Honor" contains two earlier published books, "Shards of Honor," and "Barrayar," which are the second and third stories in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. Together, they tell the story of Cordelia Naismith, a survey officer from civilized, polite Beta. In "Shards of Honor," her crew was killed, and she was taken prisoner by Aral Vorkosigan, "The Butcher of Komarr." When she was released, and then recaptured in a later conflict, Vorkosigan rescued her and proposed to her, and she married him. The second half of "Cordelia's Honor," "Barrayar" (which won the Hugo Award), is the story of the incredible effect Cordelia had on Vorkosigan's warrior planet, Barrayar, and how she stopped the civil war that threatened to slag down the planet. The heir she bore Vorkosigan was twisted and deformed from an assassination attempt during pregnancy. This son, Miles, Lord Vorkosigan, is the hero of the following nine books (so far) of the Vorkosigan Saga. I am very fond of David Drake's and S. M. Stirling's SF realistic war stories. Lois McMaster Bujold's "Barrayar" and the Vorkosigan Saga stories are Drake's and Stirling's equal. Very highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Compilation of Two Books
Review: ... Standing alone, each of the two stories in this book are very good. Together, they're excellent. The first book (Shards of Honor) deals strictly with the meeting and getting together of Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan (Miles' parents). As such, it ends right smack in the middle of the story. The second book (Barrayar) picks up from there and continues through Miles' birth (with a bit of later stuff thrown in). Thus, taken together, the two books in this compilation form one complete story and justify their issuance as a compilation. This book (or its two components) are essential to the series and are wonderful to read. Read them.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Compilation of Two Books
Review: ... Standing alone, each of the two stories in this book are very good. Together, they're excellent. The first book (Shards of Honor) deals strictly with the meeting and getting together of Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan (Miles' parents). As such, it ends right smack in the middle of the story. The second book (Barrayar) picks up from there and continues through Miles' birth (with a bit of later stuff thrown in). Thus, taken together, the two books in this compilation form one complete story and justify their issuance as a compilation. This book (or its two components) are essential to the series and are wonderful to read. Read them.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely fantastic
Review: A fan of the Seafort Saga, I saw the Vorkosigan saga recommended instead of Feintuch's books in several of the reviews for the Seafort saga. I figured I love scifi, especially military scifi, so I should give this series a shot. It is absolutely fantastic. I started off with Cordelia's Honor because I wanted to get the background before I plunge into the Miles' part of the saga. This book is a combination of Shards of Honor and Barrayar (Barrayar won the Hugo award), and it tells the story of how Cordelia met Aral, got married, and wound up having Miles. Sounds like a romance? It isn't. It's full of twists and turns that'll keep you on the edge of your seat. Although I don't think Shards of Honor wasn't as exciting as Barrayar, it still is a wonderful book. Cordelia, of the planet Beta, becomes Aral "Butcher of Komarr" Vorkosigan's prisoner while she's doing a Survey mission. Vorkosigan has this "thing" about prisoners and refuses to do harm to them. Well, being his prisoner spins off into her first adventure where she gets a taste of Barrayaran society (where Vorkosigan is from). Beta and Barrayar are sort of like the technologically advanced hippies vs. Conservative Spartan societies. Barrayar prides itself on its military capacities, but it's politics are a mess. The technology is primitive since Barrayar only came out of isolation less than a century before Cordelia arrives. The current emperor trying to straighten everything out, the class structure is incredibly rigid, and civil wars seem to be the norm. On Beta, they're sexually liberated, there is no poor, and they have the best technology of the galaxy. The two of them wind up in a few more adventures together, and then they are happily married on Barrayar - where Cordelia is an outsider and Vorkosigan is a war-hero. When the emperor names Vorkosigan the regent to the emperor's heir - 4 year old Gregor - Cordelia finds herself swept up in politics, conspiracies, and treason. The book is a non-stop thrill ride. Bujold has a fantastic writing style, mixing adventure, theology, philosophy, romance, politics (but not over your head type politics), and suspense. The characters are all believable , and you can't help connecting with at least a couple of them. All the characters are multi-dimensional and with a great variety. For example, there's Cordelia, the theologian who does not understand war, killing, and senseless masochist honor. There's Aral, a 'progressive' Barrayaran who tries to reconcile his ancestral-culture with everything that's being brought in, not ever quite knowing what the ring thing to do is. Bothari, a "monster" in appearances and insane in mind, who reflects whatever is expected of him... the list just goes on and on. Wonderful tale, but the only drawback was I started it the week before exam finals. Bad choice on my part: I couldn't put the book down. I'd tell myself "one more chapter," but that was just impossible and 100 pages later I'd still be trying to pry myself away from the book. And now I'm in agony that I don't own Young Miles
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: A friend of mine loaned me separate copies of Shards of Honor and Barrayar, then ended up buying me the two-in-one edition because I was so reluctant to give them back. Since then I have re-read it until it is falling apart. There's no higher praise I can give a book than that. Cordelia's Honor is one of those books that alters your worldview, changes your life, and sits on your top shelf forevermore. It's a love story but it's a lot more than that. It's the story of how two determined people from very different backgrounds meet, fall in love and go on to change their worlds for the better. Cordelia and Aral become like real people you actually know--better still, they become your friends. If you haven't read this story, you don't know what you're missing--it is INCREDIBLE.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful read and framework for discussion
Review: A wonderful read, and a great framework to start a discussion of how the choices we make about ethics, morality, politics, power, and money, influence our lives. I have given the first part ( Shards of Honor ) to people
since 1993(?) as a framework to discuss personal and work
related issues. Almost 1/4 have gone on to buy the whole
series. And if you like Bujold, read Moon and Cherryh.
Rating: 
Summary: SF or not SF?
Review: Although I love this book (or rather, compilation), I think that people who are expecting a hard SF novel are in for a big shock.
These two books follow the story of one woman falling in love over intergalactic distances, but there's a remarkably low proportion of technical detail about how anything works or what the big machines look like.
Also, anyone without a heathy respect for and appreciation of quasi-medieval cultures had better stay away, unless they're willing to have an open mind about certain aspects of those types of cultures, since the plot moves from a very technological culture to a relatively feudal one.
I've always been a fan of the Vorsokiverse, but I think that perhaps _Cordelia_ isn't a very good place to introduce someone to the universe.
Rating:
Summary: Not just a prequel; an awesome story in an on itself
Review: Before I picked up the two novels comprising this book (Shards of Honor and Barrayar), I somehow managed to completely miss the Lois Bujold phenomenon known as the Miles Vorkosigan series. Something about some love affair between a captain and a naive astrocartographer just didn't seem like my idea of good SF, whatever the rave reviews... Boy, was I ever wrong. Don't take these two novels as just a prequel to the Miles Vorkosigan stories. Frankly, they're totally awesome in their own right. Cordelia is a fantastic protagonist, working both as a naive narrator, amazed at the workings of a militaristic empire as much as the readers, but she also comes from a fascinating society in her own right, which is far removed from our world, it seems, as Barrayar is. Cordelia, truth be told, is a breath of fresh air in today's SF. Yes, we've seen heroines before, but most of the times, they are clumsily written by men who seem to only grasp their way of thinking on the surface. Cordelia is a living, breathing woman, feminine in outlook yet incredibly brave and strong by men's standards, and she somehow manages to keep her own self intact in the face of a dramatically patriarcal and militaristic society. That's what Cordelia's Honor is, at the heart: the story of a woman's survival in a patriarcal society, and the way she inevitably changes it, and changes herself. By the end of the second novel, I was stunned at the significance of Miles' birth... How he is, for better or for worse, the product of this clash of cultures, and how scarred he has been by the clash even before he was born. Cordelia's first words to him are so terribly poignant in that regard. As I move on to read the story of Miles himself, I mourn the disappearance of a cherished SF character. I already miss Cordelia's -voice-, her mesmerizing insight into the society of men she was transplanted in. My hat is off to Mrs. Bujold, for one of SF's most human yet memorable characters.
Rating: 
Summary: Where is the Sci Fi?
Review: Bujold has a strong following among sci fi readers for good writing and Cordelia's Honor demonstrates why. The writing is strong, the characters, if sometimes more carictures than characters are distinctive.
Unfortunately, the sci fi is missing. Yes, there is a gloss of other worlds, disruptor rays and stunners and faster-than-light travel, but these elements are incidental to both books. Take them away, put Barrayar and Beta on two continents on opposite sides of the world (or, rename them Sparta and Athens) and you can write the same book.
Classify this work as a political thriller with a sci fi gloss. Worth a solid 3 stars for the writing, but only 1-2 stars as a work of sci fi.
Rating:
Summary: Two excellent books: fun, engaging, and with depth.
Review: By Ed Burkhead Shards of Honor: This book tells about how two really capable people met, fell in love, "fought" on oposite sides of a war, and handled the end of the war. As is obvious from the title, honor and doing one's duty is high in the theme of the book. But it also includes a lot of humor, pathos, struggle, etc. You will begin to really like the characters in these stories. Barrayar: The couple, now married and pregnant, have assumed the job of being regents for the planet's child emperor. The child's emperor's vulnerability tempts a rebellion which must be overcome. Bujold has created fictional characters I care about. If only they were real I would dearly love to move in with them and be part of their family. In spite of their faults, or more often because of them, their accomplishments approach super-human -- as they fall on their faces. Though most all of the story in both books included in this volume is really engaging, let me summarize with this: near the end of Barrayar, stoic me both leaked actual tears then laughed out loud while reading a single page. These, followed by "Warrior's Apprentice," and the rest of Bujold's books are now my 1st choice to recommend to anyone. Shards of Honor and Barrayar are chronologically 1st and 2nd in the lives of the characters. Feel free to read Warrior's Apprentice first if you choose.
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