Week 9

   

    Shards of Honor was written in 1986, and is solidly within the romance novel genre, but with some twist. I'm not going to get into the details of the planets and the politics but basically, Commander Cordelia Naismith is on a planet, taken prisoner by a guy named Aral Vorkosigan, they have to work together for survival, etc. The plot thickens when Cordelia ends up on Aral's ship, there are various plots and mutinies and Aral and Cordelia are caught up in politics and doomed to be apart because they are residents of two warning planets. My enjoyment of this book was hurt most by the characters, who are sad, hollow creatures with emotions skittering off their surfaces and never reaching any deep significance. There were times when the characters were supposedly happy, terrified, or despairing, but I only know because that's what I was told by the narrator. It's one of the worst cases of characterization by telling rather then showing that I have read. I never felt connected to the characters which is odd. The romance never became credible, remaining a bad example of love at first sigh. My biggest problem with the book was the hard time I had keeping track of the characters or rather a hard time matching characters to names.