What of what and what what what?

er,,,,, that's so comprehensively questioning that I don't even know what you're asking

Your previous post's first paragraph

Oh. I was drawing a parallel between myself and Ekaterin. This was relevant because at a time when most people would have sworn, this particular person was so trained in self-repression that the most she could come up with was exceedingly mild invective.

If you say so
(´･ω･`)?

That sounds like a super funny scene!
I don't know the book it's from, tell me more about it!

It's from the book "Komarr" and although I love this series with a strong passion, and laugh a lot while reading them, they definitely do not skip over darker issues. This book seems to have two protagonists, and one of them is trapped in an unhappy marriage, so don't go into it expecting pure lightness.


It's also one of a series. I read them out of order, so it can definitely be done, but the author doesn't actually spend much time filling you in on what's happened before, so there's a lot of nuance and background which adds quite a bit of depth to the book that will be missed if you start with this one.

If you do start in the middle, I recommend starting with one of the more straight-forward Space Opera Adventure style ones, like "Mountains of Mourning", "Weatherman", "The Vor Game", "Cetaganda", or "Warrior's Apprentice" Hm, you could also probably do "Diplomatic Immunity", "Cryoburn", and "A Civil Campaign" without much prep although all of these books lend themselves WELL to rereads. Every time I go back to them I find more, so it's hard to remember the first readthrough. Oh! And "Captain VorPatril's Alliance" will read like a completely different genre if you haven't read anything else first but it should be fun and could easily be done!

(The books that will make more sense if you've read at least one other first are "Mirror Dance", "Brothers in Arms", "Barrayar", "Memory", "Komarr" and some of the short stories)

I REALLY love this series, though.

They are written in beautiful language, they are written tightly without much extraneous digression, they have complex characters and the characters actually grow and change over the course of the books (and within a book), they follow through on consequences without devolving into cynicism and depression, they give clever insights into societies... I just love them. Also, they have silly moments even in the middle of catastrophe, because life is never only just one thing.

(They aren't free of issues, of course. For instance the author is socially liberal and that comes through very clearly, but since she never descends to outright preaching it's relatively easy to overlook. Well, that and I'm a bit liberal myself so it doesn't grate at me too badly. But I'm not saying these books are perfect. Just that I love them a lot!)

Sounds interesting :)
What is the first one called? I'm someone who usually tries to read series in order. I don't have anything against having darker things in my books as well, as long as it is an interesting story and not just gritty for gritty's sake :)

By publication order or chronological?

Chronologically, I think the first two books are Shards of Honor and Barrayar (which two have a different protagonist from most of the rest). They're collected together in "Cordelia's Honor".
If you want to start with Miles Vorkosigan (the protagonist for most of them), then "The Warrior's Apprentice" is the first. I think that's collected with a couple short stories and maybe the next novel in the book "Young Miles".
I think.

Well now I need to go reread them all to help sort them out!

the first one I ever read was "Cetaganda", so I read them out of order to start with.

Hm, I don't know if publication order or chronological order would be better!

I've put both Cordelia's Honor and Young Miles on my wishlist, from the descriptions it sounds like both might be a good place to start :)