Valor's Trial

valor-s-trial
This series just keeps getting better. In her fourth book in the Confederation series, Tanya Huff pulls together the big picture that connects the four books into an original, unexpected and satisfying set of outcomes while continuing to deliver a tense thriller.

As with the previous books, "Valor's Trial" is filled with acts courage, witty humour, gripping fight scenes and characters that I learned to care about. Yet Tanya Huff does not repeat herself. Her characters develop, the choices they make are unexpected and their situation keeps generating fresh challenges.

The newly promoted Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr is not quite the woman she was in the previous books. She's still a Marine's Marine, dedicated to achieving her show more mission and getting her people home, but her super-hero reputation is drawing an annoying amount of attention, she has doubts about the role of the Elder Races in continuing the war with The Others and she's starting to think about life after the Core.

In "Valor's Trial" Kerr finds herself a Prisoner War. This is a surprising development given that The Others don't take prisoners. Confronted with a breakdown of Core values and a loss of fighting spirit among the prisoners, Kerr has to restore order and find away for everyone to escape. What made the story so strong was that, in doing this, Kerr doesn't take the most obvious choices, nor does she simply use force. She lives to her values and does whatever is necessary to uphold them.

I was impressed by Tanya Huff's ability to imagine so many alien races and help me focus not just on what makes them different but how they work together. She pulls off the idea of a Marine Corp culture that integrates three races into something more than any of them could be alone.

There are many deaths in this book yet Tanya Huff is focused not on the body count but on making the death's matter. She packs in the emotion and never gives in to the "kill first, think about it later" mindset.

The denouement is surprising and original but there's nothing tricky or clever clever about it. The ground work for the big picture has been carefully laid in the previous books and the decisions Kerr makes are entirely consistent with who she is and what she values.

There is a fifth book in the series. Given the ending of the fourth book, I'm intrigued to see where the story will go. I've already downloaded it but I'm saving it for next. month.

Marguerite Gavin does a great job of narrating the book in a way that keeps the pace and the toughness while still delivering an emotional punch. Follow the link below to listen to a sample of her reading "Valor's Trial"

"Valor's Trial" Audio Sample show less

The last thing Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr remembered before waking up in a dark underground cave was the lieutenant that she had been sent to retrieve during the battle for Estee vaporizing in a blast of flame and light. Well, if this was the afterlife, it was certainly a miserable one. Fortunately for her it’s not the afterlife but a POW camp, which is odd, because it’s a well known fact that the Others, the enemy collation that her interstellar Confederation has been fighting for a century, don’t take prisoners. So how did she get here, and more importantly, how does she escape?

The scope broadens yet again, and I was hugely satisfied to see some of the hand-wavey "we fight them because they're the bad guys" propaganda directly addressed. I was not expecting this series to have such a clear overarching structure or such an ultimately anti-war message, given all the chest-thumping throughout all the novels. Really well done.

Torin did finally get to go back to Sh'quo company, after the debacle on Crucible, and they were deployed again almost immediately. Battle ensues, new weapon is dropped, new glass crater where Torin was. Craig Ryder doesn't give up though, and
joins forces with Torin's father and Presit the reporter to try and
convince the Marines that Torin must have survived. She did, but she was somehow transported to a POW camp where the other Marines are the biggest threat. She proceeds to kick butt and take names, but her reputation preceded her (and people who didn't know promptly find out via the grapevine, in a wonderfully true to life piece of writing), she faces mistrust, bureaucracy, and the apathy of the other prisoners.
I laughed out loud at show more many points, the dialogue is wonderful, and I got totally swept up in the drama. The alien races are well characterised, and I'll use this series when bemoaning the dearth of strange aliens in TV shows and movies - you can still empathise with a sympathetic centipede like life form if the writing is strong enough. The challenges Torin faces are reminiscent of her adventure on Big Yellow, but the end result is that she finds some answers that she was looking for. I wasn't 100% happy with the hint of what she'll do next, but I'll read anything about her. :) show less

Valor's Trial is the fourth book in Tanya Huff's Confederation series.

Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr of the multi-species Confederation is sent to another battle in that same war against the multi-species aliens called the Others by her side. One thing about the Others that seemed to be a known fact was that they never took prisoners. So why has Torin awakened in what appears to be an underground prisoner of war camp?

This being Torin Kerr, she works to set things straight, including finding a way out. Meanwhile, it's believed that there were no survivors of that battle. Torin's father and her significant other, civilian salvage operator Craig Ryder, don't believe she's gone. Craig is going to do something about that, although the other show more person he involves isn't exactly someone Torin ever wanted to see again.

The grim reality of POW life and the bleak outlook for escape make for compelling listening, as do the personalities of our heroine and her supporting characters. I enjoyed the speculation, the problem solving, and meeting new aliens. I didn't enjoy some of the harsher consequences of war, but of course I wasn't expected to.

The point of view is mostly Torin Kerr's, but it shifts to Craig Ryder and back within chapters. show less

Oookay. What I said in the first two reviews about going overboard? Tanya Huff managed, more or less, not to - which is amazing given the story. But Torin is so purely the Gunnery Sergeant in this one... OK. The story starts with her going off to another battle - and not making it back. Then things get weird. And it wasn't the Elder Races lying to the Younger - no, the meddling is a lot deeper and odder than that. Interesting how closely the Others' military setup matches the Confederacy's, too. And the Di'Taykan who thinks she's a god is a) weird and b) - well, I'm surprised she survived the trip up. A weird and wonderful story, and I really hope Huff doesn't write any more - because I think she's pushed it about as far as it will go. show more Of course, I thought that for the last one too…
Reread - OK, I read this, I know I did (I even reviewed it, right here). I didn't remember _any_ of it. Well, I remembered Big Yellow was involved, but not how. None of the events were even slightly familiar, aside from being very much in Torin's patterns. Very strange, I usually remember better than that. Well, it's a good book; I still agree with my review above. Though the final scene does have a major pivot, making the next book more possible, which I apparently didn't notice last time. show less

I have mixed reactions to this fourth installment in the series about Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.

On the positive side, I felt the plot moved along a lot more smoothly than the last volume. Whereas The Better Part of Valor and The Heart of Valor both were a bit lumpy and unevenly paced, this flowed along quite smoothly.

Ms. Huff also made the various alien races appear a lot more matter-of-fact, which is a good thing. In previous books, they always seemed to be written as oddities, which didn't make sense in the integrated universe of the book. In this volume, they seem as natural as the human characters.

On the negative side, if I had to read one more paragraph telling us how Gunnery Sergeants walk on water, how Gunnery Sergeants are show more omniscient and omnipotent, how Gunnery Sergeants are the axle on which the universe turns, how Gunnery Sergeant's s***...err...I was going to commit mayhem somewhere. It's not just in Gunny Kerr's thoughts: Ms. Huff has almost every single character in the book thinking it and saying it out loud, over and over and over and over. I mean, she's even got the enemy characters saying it.

Can you say, "beat this horse to death, then hit it 1,000,000 more times"?

The book actually ends on a note that could be the end of the series. I'm not saying that it actually will end there, just that it's a good ending place if one chooses to stop. I'll have to examine the next book in the series a bit before I make up my mind on what to do. show less