Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

I'm actually reading the Cordelia's Honor omnibus that collects this and Barrayer.  Normally with an omnibus, I'll just wait until I finish the whole thing, but I decided I wanted to address these books separately.

Shards of Honor kicks off Bujold's much vaunted Vorkosigan Saga, and, for the most part, does so extremely well.  On an expeditionary survey for the Betan Empire-a technologically advanced empire that is extremely forward thinking-Commander Cordelia Naismith's crew is attacked by a ship of the Barrayaran Empire-a more militaristic empire based on the middle ages.  Stranded on the planet, she finds herself face to face with-and prisoner of-Aral Vorkosigan, a Barrayaran noble and officer who is known as "The Butcher of Komarr," for slaughtering many surrendered prisoners, and learns that she and her people got caught in the middle of a mutiny.  Travelling together for five days, the two get to know each other, and Cordelia learns how much of his dark reputation he's earned, and how much he hasn't.

Bujold manages to avoid all the bad cliches of the "enemies in love" trope.  Cordelia isn't his prisoner for long, and when she is, it's almost a formality.  Though their social statuses in their individual societies aren't quite equal, they're close enough to avoid a power imbalance, and Cordelia not only manages to avoid needing rescueing by Aral (quite a feat, actually) but actually manages to leave him in her debt and rescues not only herself, but also her misguided but well-intentioned crew.  Not to mention Aral himself.  Aral and Cordelia are both very mature, and their developing romance is pulled off very convincingly, avoiding all the angstridden cliches of the trope and approaching it as two adults who completely understand the situation they're in.  (Leading to a proposal-early on, not the climax-that reminded me of the first proposal in Sayers's Strong Poison.)

There is, however, a "but."  And while it's not enough of a "but" to ruin the book for me or even to really lower my opinion, it is a big one.

( spoilers )

manga: Yuyu Hakusho Vol 1

Yusuke Urameshi is a 14-year-old delinquent punk who skips school, smokes, and always gets into fights. He also likes to flip up the skirt of his childhood friend (and class president) Keiko to comment on her panties, and panics when she cries, both of which are typical shounen coding for “I like you but am 5.” One day, he knocks a little kid out of the way of a car, only to be hit by the car and die himself. He figures out that he’s a ghost pretty quick, and meets Botan, the personification of death in the form of a cute, cheerful girl in a kimono who flies around perched on…uhm…the spawn of a broomstick and an oar (someone else knows what it’s called).

Botan tells him that he wasn’t supposed to die, and his death was actually pointless. The kid was supposed to be hit by the car, but his ball would have provided a cushion, saving him from any serious injuries, so Yusuke died saving someone who would have been fine anyway. This leaves the afterlife in a bit of a quandary as to what to do with him. His lifestyle should have resulted in one fate in the afterlife, but his unscheduled death-and how he came by it-shakes things up. So Koenma, the son of Enma, ruler of the underworld, who looks about 1 and has a huge hat and a pacifier, gives Yusuke a test. All he has to do is take care of an egg until it hatches. Meanwhile, his body is revived so that it appears to be in a coma, and if he passes the test, he gets to live again. What he doesn’t know is that when the egg hatches, it will be either an angel or a demon, depending on whether the soul who takes care of it is good or evil. Whichever it ends up being will determine what happens to Yusuke.

Meanwhile Yusuke is Strictly Forbidden from talking to his mother and Keiko, since they’re the people he was closest to in life, and the only person-aside from those near death and those of the supernatural variety-who can tell he’s there is Kuwabura, the only other punk to give Yusuke a run for his money in the delinquent department. We know Kurabura isn’t so bad because he lets people beat him up and studies hard so his friend can keep his job. We know his friends aren’t so bad because they see Keiko and her friends being bullied and decide to save them.

So far, it’s fun with lots of mythology, but not overly involving, focusing on Yusuke adjusting to being a ghost and helping ghosts and people near death come to peace, but I understand it eventually turns into normal shounen action.

Unrelated to the book as a whole, in one of the author’s notes, the mangaka says that a manga he wrote that never saw the light of day “was a weird sports manga with homosexual characters and cross-dressing (I may have turned off a lot of Weekly Shonen Jump readers just by explaining this much of the story).” Clearly, he said this before internet fandom took over!