Shards of Honor is the novel in which Lois McMaster Bujold introduced the SF world to Barrayar and Aral Vorkosigan, Beta Colony and Cordelia Naismith. From this beginning the author has created a multi-generational saga spanning time as well as space. Bujold is generally recognized as the current exemplar of the character-based SF adventure story.
Although this is definitely science-fiction, it has the feel of a romantic but adventurous best seller. If you strip it to the bones, you'll find a story of a woman falling in love with an enemy commander. However, that would make it sound like a woman's book. It's also about a man torn between duty as a military officer and his sense of honor as a human being, and that makes it a man's book.
This tells the story of Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan, eventual parents of Miles Vorkosigan who becomes the main character of the series. However, this covers the beginning, before Miles.
It begins with the attack on an astronomical survey team which has the effect of most members fleeing off planet. Cordelia Naismith and her botanist, who is attacked and left helpless and senseless, are captured by Aral Vorkosigan who's been abandoned by a group of mutineers. Forced to trust each other to survive, they predictably fall in love, but their separate allegainces cause considerable complications. There are space battles, political conflicts and bloodshed enough for the adventure fan and emotional situations enough for a romance fan.
It's told from Cordelia's viewpoint, but don't let that scare away any men. There's plenty of action here, and there's intrigue. There's keen insight into opposing viewpoints of conflict situations. We're shown both the Betan perspective and the Barrayaran perspective, and we learn that the truth of a conflict lies between the two perspectives, not from one alone.
There's much more here. I recommend you read it for yourself.
