Elizabeth Moon

IN A NUTSHELL
A fun, overcoming-the-odds adventure that twists the Military Sci Fi trope in interesting ways, has an engaging young woman as the lead character, is fast-paced, exciting, and has skilful world-building and reasonably well-rounded characters. It kept me turning the pages and left me eager for more.

I hadn’t meant to read ‘Trading In Danger’. I was just going to read the Kindle sample so that I could decide whether I wanted to buy it. It got its hooks into me at once, and show more not only did I read the whole thing, but I bought the rest of the five-book series.

This is the kind of exhilarating but thought-provoking Space Opera that I love. I loved that it twisted the Military SF tropes by having our rising-star space cadet dismissed from the academy in the opening scenes. This isn’t what is supposed to happen to a competent, talented, dedicated heroine, especially when her name is Vatta, and the series is called Vatta’s War.

Then it turned out that Ky Vatta is an heiress to a major space shipping company, and she’s been given the captaincy of a ship with instructions to take it on a last milk run before having it scrapped. That didn’t sound very exciting, so I was already waiting for Ky to do something different and for things to go wrong. She did, and they did, and suddenly I was in an exciting struggle with an inexperienced captain and a civilian crew, finding themselves in a war zone. There was sabotage, explosions, mercenaries, rogue ships, mutinies and no means of communicating with home.

Ky’s inexperience helped with the world-building as old hands explained things to her. Her military training gave her the background to grasp what was going on and explain it to others. In the end though, it was her character that got her through. Ky is placed in a situation where she has to make rapid life-or-death decisions with limited data and almost no resources. She doesn’t get everything right, but she discovers something important about herself: she feels alive under pressure, combat thrills her and killing the bad guys not only causes her qualms but gives her moments of euphoria. She’s a little ashamed to discover that, as the daughter of a merchant house with a reputation for honesty and a commitment to trade and profit, she is a natural warrior and killer.

I enjoyed the fast pace of the plot. I admired how real the technology and the trading environment seemed (think C. J Cherryh’s ‘Chanur’ series, but with enough twists to make it distinctive). The problems that Ky faced were engaging and complicated, and I enjoyed watching her solve them. I also liked the way each problem solved revealed a bigger, more dangerous picture that I was eager to know more about.

It was a very satisfying start to an exciting and entertaining series. show less

Sheepfarmer's Daughter is essentially a military SF story told in an adventure fantasy setting. If this sounds AWESOME, read on.

The novel's setting is the stock fantasy world of the 70s, but Moon describes it in lush, precise detail (like the best Dungeons & Dragons campaign you've ever played). Instead of following a traveling band of heroes, the book lovingly depicts the everyday slog of infantry in a mercenary company.

There is plenty of adventure and peril, but also a lot of tedium, show more suffering, and details of everyday life. (It's so dense with these details that you will find yourself struggling to remember place names and minor characters—don't worry; there's not a test at the end.) It's the perfect light read for those who enjoy atmosphere and worldbuilding rather than nonstop action. As with any book that follows a tight-knit community, there's a coziness to the narrative that reminds me of school stories as well as military SF (which explains why the two genres are so easily combined, as in Ender's Game).

Paksenarrion is a wonderful, understated character—bold yet unsure of herself and fun to root for as she grows from a country bumpkin to a confident warrior. The book does intimate that she may have a heroic future, but she isn't a princess or a wizard or the Chosen One, and I like her the more for it. She's also apparently asexual, and it's depicted as totally okay and means that her emotional life doesn't center around sexuality (which, you know, is true of the rest of humanity as well, but don't tell writers that. I say that as a writer who loves her romance subplots).

I felt the book dealt with two touchy subjects very well—military service and the role of women. The novel doesn't glorify war, but it does sensitively depict why young people in an agrarian society would decide to enlist and the sense of community and loyalty that binds them together.

Gender is dealt with in a refreshing way as well—Paks' world is much more egalitarian than many faux-medieval fantasy worlds, but there is still cultural variation in the treatment of women and extremely powerful depictions of sexual harassment and violence in a military context. Since Moon isn't going for historic realism, she takes her inspiration from the modern, rather than medieval, experience of women in the military. This means that we get lots of female characters who both kick ass and speak convincingly to her readers' lived experiences.

At the end of the day, it's a fluffy rather than literary work of fantasy literature, but a totally delightful one that doesn't repeat the same old tropes of court intrigue, runaway princesses, artifact quests, and end of the world scenarios. Highly recommended. show less

Kylara Vatta is nice, perhaps too nice. Her top status at the Academy is sacrificed for public relations reasons after her efforts to help a fellow student fall awry. Her family's powerful connections and vast trading conglomerate come in useful, and within a week Ky finds herself as the captain of an old rust bucket, headed to the far reaches of space. What should have been a simple milk run becomes something much more dangerous when Ky takes on an additional contract, leaving them stranded show more near planets on the brink of civil war. Ky may be young, but she's not stupid - or as gullible as people assume. It's going to take all of her military training to get her and her crew out alive.

I haven't read much in the space opera genre, but wow. This book completely swept me away. Ky is a believable and imperfect heroine, surviving by her wits in a situation that gets worse by the minute. The tension at parts was absolutely unbearable. I've enjoyed Moon's Paksenarrion fantasy books and her Speed of Dark, and I'm very glad I have a wonderful new series to fall in love with. I'm starting the next book, Marque and Reprisal, this very day. show less

Although technically science fiction, this novel of first contact could have been set in any collision of extremely different cultures.

On a remote planet, a failing group of colonists is being removed to be resettled on another world. Ofelia, an elderly woman who has lived there for 40 years, decides she's tired of being ordered around and considered a nuisance, and she hides in the forest until the last ships leave. She has a chance to enjoy her isolation for some months, then listens, show more horrified, as her radio picks up the arrival of a new ship, thousands of kilometers away, and their destruction by some sort of previously unknown indigenous life form. Eventually they find her, leading to remarkable changes for her and for future arrivals.

The main character is testy and can be a bit of an acquired taste, but she also has curiosity and a willingness to think outside the box when confronted with the natives. I'm really glad I continued with the book after wondering if I could take a whole book about her. Recommended for fans of both sci fi and literary fiction. show less