If the tense maneuvering around Vordarian’s coup, Aral’s regency for young Gregor, and the way Cordelia reads a hostile court hooked you, you’ll love how Mahit Dzmare navigates the glittering, lethal bureaucracy of Teixcalaan. Like Cordelia slipping through Barrayaran factions to rescue her child and outwit Vordarian’s loyalists, Mahit must decode etiquette-as-weaponry, survive assassination attempts, and decide when to play by the empire’s rules—and when to upend the table. A Memory Called Empire delivers the same pulse of quiet audacity and political nerve.

You enjoyed how Cordelia’s Beta Colony values clash with Barrayar’s honor code—and how the book centers ethics, culture, and people over tech (even as uterine replicators and military hardware matter). In The Left Hand of Darkness, envoy Genly Ai must fathom Gethen’s gender and customs the way Cordelia learns Barrayar, with every misstep carrying political stakes. The emotional core—trust slowly forged across a frozen, perilous journey—echoes Cordelia’s moral clarity as she charts her own path in an alien (to her) society.

If what gripped you in Barrayar was the close focus on Cordelia’s private battles—her pregnancy, the harrowing rescue of Miles’s uterine replicator, the fragile safety of her household under siege—then this companion novel’s small-scale urgency will resonate. A Closed and Common Orbit follows an AI and a young woman building a life in hiding, choosing family, names, and futures in the shadow of bigger powers, much like Cordelia safeguarding her own found circle (Bothari, Droushnakovi, Koudelka) while the empire convulses outside.

Cordelia and Aral constantly weigh what power is for—after the coup, during the purges, and in their care for Gregor—refusing to become what they fight. The Goblin Emperor offers that same moral spine: Maia inherits a backstabbing court and must decide whether to rule by fear or principle. If you admired how Cordelia rejects Piotr’s cold calculus over Miles and orchestrates a rescue with minimal bloodshed, Maia’s insistence on humane governance, even when it costs, will hit the same sweet spot.

Cordelia’s mix of compassion and steel—outwitting Vordarian’s forces, leveraging medical tech to save her child, and standing firm against Barrayar’s sexism—finds a powerful echo here. On the ocean world of Shora, women bioengineers resist imperial militarism using knowledge, community, and nonviolent strategy. If you loved Cordelia’s competence and refusal to cede her ethics, A Door Into Ocean gives you another indelible heroine facing down an empire without surrendering who she is.