Once a Hero

Call me completely dumb, but I read a full 300 pages of this novel before giving up because it had gotten so progressively STUPID. God, it was a stupid and boring novel. This was my first Elizabeth Moon novel and I had always heard pretty good things about her, but this was not a good introduction to her work for me. When I bought this, I didn't know that this was the fourth book in a large series. It would have helped to read the preceding book and from what I could tell, the preceding book would have been a lot better.

In the preceding book, protagonist Lieutenant Esmay Suiza had survived a mutiny on a warship where her captain had turned traitor along with several other ship captains and there was a battle on the ship leaving her show more senior officer. She took the ship back to the ongoing warship battle and won, beating all odds. In this book, she's court marshaled for mutiny and is exonerated. She goes to her home planet on leave, has a horrible time, can't wait to get back to Fleet, and upon arriving, instead of being assigned to another warship, she discovers she's assigned to a monstrously huge repair spaceship. It has 18 levels and is the size of an orbital space station. It has 25,000 personnel, a captain who hates her, and multiple admirals. She's assigned to Hull and Architecture, a department she has no experience in, and yes, that's about the most exciting department on this ship. And so begins an entire book of descriptions of inventory racks, getting lost on various levels, eating in mess halls, taking tubes to various levels, other departments, such as Scan, Tactical, blah, blah, blah. Oh my God, is it boring. She has to go get inventory number GS5077658SL or crap like that and find plan FR564972, etc. How many pages of that shit can you read? Fortunately some action finally occurs. Except that it's beyond stupid. They find out about a damaged warship in another sector that they want to repair, so they "jump" without escort to get it, find dead and wounded people on it, transfer all of the bloody but strangely unwounded (after all) people to the sick bay, and start working on the ship, which will apparently take months to repair. Two warships that were with the damaged one leave them to go back to their previous destination, leaving the repair ship alone. Understand that their enemies lack good technology and would like nothing more than to capture this type of ship so they could use it for themselves. And so the 25 wounded crew members of the ship they just got are an enemy commando team. And a couple of hours after they've been in sick bay, the authorities on the repair ship, get them up, give them clothes and IDs and assign them to various departments to work because they desperately need their help. They desperately need the help of 25 people who don't know anything about their ship when they already have 25,000 people? Yeah, that's logical. How freaking stupid is that? When Esmay's assigned person comes, she gets a bad feeling about him, shares it with her boss, and immediately concludes that it's an enemy commando team that attacked the ship they took in, killed its personnel, put on their uniforms, are acting as Fleet personnel, and are now spread all over the repair ship ready to take it over. She just knew it. She knew the plan. Somehow. It's amazing. It's beyond comprehension that she would be able to come to that conclusion just by interacting with one person from that ship. It literally makes no sense whatsoever. It's stupid as hell. Of course, it turns out that she's right, but it's virtually impossible for anyone to come to that conclusion based on just her instinct. And then the enemy commando team of 25 people steal a few dull dinner knives from the mess hall while eating, get together, and laughingly plan to take over the ship, killing as many people as possible with these "weapons" even though they face 25,000 people. Meanwhile, the captain and admirals have been alerted to everything by Esmay and are planning on taking over the oncoming enemy warships when they arrive, even though they have no weapons. Then they're going to blow up their own ship and people to keep it out of the hands of the enemy. I read a little bit further. The bad guys take a hostage, Esmay's love interest. They kill a few people. But I just stopped because the book had gotten so fucking stupid, I just couldn't continue. I can't believe how boring and how dumb this book and this premise is. I've just finished reading the first 10 Honor Harrington books, which I've compared this book to because of the theoretically strong female protagonists, but David Weber can write a believable, compelling story and Honor rocks. Moon is a weak writer who chooses boring things to write about and writes unrealistic scenes and scenarios and makes her books unbelievable as a result. If she had just made some adjustments, changed some things, it could have been better, maybe much better, I'm not sure. But she didn't and as a result, the book sucks. I'm not going to give any more books in this series a chance. There may be some good ones, but I'm not risking it. Not recommended. show less

This book feels like it's what all Honor Harrington books want to be when they grow up; but beyond the superficial similarity, i.e., the main character is a female interplanetary navy officer with a flair for command, Once a Hero has a more nuanced approach to the story it has to tell and the characters that are participating. Yes, there's ship combat and hand to hand combat, but the main arc of the story is more about personal discovery and growth than about kicking ass, though ass kicking does indeed occur.

Surprised to find that upon re-reading this book (for the third or fourth time, actually) I've increased its rating by a whole star.

I have some problems with the Familias framework Moon created for this series of books. In particular, many of the principal characters in these stories come from extremely privileged backgrounds, and much of the discussion is framed as arguments about status within the privileged classes. All of that is actually kind of fun, but it's a little disconcerting to find those games driving what are at heart military action tales.

Others, judging from the reviews, find the horses in these tales offensive. I don't. And folks who don't want to read about brutality really should avoid this class of novel; it comes show more with the territory. At least in Moon's books, it's presented as offensive.

That said: Moon is a master plotter, an efficient writer, and truly excellent at character creation. This is a complex novel on several levels. Besides the warfare, there are two very different political environments, fleet politics, family disagreements, on-board relationships, and a young woman finding herself. Moon integrates these various threads more effectively than anyone else writing military SF. I like this stuff; wish she'd return to it.

This review has also been published on a dabbler's journal. show less

Interestingly enough, this book in the series "The Serrano Legacy" has very little to do with Heris Serrano, or any other Serrano. Instead we follow Esmay Suiza, the junior lieutenant that brought a ship back in a previous book. I would often find such detours annoying, but I really like this book and was about to give it five stars until some cheesy elements in the end tried to pull it down. Well, I'll give it five stars anyway.

Esmay Suiza is a female space officer from a planet which doesn't care for rejuvenation, barely care for space, and absolutely not care for female military. With that background she doesn't quite fit in, with rare flashes of absolute brilliance. Now she has to answer for her actions in front of a court martial, show more and they are not her friends. show less

After a break, I'm continuing with the Serrano Legacy series by Elizabeth Moon. The first three books on Heris Serrano--though good--were a bit of a disappointment. I was pleased to find this book, continuing the series with a bit character from WINNING COLORS, was much better and more scifi opera in the style of her later Vatta's War series.

Esmay Suiza didn't intend to be a hero. But when her spaceship was captained by a traitor, she and others rose in mutiny. Esmay ended up as captain, making a decisive victory against incredible odds. However, in the aftermath, no one knows how the no-ambition ensign did it; Esmay herself is befuddled. When reassigned to a new ship, trouble finds her yet again, and this time Esmay must confront her show more deepest fears in order to stay alive--and mentally sound.

Elizabeth Moon writes great science fiction. Esmay is a complicated character. Like Heris Serrano, she's extremely stoic, but Esmay has her reasons--and it's interesting how the reader discovers those reasons along with her. At times, the psychological aspects did seem to drag on too long, but the rest of the book relied on constant action and suspense. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series. show less

I do not read the Familias Regnant books for deep discourse but for entertainment so this one surprised me a bit with being a somewhat darker than the previous three. The protagonist, Esmay Suiza, has recurring and extremely disturbing nightmares, and her lack of will to confront and treat these symptoms affects her Fleet career negatively. Her personal struggle and doubt brings depth to a story that else would had been a not only predictable but shallow space opera.

My main objection is people are dying left and right, some of them while being abused, but you never feel affected by it. This book is as clinically clean as a Star Trek Next Generation episode, stuffed with red uniformed nobodies.

I still liked it. It's a capturing and fast show more read. show less

Structurally, this book is kind of an odd duck. It functions both as a sequel to the Heris Serrano trilogy that precedes it and as the beginning of a new series that stars a different character. As such, there are a few sharp edges. I had read the first three books some time ago - long enough that I was essentially coming to this one cold - and as a result, the court-martial that takes up a large chunk of the beginning of this book felt both confusing and overlong. If I'd come into this book fresh off the heels of its predecessor, though, that's exactly what I would want to see, so I don't hold anything against that section. Thus, while Heris and Esmay have their own stories that are essentially independent, that one chunk of bridgework show more does merit mention for the sake of newcomers.

Aside from that caveat, Moon does an excellent job of explaining how a lackluster tech-track lieutenant managed to pull off...well, what she gets court-martialed for, and properly so. The book shakes out into four roughly equal parts: the court-martial, Esmay's trip home, her attempt to maintain her old career track, and the big action sequence that proves to her (and her superiors) that her previous heroism was anything but a fluke.

In some ways, this series provides interesting contrasts with both the Honor Harrington books and the Kris Longknife series. I expect that fans of any of these three series will find the other two rewarding as well. show less