The Sword and Laser discussion

Should I read the two books separately on Kindle?? Is it the exact same experience?

That’s what I did. To me, the books felt sufficiently different that having the natural break worked well.

I’m doing that but using WSFV to also listen to Audible. It works.

Well, "Cordelia's Honor" is an omnibus made up of Shards of Honor and Barrayar. So Shards first, then Barrayar. Or is there more to the question that I'm missing?

And Shards of Honor was Lois' first book and Barrayar was her eighth book, although they take place right after each other. There's a whole thing about the best Vorkosigan series reading order. It's like Elric again. Hmm, I thought we read Vorkosigan before?

We certainly haven't read any as a main read (don't know about parallel reads), although we have read another Bujold (The Curse of Chalion).

Veronica wrote: "Should I read the two books separately on Kindle?? Is it the exact same experience?"

I’m pretty sure (99.9%) the omnibus is literally just the two books printed in the same volume. The experience would be identical.

OK thanks everyone!

There was also a short story, "Aftermaths," in my edition of Cordelia's Honor. Not sure if that would make any difference.

Atermaths was an epilogue in the audible version of Shards of Honor.

Huh. Never realized that there were versions of Shard of Honor without "Aftermaths".

It really works well as an epilogue.

As well as this one there were 4 or 5 other Omnibus editions of these books. I think this may have been a determined effort from the author and publisher to get people to read them in the right (chronological) order.
Having only read this series last year i'm not doing a reread but I will say that this is certainly one of the best SF series that I've read and highly recommended. Some of the later books are amazing and judging by the 5 hugo, 2 nebular and 3 Locus award wins that's not just my opinion. The others in the series gained about a dozen additional nominatons.

AndrewP wrote: "...Having only read this series last year I'm not doing a reread but I will say that this is certainly one of the best SF series that I've read and highly recommended. ..."

100% agree and same here, although I read them a few years ago. Definitely a great series where I rated most installments 4 or 5 stars.

This seems as good a spot as any to post this. Sorry for the potentially bad news, but It has been noticed by folks on the discord server that Audible has removed both Shards of Honor and Barrayar from the free with subscription section.

So, I guess if you listened to them early in the month you were in luck. This is obviously a bit annoying and frustrating if you hadn't finished listening to them and were planning on them being there. They are still for sale on the service. It has also been mentioned that both audio books seem to be on Hoopla, if your library supports that.

John (Nevets) wrote: "This seems as good a spot as any to post this. Sorry for the potentially bad news, but It has been noticed by folks on the discord server that Audible has removed both Shards of Honor and Barrayar ..."

They are still showing up in my library atm, so maybe UK Audible has a different arrangement? Or maybe they’ll both disappear tomorrow and I’ll be annoyed.

Hope so Ruth.

After learning of this I went looking for what was in Audible + currently. And one of the things I found was that it seems the first 6 books of the Murderbot series are in there now. Falling Free by Bujold seems to be there as well. But it sure seems difficult to tell what is, and what isn't.

They rotate what’s available in Audible+ and what isn’t, but I have never previously lost access to something without any warning. I’ve rushed to listen to stuff before it leaves the plus catalogue before now!

I finished Shards of Honor, but when I went to listen to the second part I had to buy it :(

I guess I was lucky when I read these as all but 4 of them were included in Audible+ at that time. As it happens, Falling Free was one I had to purchase.

Well I’ve finished Shards of Honour and moved on to Barrayar and the books are still in my Audible library … fingers crossed they stay there until I finish!

I was in the middle of Barrayar when I was informed that it was no longer part of the Audible Plus membership this weekend. However, yesterday it reappeared as available along with a tag saying it will be leaving the Plus catalog on 5/3. Could this be Sword and Laser influence?

betanine wrote: "I was in the middle of Barrayar when I was informed that it was no longer part of the Audible Plus membership this weekend. However, yesterday it reappeared as available along with a tag saying it ..."

Interesting. I’m trying to finish listening to Barrayar before the end of the month anyway, and I want to pause my Audible membership before it renews on the 29th because I have several books waiting for me to listen to them already. If Barrayar is leaving the Plus catalogue, that’s even more incentive to finish it quickly!

I have powered through Barrayar (listened to 11 hours over the last three days) to make sure I finished it before it was removed from the Audible Plus catalogue. Thoughts on the book to come! I have now paused my Audible membership so I can catch up with listening to the audiobooks I already have rather than accumulating more credits.

Me again!
Just dropping by to say, when this first won the March Madness, I was dubious about the idea of an out-of-print omnibus edition being our winning 'book' - shouldn't we just read one book? But having read both Shards of Honour and Barrayar back-to-back, with the Aftermaths short story sandwiched in the middle, I can say that they work really well together as parts of a larger narrative. Of the two I thought Barrayar had a lot more depth, but it wouldn't have worked as a standalone - you need to read Shards of Honour first to understand the backstory. I'm really glad I read both of them in quick succession to get the full experience. Good work Shields for this nomination and vote!

Just catching up in the reading list. For e-books, I went to the publisher (Baen) and the omnibus version isn't available for new purchases (you can still download it if you had purchased it in the past). So, I'm going to purchase the two separate books as e-books and read them serially.
If you purchase directly from Baen, there won't be any DRM so feel free to load it into your Calibre library and transfer to what ever device you want to read with. (This is normal for Baen books.)