Having read this book, I can truthfully say I did not imagine any of the lead characters to look that way. I imagined Cordelia with a much more pronounced chin and thinner face, for example, and Vorkosigan to look more like a burly refrigerator. I do like that space ship thing, though, because I have no clear idea how it works.
I've started reading the Vorkosigan Saga, starting here with Shards of Honor. Debates exist that this may not be the proper place to start, but I'm going with publication order, so here we go.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect. At first glance, this book looked like a space age Harlequin romance. For some reason, I had forgotten how much I loved the only other Bujold book I've read: The Curse of Chalion. So while I was expecting a space romance, I wasn't surprised when Shards revealed itself to be that, but also so much more. It's Bujold, after all.
Shards of Honor is a love story playing out through a war, the romance generated by two people who genuinely care for one another. It also focuses on the cost in human suffering the machinations of governments can create, the type of suffering that can go on for years, courtesy of events that happen in seconds, pain that will never be posted in history books or in the speeches of the victorious. The dead pay the cost for the egos of the living.
Yet for all that darkness, the relationship between Cordelia and Vorkosigan--two combatants on opposite sides of a war, of course, because if you're going to fall in love, make it as difficult as possible--shines in this story.
Shards of Honor looks like one sort of story, and it is, but it's much more than that. And perhaps that's why I loved it so much.
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