1992 Hugo award - Best Novel; autographed on title page; my 2nd favorite SF book

Barrayar - my favorite novel by my favorite SF writer, Lois McMaster Bujold. I find her books compulsively readable, and well worth re-reading. She has a writing style that asks "what's the worst thing that this character thinks can happen to him/her?" and then shows us how said character deals with or solves the situation, often growing or learning in the process. She doesn't skip the hard parts but writes through them. Another aspect that I particularly like is the way characters have an immediate response or reaction that they think but don't voice - often uncomplimentary (something we can recognize in our selves.) This is #2 on my "top 10" list of best SF (and it almost ties for first.) Barrayar won the Hugo award in 1992 (and was a Nebula nominee.) It was serialized in Analog in 4 parts in 1991.

[I'm quoting from a review in LOCUS for a reasonable plot summary/set-up]: "One of the hallmarks of sf and fantasy, old and new, is the open-ended (aka "endless") series. It's a form often reduced to formula, diluted with each new episode. It takes an exceptional talent to overcome the temptation simply to repeat the tried and true. Fortunately, Lois McMaster Bujold is one of those grand exceptions. Her series of novels dealing with the military clans of the planet Barrayar and the adventures of Mile Vorkosigan keeps on going from strength to strength, and in many respects her new book, Barrayar is the best yet.

Barrayar fills the gap between Shards of Honor and The Warrior's Apprentice, giving the direct sequel to to Shards' romance between Cordelia the civilized Betan captain/doctor and the Barrayaran soldier/aristocrat Aral Vorkosigan. The eventual result of their union will be that brilliant scapegrace Miles, hero of Apprentice and a number of later books, but in this novel he and several of his future companions are present mainly as fetuses - important and sometime controversial fetuses, pawns in the ongoing Barrayaran power games and already in jeopardy before they can even be born.

We see the planet through the eyes of recently-wed Cordelia, a witty, intelligent woman from a profoundly different culture… Barrayar has a fairytale archaicism, heavy with ritual, ceremony, and the rancors that only long tradition can produce. Superficially, it may look like something out of The Student Prince, but beneath the comic opera surface lie darker, more troubling elements.

When the old Emperor dies and Cordelia's husband becomes regent, the elaborate pavane of court life turns into a very real political nightmare. She will need all her intelligence, passion, and hard-pressed sense of humor to survive the deadly absurdities of a Barrayaran power struggle, while fighting for the life of her unborn son.

I'm glad Bujold waited before telling this tale, Shards of Honor still had some beginner's awkwardness. Now, about half a dozen books and years further into her career, she has all the skills she needs to make this novel far more than military sf with a touch of romance. This is sf fully equipped with brains, humor, and heart." [-Faren Miller (LOCUS, September 1991)]