Moon, Elizabeth. Into the Fire. Vatta’s Peace No. 2. Del Rey, 2018.
Ky Vatta returns home after being marooned in Cold Welcome. She is appointed Commandant of the space academy she left in disgrace in Trading in Danger, the first volume of the Vatta’s War series. But the political machinations that led to her arctic adventure have not ended. Her family still faces assassination attempts and Slotter Key faces civil war. Elizabeth Moon is an expert at character-driven military science fiction. I hope there will be a third volume to the series, maybe a new generation to rival the Honorverse. 4 stars. ( )

It's definitely a middle book. But even with that caveat the pacing is extremely uneven. I literally thought I'd skipped to another book in the last third. A lot of disconnect. ( )

I am a big fan of fantasy and science fiction novels especially if they are long and have several books in the series. I really enjoy a series of books that I can immerse myself in and I first picked up an Elizabeth Moon novel because it was long and part of a multi-novel series. I continue to read her books because I find them engrossing and highly enjoyable. ( )

Ky and her family must defeat a cabal. They all learn a lot about themselves. ( )

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Quote:
"We ready?" he asked when Ky had settled herself in the backseat.
"Better be," Ky said. "I'd hate to have wasted all those hours trying to make this plan as shaky and unworkable as possible."
Review:
Into the Fire picks up almost immediately after Cold Fire leaves us: trapped on Slotter Key with a rebel shadow faction of the army hellbent on the destruction of the Vatta family first and the Slotter Key government second. This shadow faction has insinuated itself into every part of the Slotter Key government, and they use it at every advantage... to screw over the Vatta family.

To say I did not care for this book is perhaps an understatement. It is, in a lot of ways, better than Cold Fire. For instance, the setup to make the story in Into the Fire makes some sense, especially since it is based on past events that happened in the original quintet. The characters are also mostly together in one place, communicating with each other, and solving problems together.

It was a lot of the other parts that I just did not care for.

To start with, Into the Fire repeated itself. A lot. The beginning of the book was a lot of the same scenarios on a loop. Which mostly meant that anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. I'm pretty certain I saw the same conversation, with the same lawyer, three times. Though I shouldn't say it is everything goes wrong. Maybe one in every three things go wrong, just so you feel like there is some forward momentum but in actuality it is a trap, waiting until a certain part in the story when everything all happens at once.

Also I have a hard time believing this shadow faction in the military can exist. Several thousand people were on the enemy side, and not one of them blabbed? Not even once? For generations? Two people on the good side told their superiors during the course of this one book alone, which prompted more investigations into what was going on. No organization, no matter how careful, is going to choose entirely people who are on their side. And they're not going to keep everyone happy the entire time: someone is going to get jilted and turn coat.

Plus this revenge plot the enemy family has been cooking up against the Vatta family has been ongoing for decades. And the feud started centuries ago when the Vatta family wouldn't play ball with their criminal enterprise. Like seriously? That's what we're going with? That fueled 2 centuries of hate and decades worth of destruction?

Of course we're forgetting about Grace Vatta's past which gets brought up in more detail in Into the Fire. It is implied, though I can't remember if it was outright stated, that her involvement in the Unitarian War contributed to the enemy family's hatred of her. Her being in the war was brought up before, quite a bit actually, but it was always surface level because no one wanted to bring up bad memories. And honestly I do not like the way this was handled. Both on the side of the author and on the side of everyone involved in the book. It just seems so unnecessary, and in some ways rewriting the past to make the present situation work.

Once the book finally kicked off into high gear, things went quicker. In fact a bit too fast. I didn't care for the ending to this story because it felt wrapped up too quickly, too easily. I do believe Into the Fire is the last book in Vatta's Peace. I haven't seen anything about a third book, though I haven't seen anything to suggest this is complete, either. And the ending certainly feels like it wrapped up the story in a nice little package that no one at all is ever going to worry about again.

Though there are enough random threads left hanging and unexplored that she could totally come back to this world again if she wanted to. Trust me. ( )