Barrayar won the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel of the year. Together they form a continuous story following the life of Cordelia Vorkosigan nee Naismith from the day she met her then-enemy Lord Aral Vorkosigan through the boyhood of her son Miles. Publisher's Note: Cordelia's Honor is comprised of two parts: Shards of Honor and Barrayar. Commander Cordelia Naismith is the head scientist for an expedition from Beta Colony to study life forms in other planetary systems. Neither Aral nor Cordelia guessed the part that their cell-damaged unborn would play in Barrayar's bloody legacy. Cordelia’s Honor is actually an omnibus edition of two books: Shards of Honor (1986) and Barrayar (1991), and won the Hugo and the Locus Awards for best novel in 1992. But when the Emperor died, Aral became guardian of the infant heir to the imperial throne of Barrayar -and the target of high-tech assassins in a dynastic civil war that was reminiscent of Earth's Middle Ages, but fought with up-to-the minute biowar technology.

Sick of combat and betrayal, she was ready to settle down to a quiet life, interrupted only by the occasion ceremonial appearances required of the Lady Vorkosigan. Discovering deception within deception, treachery within treachery, she was forced into a separate peace with her chief opponent, Lord Aral Vorkosigan -he who was called 'The Butcher of Komarr'-and would consequently become an outcast on her own planet and the Lady Vorkosigan on his. In her first trial by fire, Cordelia Naismith captained a throwaway ship of the Betan Expeditionary Force on a mission to destroy an enemy armada.

Cordelia's honor