Shards of Honor is the book that kicks off the long-running Vorkosigan series, though this book serves more of a “How I Met Your Mother” story – only in a case where the fact that our two leads will get together is a foregone conclusion strictly because I’m reading this now after there have been a slew of sequels based around their son, Miles. So the question then becomes, “How does this book hold up when you know that there’s only one destination it can arrive at?”

Fast forward to a bit later – Barrayar is invading a trading partner of Beta Colony, with Naismith in command of a decoy mission to help get weapons through Barrayar’s blockade – they get captured on a ship with Vorkosigan ostensibly in command – but not in command of the whole expedition. Worse, the actual commander of the offensive is a depraved scumbag. It will take both Naismith and Vorkosigan’s ingenuity to get Cordelia out of this situation.

One more fast forward – the war is over, and Naismith has been returned home to Beta Colony. However, she still has feelings for Aral, but Beta Colony views that as being mental damage to be fixed, and threatens to reprogram her, forcing her to try to flee Beta Colony for Barrayar.

So, there’s a lot to unpack here. First off, there’s a lot of plot here – and the story does a decent job of trying to present favorable and negative viewpoints of both Barrayar and Beta Colony. That said, this leads to chunks of the story really showing their age – specifically related to the discussion of mental illness. Not that it depicts the medical model of mental illness as being negative – that in and of itself is not a problem. The problem is that it’s the only depiction of mental healthcare in existence – there’s Beta Colony’s medical model, and there’s Barrayar which… doesn’t have anything constructive either.

The problem is that there’s a lot of depictions of mental health from the time this was published, which takes the tack that good versions of Mental Health care don’t exist, at least in their universe. No alternatives are described as existing in the text, and none of the characters can come up with an alternative either. I don’t want to get into the idea that the entirety of a world created in a work of speculative fiction represents the views endorsed by the main character in all instances of science fiction – but even our 21st century isn’t exactly enlightened when it comes to mental health care, and while the present day is better than the ’80s, that’s a bit like saying having Kairi Sane step on your foot is better than Mark Henry stepping on your foot. That may be true, but all things considered, it would be better if nobody stepped on your foot.

Otherwise, the writing and prose is great, and the character dynamics between Aral and Cordelia are great. I got a strong sense of their romance, which makes their development convincing. I bought that Cordelia would leap through all these challenges to try to rejoin the man she loves. I just wish the thing that was the impetus for her leaving home wasn’t a depiction of mental health care that has aged like fish. It wasn’t enough to stop me from finishing the book, and certainly didn’t stop me from continuing, but it is something that I should mention to people (along with a sequence where Cordelia is sexually assaulted by the commander of the Barrayaran military force) – in advance of picking up the book, so you’re not blindsided.

If you do want to pick up the book, it’s available from Bookshop.org and Amazon. (Affiliate links).

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