Trading in Danger
(The Vatta's War series, Book 1)
Elizabeth Moon
Del Rey
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****
DESCRIPTION: Kylara Vatta, lone daughter of the prestigious interstellar shipping moguls behind Vatta Transport of the planet Slotter Key, is off to an inauspicious start. Defying family tradition by joining the military academy, she seemed to have bright prospects... until an incident with a fellow cadet blackened the Academy's eye, and she became the scapegoat. Her father, hoping to give his wayward daughter another chance, makes her captain of the Glennys Jones, an obsolete junker making a few last trade stops on the way to the scrapheap. But when a seemingly benign opportunity practically lands in her lap, Kylara takes a chance for glory and redemption - and winds up leading the Glennys Jones directly into the danger zone of a colonial mutiny, a struggle which might be just the tip of great trouble about to erupt in civilized space.
REVIEW: I got this book for free when I went to a local sci-fi con, so even though I don't normally read big-ships-in-space books, I gave it a try. I actually enjoyed it. There's space jargon and technobabble, of course, but it's kept to a dull roar, and the plot doesn't hinge on the reader keeping track of it all. Moon establishes some good characters and worlds, and slips in a certain undercurrent of wit now and again. Even though I was initially skeptical of the ability of an interstellar trade/war tale to absorb me, I found myself staying up past midnight to finish it. (Yes, I often stay up past midnight anyway, but I started reading before noon.) Incidents which at first seemed minor details look to have greater significance in future books; according to the front cover, there are (at least) four books in Kylara's journey. I'm not sure if I'll pay the full cover price to read the next one, but I'll be keeping an eye out for it in Half Price Books... or if Barnes & Noble sends me a sufficiently discounted coupon.
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The Ender series (Orson Scott Card, YA? Fiction - Humans fight off an alien invasion, then spread to gain their own foothold among the stars)
The Star Rigger series (Jeffrey A. Carver, Fiction - Interstellar ships travel between the stars through hyperspace, navigated by lucid-dreaming pilots)
The Brain and Brawn Ships series(Anne McCaffrey, Fiction - The starships of the future have human brains as central computers)
Old Man's War (John Scalzi, Fiction - Retired adults are recruited to fight humanity's interstellar wars)
On Basilisk Station (David Weber, Fiction - A dishonored captain of an interstellar navy discovers a plot against her kingdom)
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