Barrayar
A Vorkosigan Adventure
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Narrated by:
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Grover Gardner
About this listen
Political intrigue, culture clash and romance make a stirring mix in this award-winning follow-up novel to the acclaimed Shards of Honor.
In the wake of interplanetary war, former commander Cordelia Naismith has deserted her own planet to marry the leader of the defeated enemy, Aral Vorkosigan. On his home planet of Barrayar, two rival factions are eyeing the recently vacated throne, and Aral, recently appointed Regent of Barrayar by the Emperor on his deathbed, must stand between them.
Lord and Lady Vorkosigan, Aral and Cordelia struggle to establish stability in a fragile government thrown into confusion by the transition of power and the threat of civil war. When a palace coup endangers the government, their lives, and her unborn son, Cordelia takes action to secure the safety of her new family and new home.
Hi-fi sci-fi: listen to more in the Vorkosigan saga.©1991 Lois McMaster Bujold (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
1992 Hugo Award, Best Novel
Featured Article: 12 of the Best Sci-Fi Series in Audio
From the furthest reaches of space to the microbiology of pandemics and gene manipulation, to the future implications of technology for societies similar to our own, science fiction is a fascinating genre that offers listeners a wide variety of ways to access its themes. In looking for the best sci-fi audiobook series, it can be difficult to know where to start due to the genre's sheer number of iterations and variations. But what these series have in common is an acute devotion to telling a good story, as well as fully building out the worlds therein. The writing is enhanced by the creative and impassioned narration.
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Coming of Teenhood
- By Coral on 01-18-07
By: Herbie Brennan
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The Silvered
- By: Tanya Huff
- Narrated by: Dee Macaluso
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The Empire has declared war on the small, were-ruled kingdom of Aydori, capturing five women of the Mage-Pack, including the wife of the were Pack-leader. With the Pack off defending the border, it falls to Mirian Maylin and Tomas Hagen - she a low-level mage, he younger brother to the Pack-leader - to save them. Together the two set out on the kidnappers’ trail, racing into the heart of enemy territory. But with every step the odds against their survival, let alone their success, grow steeper....
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Persevere-- The sample doesn't do it justice!
- By Mindy on 07-31-16
By: Tanya Huff
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The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination
- Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius
- By: John Joseph Adams - editor
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Mary Robinette Kowal, Justine Eyre
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games, and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy, or otherwise dominate the world as we know it. It’s just not fair. So those of us who are so twisted and sick that we love mad scientists have created this guide.
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HAND DANCING
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-30-15
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The Cutting Edge
- Part One of A Handful of Men
- By: Dave Duncan
- Narrated by: Mil Nicholson
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Beautiful Queen Inos married the loyal stableboy Rap and made him her king. They were very much in love, and they lived happily ever after. Fifteen years went by. Rap and Inos were comfortable, secure, and truly happy, raising their family in the little backwater kingdom of Krasnegar, well removed from the hurly-burly of great affairs.... But in far-off Hub, the old Imperor's health - and, some said, his sanity - deteriorated inexorably. The borderlands were seething....
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High expectations
- By Ryan M. Kelley on 04-08-14
By: Dave Duncan
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How Long 'Til Black Future Month?
- Stories
- By: N. K. Jemisin
- Narrated by: Shayna Small, Gail Nelson-Holgate, Robin Ray Eller, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights listeners with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.
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Great! One quibble with the audiobook editing
- By L on 03-05-19
By: N. K. Jemisin
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Ghost Talkers
- By: Mary Robinette Kowal
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Hartshorne, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force. Each soldier heading for the front is conditioned to report to the mediums of the Spirit Corps when they die so the corps can pass instant information about troop movements to military intelligence. Ginger and her fellow mediums contribute a great deal to the war efforts, so long as they pass the information through appropriate channels.
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A very atmospheric, fast read!
- By kara-karina on 09-04-16
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The Demon King
- A Seven Realms Novel
- By: Cinda Williams Chima
- Narrated by: Carol Monda
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The first of a new young adult trilogy, The Demon King features a former thief, Han, who’s trying to provide for his mother and sister. One day Han, who sports mysterious (and certainly magical) silver cuffs on his wrists, confronts wizards setting fire to a sacred mountain. Now possessing one ofthe wizards’ amulets, Han faces more trouble than he ever could have imagined.
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Sooooooo Good!!!!!
- By Sharon on 06-15-13
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Six of Crows
- By: Leigh Bardugo
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder, Brandon Rubin, Fred Berman, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price - and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can't pull it off alone.
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7 Narrators, But That's Not a Good Thing
- By KM on 03-18-16
By: Leigh Bardugo
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Grass
- By: Sheri S. Tepper
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 18 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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What could be more commonplace than grass or a world covered over all its surface with a wind-whipped ocean of grass? But the planet Grass conceals horrifying secrets within its endless pastures. And as an incurable plague attacks all inhabited planets but this one, the prairie-like Grass begins to reveal these secrets - and nothing will ever be the same again.
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Speculative & Creative, Yet well Paced and Unique
- By Zach Wilson on 04-17-17
By: Sheri S. Tepper
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The Mirror of Her Dreams
- Volume I of Mordant's Need
- By: Stephen R. Donaldson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 28 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of rich but neglectful parents, Terisa Morgan lives alone in a New York City apartment, a young woman who has grown to doubt her own existence. Surrounded by the flat reassurance of mirrors, she leads an unfulfilled life - until the night a strange man named Geraden comes crashing through one of her mirrors, on a quest to find a champion to save his kingdom of Mordant from a pervasive evil that threatens the land.
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Thank Heavens, It's Finally Over!
- By Benjamin on 07-12-12
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Nightborn
- Lords of the Darkyn, Book 1
- By: Lynn Viehl
- Narrated by: Johanna Parker
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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The High Lord of the Immortal Darkyn has sent his most trusted warrior, Korvel, to retrieve a coveted scroll that's rumored to contain maps to Templar treasures and the secrets to eternal life. Uniting with Korvel to recover the dangerous artifact is Simone Derien, the daughter of the scroll's guardian, and a woman with many deadly secrets.
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GOOD BUT.... WHERE'S THE PREVIOUS BOOKS???
- By CAROLYN 🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹 on 05-13-13
By: Lynn Viehl
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Falling Free
- Miles Vorsokigan, Book 4
- By: Lois McMaster Bujold
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
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Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what's wrong, and move on to the next job. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat, where a group of humanoids had been secretly, commercially bioengineered for working in free fall. Could he just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation?
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Don't read this one first
- By Carol on 02-20-13
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Fragmentos de honor [Shards of Honor]
- Las aventuras de Miles Vorkosigan 1 [The Adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, Book 1]
- By: Lois McMaster Bujold, Rafael Martín Trechera - translator
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Cordelia Naismith, de la Fuerza Expedicionaria Betana, estaba en el lugar y el momento equivocados, inlcuso llevaba el uniforme que no debía. Así que su encuentro con Aral Vorkosigan solo podía ser consecuencia de una de esas estratagemas tan sórdidas y abundantes en la militarizada sociedad de Barrayar. Un conjunto de intrigas, traiciones y engaños la conducen a establecer una paz personal con Aral Vorkosigan, su principal enemigo.
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Muy entretenida. Ligera, bien narrada, breve.
- By anisakis27 on 05-24-22
By: Lois McMaster Bujold, and others
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The Hallowed Hunt
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The half-mad Prince Boleso has been slain by a noblewoman he had intended to defile. It falls to Lord Ingrey kin Wilfcliff to transport the prince to his burial place and to bring the accused killer, Lady Ijada, to judgment. The road he travels with his burden and his prisoner is fraught with danger. But in the midst of political chaos, magic has the fiercer hold on Ingrey's destiny, and Ijada herself may turn out to be the only one he dares trust.
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Extremely disappointing
- By Loren on 10-12-12
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The Spirit Ring
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In an alternate Renaissance Italy where the church regulates magic and licenses magicians, fiery Fiametta Beneforte wants to be more than her goldsmith-mage father's unpaid apprentice. But when the Duchy of Montefoglia is laid under military and magical siege, she unexpectedly must join with Thur Ochs, a young Swiss miner and foundryman, to tap their skills in both metalwork and necromancy to rescue her father's soul and combat an evil sorcerer.
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Well written Supernatural-Fantasy
- By IreneMBBT on 07-29-19
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The Sharing Knife, Volume 1
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Young, pregnant Fawn Bluefield has just fled her family's farm to the city of Glassforge, where she encounters a patrol of the enigmatic soldier-sorcerers known as Lakewalkers. Fawn has heard stories about the Lakewalkers, who are wandering necromancers with no permanent homes and no possessions except the clothes they wear and the mysterious knives they carry. What she does not know is that the Lakewalkers are engaged in a perilous campaign against inhuman and immortal magical entities known as "malices".
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Not really my thing
- By Eric C. Zawadzki on 08-27-09
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A Fire Upon the Deep
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A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.
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What a wild, wacky, awesome book!
- By Noah Smith on 06-20-10
By: Vernor Vinge
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Falling Free
- Miles Vorsokigan, Book 4
- By: Lois McMaster Bujold
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Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what's wrong, and move on to the next job. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat, where a group of humanoids had been secretly, commercially bioengineered for working in free fall. Could he just stand there and allow the exploitation of hundreds of helpless children merely to enhance the bottom line of a heartless mega-corporation?
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Don't read this one first
- By Carol on 02-20-13
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Fragmentos de honor [Shards of Honor]
- Las aventuras de Miles Vorkosigan 1 [The Adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, Book 1]
- By: Lois McMaster Bujold, Rafael Martín Trechera - translator
- Narrated by: Raúl Rodríguez
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Cordelia Naismith, de la Fuerza Expedicionaria Betana, estaba en el lugar y el momento equivocados, inlcuso llevaba el uniforme que no debía. Así que su encuentro con Aral Vorkosigan solo podía ser consecuencia de una de esas estratagemas tan sórdidas y abundantes en la militarizada sociedad de Barrayar. Un conjunto de intrigas, traiciones y engaños la conducen a establecer una paz personal con Aral Vorkosigan, su principal enemigo.
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Muy entretenida. Ligera, bien narrada, breve.
- By anisakis27 on 05-24-22
By: Lois McMaster Bujold, and others
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The Hallowed Hunt
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- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
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The half-mad Prince Boleso has been slain by a noblewoman he had intended to defile. It falls to Lord Ingrey kin Wilfcliff to transport the prince to his burial place and to bring the accused killer, Lady Ijada, to judgment. The road he travels with his burden and his prisoner is fraught with danger. But in the midst of political chaos, magic has the fiercer hold on Ingrey's destiny, and Ijada herself may turn out to be the only one he dares trust.
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Extremely disappointing
- By Loren on 10-12-12
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The Spirit Ring
- By: Lois McMaster Bujold
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
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In an alternate Renaissance Italy where the church regulates magic and licenses magicians, fiery Fiametta Beneforte wants to be more than her goldsmith-mage father's unpaid apprentice. But when the Duchy of Montefoglia is laid under military and magical siege, she unexpectedly must join with Thur Ochs, a young Swiss miner and foundryman, to tap their skills in both metalwork and necromancy to rescue her father's soul and combat an evil sorcerer.
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Well written Supernatural-Fantasy
- By IreneMBBT on 07-29-19
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The Sharing Knife, Volume 1
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- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
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Young, pregnant Fawn Bluefield has just fled her family's farm to the city of Glassforge, where she encounters a patrol of the enigmatic soldier-sorcerers known as Lakewalkers. Fawn has heard stories about the Lakewalkers, who are wandering necromancers with no permanent homes and no possessions except the clothes they wear and the mysterious knives they carry. What she does not know is that the Lakewalkers are engaged in a perilous campaign against inhuman and immortal magical entities known as "malices".
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Not really my thing
- By Eric C. Zawadzki on 08-27-09
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A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.
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What a wild, wacky, awesome book!
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For Oxford student Kivrin, traveling back to the 14th century is more than the culmination of her studies - it's the chance for a wonderful adventure. For Dunworthy, her mentor, it is cause for intense worry about the thousands of things that could go wrong.
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Timely, beautiful, terrible and haunting
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The Farseer: Assassin's Apprentice
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With unforgettable characters, a sweeping backdrop, and passionate storytelling, this is a fantasy debut to rival that of Robert Jordan. Filled with adventure and bloodshed, pageantry and piracy, mystery and menace, Assassin's Apprentice is the story of a royal house and the young man who is destined to chart its course through tempests of change.
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Not a waste of 83 hours...just the 60 I spent.
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The Calculating Stars
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On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the East Coast of the US, including Washington, DC. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the Earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space and requires a much-larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York’s drive to become the first lady astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.
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Never achieves lift off
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Ringworld
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Welcome to Ringworld, an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. The gravitational force created by a rotation on its axis of 770 miles per second means no need for a roof. Walls 1,000 miles high at each rim will let in the sun and prevent much air from escaping. Larry Niven's novel, Ringworld, is the winner of the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1972 Ditmars, an Australian award for Best International Science Fiction.
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Genuinely Creative
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By: Larry Niven
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Freedom's Fire Box Set, Books 1-6
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The best-selling, epic space adventure, Freedom's Fire: the complete series of six audiobooks, in one bundle.
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Not Recommend.
- By William on 09-30-19
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Penric’s Demon
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On his way to his betrothal, young Lord Penric comes upon a riding accident with an elderly lady on the ground, her maidservant and guardsmen distraught. As he approaches to help, he discovers that the lady is a Temple divine, servant to the five gods of this world. Her avowed god is the Bastard, "master of all disasters out of season", and with her dying breath she bequeaths her mysterious powers to Penric.
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A Kinder, Gentler Demon
- By Carol on 01-10-16
What listeners say about Barrayar
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Terri
- 05-04-12
A Hero's Beginning & his Extraordinary Parents
It is amazing how many credits you can blow through when you find an incredible writer & series (or multiple series). I haven't found anything of LMB's that I haven't enjoyed.
This is book 2 about Miles' extraordinary parents and friends. I absolutely adore Cordelia. She is the type of woman that many of us wish to be, honest, strong in will, determined, and she has great taste in mates & friends. Aral Vorkosigan is a man looking for something and someone to live for and Cordelia is the one who helps guide him as well as love & understand him.
I love the back stories of other major characters in the series: Bothari, Illyan, Kuo, Drou, Gregor Vorbarra....
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Chuck
- 07-05-10
A Good Intro to Vorkosigan series
I enjoyed this book. I was new to the author and the series. The characters and the background to the culture are developed as a byproduct of the story which I like. This allows action to be intertwined with narrative. Well narrated.
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4 people found this helpful
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- KBergin
- 03-19-21
Deserves Every Accolade
For those who read the first two novels in the Chalion series (The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls), the fast-paced The Hallowed Hunt will seem a strange end to the series. Set on a different world with entirely new characters, this novel’s “type”—absent the five-fold religion and the supernatural—is a story of political and warring intrigue on a different planet. Instead of saints, there are heroes. Instead of miracles, there are advanced weapons and eighteen artificial wombs brought back from a recent space war with a much different world (perhaps more “familiar” to the modern western reader) that frees women to continue their lives as the baby develops for nine months. Barrayar leans much further toward science fiction and romance (always present in the earlier Chalion books). Fantasy is there only in the terrific world-building. Bujold has said that, in real time, it could take place at the same time or several hundred years in the future of the stories that centered in Chalion and their backdrop of wars with its north-bordering country.
On the World of Barrayar, ruled by a dying Emperor whose five-year-old grandson is next in line, the main characters are a newly married couple. Our point-of-view character is Patricia Naismith Vorkosigan, former Captain of a science/exploration spaceship from Beta Colony, an advanced world of science and gender equality—not classless, but free from hunger and encouraging advancement for all via free access to education and health care. She is recently married (and pregnant) to Aral Vorkosigan, a retired military officer and nobleman in Barrayar’s scientifically advancing but socially Medieval society. They were once enemies until they had to come together against those who would defeat them both. They know each other very well.
Their love and mutual respect are as much the heart of this novel as they are essential to its action. When the son-less emperor dies, leaving a helpless grandchild and his mother as practical pawns in the hidden schisms between the conservative (anti-science, anti-egalitarianism) nobles and the progressive counterparts, Patricia finds herself the wife of the Regent of Barrayar until the little Emperor comes into power at age twenty.
Mayhem and civil war break loose. Kidnappings of the upper-class of Vorkosigan supporters begin, and the enemy takes over the palace.
Pregnant and in a world that she thought that she’d come to love, she takes a gamble to free herself to action. And action is what follows, for the last third of the book is hers.
No spoilers.
The two central characters are beautifully drawn, Patricia particularly. We hear her thoughts, her doubts, her decision-making techniques, her greatest fears, and then the result: her actions. She IS a Captain, after all. Her and Aral’s closest allies are fully developed people with achingly described pasts and their present, painful results.
Bujold has written a marvel of a “space opera” that takes place “on the ground” in every way. I raced through it!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kirsten M. Crippen
- 01-11-13
Is Machiavelli required reading on this planet??
The second book in the Vorkosigan saga, Barrayar picks up almost instantly after Shards of Honor. This book is chock full of political intrigue, machinations - honestly, is Machiavelli required reading on this planet? - and murder.
Bujold throws a little romance, social commentary, and ethics into the mix. Also, it's just a great adventure.
The worlds and culture of Barrayar and Beta are wonderfully sketched out. Beta a truly egalitarian society - where access to information is a constitutional right - and Barrayar a more rigid, warrior-centric, and imperial society are good case studies.
I also think this idea that making all the different worlds as direct descendants of Earth, instead of including actual alien civilizations is interesting. All the different civilizations are distinct and different, while all are human.
The characters are wonderful. Not only do you care for them, but you really want to know more about them. A sign of a great storyteller. On to the next!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anne Brunhart
- 03-13-15
Lois Bujold's story telling makes my soul happy
I am at a loss to explain how much I enjoy her writing. I need her writing talents to give her just praise and adoration, and if I try, I risk sounding like a potential infatuated stalker. I will say if you enjoy science fiction at its most authentic in scale and quality, you will find no better author to follow today.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Lauri Donahue
- 11-15-18
Wonderful!
This might be my favorite Vorkosigan book. It’s a delicious mix of humor, adventure, wit, and genuine emotion, with moments that made me tear up and whoop. The narration is sublimely matched to the text and a masterpiece in itself.
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- justin aquino
- 05-18-21
Wonderful and very entertaining
Second time to go through this since 2013. It's still a great story and the characters are well developed.
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- Pressley
- 01-13-21
Great read, action packed plot
The author is a master of action packed plots with wonderfully engaging characters. I recommend it.
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- Rebecca L. White
- 04-21-17
compelling story dated
the author took a long time to develop the characters in this story. I was beginning to get bored when the real action started. overall I enjoyed the story. however for a science fiction Thriller one expects that it will feature technological advances beyond our imagination. perhaps this was the case when then book was initially written in the 1980s but it appears dated in 2017
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- CatsAndBooks
- 06-21-24
A prequel that adds so much!
A prequel that adds so much! I very much enjoyed this story about Miles parents. Worth it!
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