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lauredhel's review against another edition
5.0
As a Cordelia fangirl, I found this book just the most glorious, satisfying, blubbering-inducing thing ever. It's about relationship negotiation, moving forward, dealing with the aftermath of grief and hope for the future, parenting (and grandparenting), science, making family and finding home... Just all the things.
qwerty88's review against another edition
4.0
So happy to come back to Cordelia. It feels true to the characters. I like that Bujold has people actually growing old (even Miles).
minnfinn's review against another edition
4.0
If you've read the Vorkosigan series... this is Cordelia's "Happily Ever After" and her story comes full circle from where it began on Sergyar. Very light on conflict and obstacles to overcome, and very rich in relationships.
tonka_blue's review against another edition
5.0
This is a book that doesn't have such as adventures/political schemes or something in-between as Bujold's previous books have had and as such it might not be for everyone. However, this is brilliant and it's one of Bujold's masterpieces.
Many writers are more than capable writing adventures and twists, but Bujold wrote a story about new start of already known character aka Cordelia Vorkosigan after her husband's death. And it was beautiful.
The characters, some old and some new, were realistic, humane and easily relatable. It was so comfortable to learn about all the changes that happened without having them shoved to your throat, and learning new things about the characters was not only realistic but it had shed a new light on events/characters from previous books. Humour and common sense were more than present. :)
Many writers are more than capable writing adventures and twists, but Bujold wrote a story about new start of already known character aka Cordelia Vorkosigan after her husband's death. And it was beautiful.
The characters, some old and some new, were realistic, humane and easily relatable. It was so comfortable to learn about all the changes that happened without having them shoved to your throat, and learning new things about the characters was not only realistic but it had shed a new light on events/characters from previous books. Humour and common sense were more than present. :)
vailynst's review against another edition
4.0
Mini-Review:
If you are looking for an action packed story full of intrigue and glory, this isn't it.
I was quite pleased to listen to this book. It's a great way to end a long series that covered a wide range of lovable characters in a variety of strange and demanding situations. The core of it is a love story. Love of a world that ranges the endless stars, a family of amazing fighters & snark, their friends & lovers and their fierce loyalty to what they deem important.
It was full of the characteristics and values that make up the foundation of the series. Towards the end, I snort-laughed in delight at the sneaky and seamless way Bujold wove a tale of utterly average events in an not at all average world. I loved it.
If you are looking for an action packed story full of intrigue and glory, this isn't it.
I was quite pleased to listen to this book. It's a great way to end a long series that covered a wide range of lovable characters in a variety of strange and demanding situations. The core of it is a love story. Love of a world that ranges the endless stars, a family of amazing fighters & snark, their friends & lovers and their fierce loyalty to what they deem important.
It was full of the characteristics and values that make up the foundation of the series. Towards the end, I snort-laughed in delight at the sneaky and seamless way Bujold wove a tale of utterly average events in an not at all average world. I loved it.
lawrenceevalyn's review against another edition
5.0
What a delight! I devoured it, as I suspected I would. It was a little odd not to have the various subplots turn into something horrifying at the end, but also appropriate to the story itself. I still hardly know what to feel about Cordelia/Aral/Jole actually being canon. They've lived in my heart for years, thanks to some stellar fic, and I would never have said that I value canon over fanon (rather the reverse, really!), and yet this seems to have made them... beautifully real. There are no other versions of this story, now: even before the author wrote it in, it was true. I want to go reread all of the books Jole might have been in, now!
aisforawkward's review
5.0
So this was a re-read for me, a year after my first read. This gave me enough distance from not just this book, but the series as a whole and the characters, to read this a bit more objectively and see more of the flaws. I still loved it, and I am going to let my 5 star rating stand, but it would probably be more of a 3.5 star now, so I am going to ramble just about the problems I noticed this read that I didn't the first time through.
This book was possibly the most divisive of the entire series and with good reason, especially for those who read the series as a whole. I originally read bits of it scattered over the years until last year when I worked my way through the entire series (all 15 previous books) up to this one. Unlike all the other books this one was a simple, straightforward "life" book, with a touch of romance and a lot of nostalgia which is probably a put off for many. But for me the biggest problems are with the way the author dealt with the romance in history, and the children in future, and Cordelia as a bit of a Mary Sue and how that impacted the other two problems.
If you read the two previous Cordelia books, at the start of the series, you know she is practical to a fault, and very Betan in her outlook on relationships (aka very open minded) at times, but generally a flawed nuanced mostly believable character (I thought so at least). Throughout the rest of the books, which are mostly Miles and co, she comes across as a secondary character who steps in to fix things when they go wrong. Which since she is Miles' Mother works fine for the most part (even though it smacks of the Mary Sue), because of those first two books as backdrop and because she is such a minor character in the rest. The problem is that to some degree the way she was always right seems to persist into this book when she finally takes a more prominent role again, and it undermined some important aspects of the overall plot in ways I hadn't really noticed the first time around.
Cordelia was always a ruthlessly practical individual, but she also tended to feel strongly about how to care for children to make sure they were well balanced individuals. This doesn't quite fit with the way she was portrayed as planning to raise 6 daughters potentially alone in isolation, away from all extended family. I am not saying anything against her raising six daughters as single parent per-se, but that she did so in isolation, without any seeming concern for the huge problems inherent in doing so a long travel away from any family support. She discusses having multiple options in the case of her death to care for them, but she never once discusses the problems inherent with when she is still alive, and the help she would invariably need. There was a bit of a brush off where the fact she was largely raised by her own Mother supposedly shaped her view of single parenting.. But having raised children already, being practical to a fault, and knowing better than to equate raising one child to raising six this entire lack of planning or consideration while simultaneously portraying her as always being right just didn't fit. Given everything else I would at least have expected some discussion of a plan for support, friends, family visits, etc. But there wasn't really anything. This didn't detrimentally undermine the plot, but definitely bothered me on this re-read.
The next bit is a probably massive spoiler if you haven't read the first 15~ pages of this book but have read the first two Cordelia books. I am not sure how to talk about any of it easily or without lots of spoilers so I am just going to jump in and ramble about it.
When it comes to the romance (the most contentious part of the plot) the biggest problem stems from a lack of serious discussion about the implications of the start of the original relationship between Cordelia's husband Aral and his military subordinate Oliver Jole 23 years earlier and how it fits with a rather important interaction from the book Barrayar :
"He's bisexual, you know." He took a delicate sip of his wine.
"Was bisexual," she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. "Now he's monogamous".
While this line in and of itself was a great comeback in a fraught scene (and I loved it) it also struck me as problematic even at the time. But in retrospect it becomes much more complicated to discover that 10 years into their marriage Aral falls in love with Oliver and starts an affair with him without once discussing it with Cordelia first, and seemingly without pause. Throughout all the Miles books when Cordelia and Aral are mostly minor offscreen secondary characters right up until Aral's death, Aral had two long term relationships. The public one with Cordelia, and the private one with Oliver.. And the rare times when all three of them got together. Obviously this was a polyamorous relationship, and obviously in context I am supposed to just accept it worked. But it also massively undermines character development as is, without some further exploration than was given here. Aral was deeply invested in personal honour, and this was a central point of Shards of Honor as he dealt with the way his loss of honour broke him personally. The idea of Cordelia who idly proclaims him monogamous at the start of the marriage, and Aral who is so bound up in personal honour, having no repercussions at all from his falling into this extramarital relationship.. Was problematic. It doesn't sit well at all with me, that there was NO discussion of it even in flashbacks. It was just a given that Aral did happily jump into this relationship without talking to his wife first, and that she happily accepted it. Her easy acceptance of this worked well for me.. But not the fact she had to find out second hand. Even someone as open as she was, I would have expected some kind of fallout. I would have expected Aral to be deeply conflicted, and for there to have been a serious discussion in their marriage as a result.
Perhaps Bujold could solve this with a novella set in the past where Cordelia gives Aral tacit permission to explore sexual partners while is out on long duties, and a discussion after he starts his romance with Oliver. But without that sort of interaction I find the entire premise to be somewhat flimsy, and since this book was so much about nostalgia and discussion of past events, the lack of mentioning that kind of important interaction undermined things for me.
I do also think there wasn't enough explanation of the emotional distance between Cordelia and Oliver, given the 20 years of shared marriage, but given other details given this is a mostly minor quibble. Given the way they fell apart after Aral's death and didn't really interact personally for the 3 years (as Oliver said, grief does strange things to people sometimes) before this book it mostly worked for me, but I still wish there had a been a bit more here.
Overall I think the problems with this book are disappointing in this re-read because they didn't completely undermine the plot for me, and they honestly shouldn't have been problems at all. A little more time spent on flashbacks to a few minor but key scenes, a little discussion about how she planned to raise children as a single parent in the future, and a little more time spent on showing Cordelia as fallible, and it wouldn't have substantially changed the book at all.
Anyway, I still loved this book despite these flaws, and will probably re-read it again someday.
This book was possibly the most divisive of the entire series and with good reason, especially for those who read the series as a whole. I originally read bits of it scattered over the years until last year when I worked my way through the entire series (all 15 previous books) up to this one. Unlike all the other books this one was a simple, straightforward "life" book, with a touch of romance and a lot of nostalgia which is probably a put off for many. But for me the biggest problems are with the way the author dealt with the romance in history, and the children in future, and Cordelia as a bit of a Mary Sue and how that impacted the other two problems.
If you read the two previous Cordelia books, at the start of the series, you know she is practical to a fault, and very Betan in her outlook on relationships (aka very open minded) at times, but generally a flawed nuanced mostly believable character (I thought so at least). Throughout the rest of the books, which are mostly Miles and co, she comes across as a secondary character who steps in to fix things when they go wrong. Which since she is Miles' Mother works fine for the most part (even though it smacks of the Mary Sue), because of those first two books as backdrop and because she is such a minor character in the rest. The problem is that to some degree the way she was always right seems to persist into this book when she finally takes a more prominent role again, and it undermined some important aspects of the overall plot in ways I hadn't really noticed the first time around.
Cordelia was always a ruthlessly practical individual, but she also tended to feel strongly about how to care for children to make sure they were well balanced individuals. This doesn't quite fit with the way she was portrayed as planning to raise 6 daughters potentially alone in isolation, away from all extended family. I am not saying anything against her raising six daughters as single parent per-se, but that she did so in isolation, without any seeming concern for the huge problems inherent in doing so a long travel away from any family support. She discusses having multiple options in the case of her death to care for them, but she never once discusses the problems inherent with when she is still alive, and the help she would invariably need. There was a bit of a brush off where the fact she was largely raised by her own Mother supposedly shaped her view of single parenting.. But having raised children already, being practical to a fault, and knowing better than to equate raising one child to raising six this entire lack of planning or consideration while simultaneously portraying her as always being right just didn't fit. Given everything else I would at least have expected some discussion of a plan for support, friends, family visits, etc. But there wasn't really anything. This didn't detrimentally undermine the plot, but definitely bothered me on this re-read.
The next bit is a probably massive spoiler if you haven't read the first 15~ pages of this book but have read the first two Cordelia books. I am not sure how to talk about any of it easily or without lots of spoilers so I am just going to jump in and ramble about it.
When it comes to the romance (the most contentious part of the plot) the biggest problem stems from a lack of serious discussion about the implications of the start of the original relationship between Cordelia's husband Aral and his military subordinate Oliver Jole 23 years earlier and how it fits with a rather important interaction from the book Barrayar :
"He's bisexual, you know." He took a delicate sip of his wine.
"Was bisexual," she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. "Now he's monogamous".
While this line in and of itself was a great comeback in a fraught scene (and I loved it) it also struck me as problematic even at the time. But in retrospect it becomes much more complicated to discover that 10 years into their marriage Aral falls in love with Oliver and starts an affair with him without once discussing it with Cordelia first, and seemingly without pause. Throughout all the Miles books when Cordelia and Aral are mostly minor offscreen secondary characters right up until Aral's death, Aral had two long term relationships. The public one with Cordelia, and the private one with Oliver.. And the rare times when all three of them got together. Obviously this was a polyamorous relationship, and obviously in context I am supposed to just accept it worked. But it also massively undermines character development as is, without some further exploration than was given here. Aral was deeply invested in personal honour, and this was a central point of Shards of Honor as he dealt with the way his loss of honour broke him personally. The idea of Cordelia who idly proclaims him monogamous at the start of the marriage, and Aral who is so bound up in personal honour, having no repercussions at all from his falling into this extramarital relationship.. Was problematic. It doesn't sit well at all with me, that there was NO discussion of it even in flashbacks. It was just a given that Aral did happily jump into this relationship without talking to his wife first, and that she happily accepted it. Her easy acceptance of this worked well for me.. But not the fact she had to find out second hand. Even someone as open as she was, I would have expected some kind of fallout. I would have expected Aral to be deeply conflicted, and for there to have been a serious discussion in their marriage as a result.
Perhaps Bujold could solve this with a novella set in the past where Cordelia gives Aral tacit permission to explore sexual partners while is out on long duties, and a discussion after he starts his romance with Oliver. But without that sort of interaction I find the entire premise to be somewhat flimsy, and since this book was so much about nostalgia and discussion of past events, the lack of mentioning that kind of important interaction undermined things for me.
I do also think there wasn't enough explanation of the emotional distance between Cordelia and Oliver, given the 20 years of shared marriage, but given other details given this is a mostly minor quibble. Given the way they fell apart after Aral's death and didn't really interact personally for the 3 years (as Oliver said, grief does strange things to people sometimes) before this book it mostly worked for me, but I still wish there had a been a bit more here.
Overall I think the problems with this book are disappointing in this re-read because they didn't completely undermine the plot for me, and they honestly shouldn't have been problems at all. A little more time spent on flashbacks to a few minor but key scenes, a little discussion about how she planned to raise children as a single parent in the future, and a little more time spent on showing Cordelia as fallible, and it wouldn't have substantially changed the book at all.
Anyway, I still loved this book despite these flaws, and will probably re-read it again someday.
lizshayne's review
5.0
Five stars worth of squee. Thank you, Baen, for selling the e-ARC. Not that I'm short on books right now, but I've been on a Vorkosigan reread and the prospect of ending with Cryoburn was too depressing to contemplate.
I should note, by the way, that this book has a certain "This Pretzel is the Worst Lasagna Ever" feel to it. If you come in looking for threats on the planetary scale, widespread battle Military SF of the sort usually brought by Vorkosigans, this will confuse you. But it is such a delicious pretzel.
Spoilers for the series, of course.
Bujold remains a wonderful writer and the comparative lightness of this entry into the series only adds to its appeal. Nothing goes horrifically wrong...presumably because neither Miles nor Ivan are heavily involved. But this is a much needed sequel.
I'm really enjoying her tendency in the past few books of writing Miles from someone else's POV. Even when there were other narrative points of view in the earlier books, any scene with Miles was told through his eyes. Seeing him through Cordelia and Jole's eyes makes for a nice change.
Also, I have never jumped faster from
"How could this character have a romance now?"
to
in my life. Seriously, well done. This was almost like getting another Aral and Cordelia story. And everything about it was just heartwarmingly sweet. When the next set of omnibuses comes out, this had BETTER come right after Cryoburn. It makes for a good ending.
And I think I see the threads of another story involving the Cetagandan beginning to make itself known. Not that I won't stay tuned.
I look forward to reading this again once it's actually published.
I should note, by the way, that this book has a certain "This Pretzel is the Worst Lasagna Ever" feel to it. If you come in looking for threats on the planetary scale, widespread battle Military SF of the sort usually brought by Vorkosigans, this will confuse you. But it is such a delicious pretzel.
Spoilers for the series, of course.
Bujold remains a wonderful writer and the comparative lightness of this entry into the series only adds to its appeal. Nothing goes horrifically wrong...presumably because neither Miles nor Ivan are heavily involved. But this is a much needed sequel.
I'm really enjoying her tendency in the past few books of writing Miles from someone else's POV. Even when there were other narrative points of view in the earlier books, any scene with Miles was told through his eyes. Seeing him through Cordelia and Jole's eyes makes for a nice change.
Also, I have never jumped faster from
"How could this character have a romance now?"
to
in my life. Seriously, well done. This was almost like getting another Aral and Cordelia story. And everything about it was just heartwarmingly sweet. When the next set of omnibuses comes out, this had BETTER come right after Cryoburn. It makes for a good ending.
And I think I see the threads of another story involving the Cetagandan beginning to make itself known. Not that I won't stay tuned.
I look forward to reading this again once it's actually published.
suzjustsuz's review
4.0
3.5 stars rounded up because the series is just so great all together.
This wasn't typical of the rest of the series, which was a rather interesting place for Bujold to decide to end the series, but ok. This was not action or a mystery, but rather it was slice of life stuff about Cordelia. There was a revelation about Aral that apparently some people have lost their minds over, but I don't understand what the fuss is about. It's not as if the revelation was completely unexpected. I've seen some arguments regarding "cheating" and "honor" but that's a stretch under these circumstances and reads like excuse to me. First, the definition of cheating is much more subjective than some folks can seem to deal with. Second, when discussing the "honor" of Aral one should recall that the very first book he was introduced in he shot someone in the face and left him for dead in spite of him not being dead, then had to be manipulated into rendering assistance to the person who would inevitably end up mental incapacitated for the remainder of his life due to Aral's "honor."
Subjectivity, folks. Sometimes you have to step outside of your own understands if you want to try to understand another perspective.
Anyway, this entry wasn't action packed but it was good character and 'verse development anyway. And it was nice to see Miles a bit flummoxed.
This wasn't typical of the rest of the series, which was a rather interesting place for Bujold to decide to end the series, but ok. This was not action or a mystery, but rather it was slice of life stuff about Cordelia. There was a revelation about Aral that apparently some people have lost their minds over, but I don't understand what the fuss is about. It's not as if the revelation was completely unexpected. I've seen some arguments regarding "cheating" and "honor" but that's a stretch under these circumstances and reads like excuse to me. First, the definition of cheating is much more subjective than some folks can seem to deal with. Second, when discussing the "honor" of Aral one should recall that the very first book he was introduced in he shot someone in the face and left him for dead in spite of him not being dead, then had to be manipulated into rendering assistance to the person who would inevitably end up mental incapacitated for the remainder of his life due to Aral's "honor."
Subjectivity, folks. Sometimes you have to step outside of your own understands if you want to try to understand another perspective.
Anyway, this entry wasn't action packed but it was good character and 'verse development anyway. And it was nice to see Miles a bit flummoxed.