Conflict of Honors

Conflicts of Honor by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller is my second book in the Liaden Universe series. This is a delightful story, a blend of romance and adventure as well as a comedy of manners set in a trade ship that travels through space. It opens with Priscilla Delacroix being betrayed by her shipmates and abandoned, subsequently she is welcomed aboard a new ship by Captain Shan yos’Galen and given a position and, more importantly a home. They begin a subtle romantic dance around each other that involves loyalty, love and unlocking the past.

Shan is a member of Clan Korval, a half-human from Liaden. Priscilla is a Terran with a very interesting back story. She was banished from her home planet when she was sixteen. This series is show more building a extensive universe and each issue gives us more information on the various cultures. The authors world-building is excellent and the reader is drawn deeply into this fabulous universe with it’s complex connections and rules.

Giving us well-rounded characters that one cares for, a fresh and exciting universe to discover and enough action and adventure to keep the story moving along, the Liaden books are a great discovery for me, and I look forward to continuing on with the series. show less

Very good. I like Priscilla and Shan - she's so driven, and so confused; he's so casual, and hiding things so well. And Lina, and Rusty, and Gordy. And Olanek is beautifully nasty. I think this is actually a better introduction to the Liaden universe than either Agent of Change (first published) or Local Custom (first in chronology - well, first of the Korval stories, at least). There's a lot of elements elegantly introduced here - Balance, and melant'i, and bowing, and the Code in general - and saying 'sorry'. And a beautiful romance to carry the information along. Very good (I said that already).

Priscilla Delacroix y Mendoza is declared legally dead and exiled from her homeworld at just sixteen. She spends the next few years working her way up through the ranks of spaceship crew, moving from ship to ship, and getting pilot training whenever she can. The Liaden trading ship Doxflon is not a pleasant ship, but she's gotten to the rank of cargo master, and she can't afford to buy out her contract before its end in six months anyway.

Even though she thinks she's found evidence that the ship's Trader, Sav Rid Olenik, is engaged in some very serious smuggling.

She's been very careful and quiet with that evidence, though, and is not expecting it at all when Olenik arranges for her to be attacked and stranded on a rather nowhere sort of show more depot world. Another Liaden ship is in port, though, and with no other real options, she asks Shan yos'Galen, captain of Dutiful Passage, for a job--any job.

Shan has his own issues with Olenik, and gradually he and Priscilla become allies in the quest for, as the Liaden say, "balance" with Sav Rid Olenik.

This is, as far as I can determine, the second book written in the series, and not all the concepts later important in the series are fully developed yet. Shan is also intentionally playing a bit of a fool in this one, which doesn't always work well. If you didn't grow up in a family or culture where alcoholic beverages are just beverages, and wine might well be served with breakfast, his drinking may well not play well for you, either. (Although, honestly, it's much like what I saw growing up in the Sicilian part of my family--which was not the part of the family that had the alcoholics.)

Lee and Miller get stronger as writers as the series progresses, and the Liaden universe gets more fully and richly developed--but this is an enjoyable book, and Priscilla, Shan, and the rest of the crew of Dutiful Passage are likable and worth getting to know.

Recommended.

I bought this book. show less

This was the very first Liaden book I discovered, way back a long long time ago. I think its still my favorite. It was one of the first ones written, too, so if you read it after reading some of the other ones you many, indeed find little inconsistencies as the authors' world has adjusted or gotten explained more. But its a fabulous book, and I'm getting ready to re-read it again. I love the connections to stories about other times (see the Chapbooks of old for more, they are available in collections now). And yes - I adore Miri, and Val Con, and Theo, and Pat Rin, but I met them later. I have a special love for Priscilla and Shan. If it is not to your taste, read some of the other ones. This is a rich universe, and the authors have show more created fascinating characters, planets, and societies to think about. Seriously, not to be missed!! show less

Re read and just as wonderful. I totally love Shan. There's something new every time I read one of Lee and Millers books again.

Shan and Priscilla are great. The language used in these novels is wonderful. You enjoy every word. The only thing that I didn't totally love is the mystical woman shamanistic thing. I just can't get behind that in any book. But space ships and Korval count me in.

Lee, Sharon, and Steve Miller. Conflict of Honors. 1988. E-book ed., Baen, 2015. Liaden Universe 9.
Conflict of Honors is one of the first three books written in the ongoing series of Liaden space operas. It is the first novel in the central narrative of clan Korval, but it is the 10th novel in the Korval chronology. I use the volume numbers provided by Goodreads out of convenience. Wikipedia provides helpful charts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liaden_universe). Conflict of Honors tells the story of the one-time agent of change, Shan, now captain of the trading ship Beautiful Passage. He rescues exiled 16-year-old Priscilla, a Terran girl framed for fraud by the crew of another ship. Avuncular mentoring blossoms into romance. It is show more always good to join the Dionysian Terran culture with the Apollonian Liadens. Lee and Miller are pros: four stars. show less

2nd in the published order of the series, this has nothign whatsoever to do with the first other than it is is set in the same universe and features memebers of the same family as Val'Con. Deeper study will reveal that it is in fact a prequel set 5-10 years before book 1. I woudl recommend reading this first, then Agent of Change but I suppose it doesn't really matter.

No aliens in this at all, just on Priscilla, a young terran girl working her way into space, and becomming embroiled in the long-term revenge plans of two warring Liad Trader families. Fairly obvious all the way thourgh, but well enough written apart from the occasional annoying jumps in character viewpoint. The somewhat sudden introduction to mental powers is unwelcome, show more but hopefully explained somewhere along hte line. The heorine does come good as expected and seems a bit too Mary Sue for my liking, capable of anything, with very little instruction at all.

There are good intereactions between the characters, especially the young lad Gordy. I'm not really convinced that honour is a sufficiently strong motive for all the bad guys actions, but there you go, it's been a standard plot since time began.

Readable, as a standalone if you're looking at a trader based SF romance, or as part of the series if you wish, but nothing really stand out special. show less