Yaaaaaaay! One of my favorite new books, which I read thanks to a recommendation ON THIS VERY SITE a couple years ago. It’s smart, it’s romantic, it’s addictive, and it’s a little bit mentally challenging too. You should all really REALLY enjoy it. Oh, and it’s also the perfect SRK/Tabu movie.

Okay, I don’t want you to get too confused about this timeline, so I’m gonna clarify upfront. Lois Bujold wrote three books in order, Shards of Honor, and then Barrayar, and then The Warriors Apprentice. But she had a hard time selling them, so the three books aren’t published in the order they were written. But they should be read in the order they were written for you to get the most “oh yeah, I remember that character!” out of them. Thus, Shards of Honor, fun standalone start to the whole series, is my choice for our book club.

It’s still in print, so you will need to buy it from a bookstore, get it on kindle, or get it from the library.

If you get addicted to this series after reading Shards of Honor (and you will), I will give you the gift of suggested future reading, keeping in mind which plot points relate to each other and which books are just all around award winning classics. Otherwise you are going to get bogged down trying to read every one in order and run out of steam before you get to the really REALLY good one (A Civil Campaign, a romance dedicated to Georgette Heyer).

So, here is your reading list for Bujold:

Shards of Honor

Barrayar

The Warriors Apprentice

[skip skip skip skip skip]

Komarr

A Civil Campaign

And then if you still have Bujold energy, you go back and read all the books between The Warriors Apprentice and Komarr that I had you skip. They are all great, it’s just that Komarr and A Civil Campaign are really REALLY great. And you can’t appreciate them unless you’ve read the first 3 books in the series first.