Rules of Engagement

I want to say this was simply a bad book but I think that's just my disappointment with Elizabeth Moon for basically phoning it in. She adheres to the rather annoying trope of RAPE IS DRAMA that so turned me off Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Which to me is just a sign of laziness. I also found it really annoying to have the author keep throwing in lines about the various rapes that are supposed to leave it up to our imaginations as to what happened, as lets be honest, there are only so ways a woman or anyone for that matter can be sexually assaulted. And I really doubt a culture in which the discussion of sex is not any form of taboo would have people of any age think a line like "she didn't even know the words for what had show more been done to them". Either fade to black and skip to afterwards or be explicit. This 12a certificate non-sense is just insulting.

The absurd bad guys, who are straight out of a cartoon except for all the rape and breeding of women, don't belong in this series that has been fairly realistic with it's setting so far. The space barbarians where are least a credible societal model rather than a bad joke at the expense of Texas.

The thing that really did it for me though was her rewriting of Brun's character to something that only barely fit within the credible given how she developed over the first trilogy. I could hear Brun being stretched and twisted to fit into a shape that was more appropriate for her Bubbles persona.

All in all I think I'm done with this series. Vatta Wars is a better series from the word go. The Familias Regnant series is so obviously a trial run that just went out of control. show less

Continuing with the Serrano Legacy series. This is the second book following Esmay Suiza.

After surviving and and refuting a hostile takeover of a spaceship, Esmay is excited to return to school on a command track. It looks like the worst is behind her, and she can become a better officer as a result. She doesn't count on the arrival of the Speaker's daughter, the vibrant and spoiled Brun. Brun latches onto Esmay--just what the overbooked student wants the least--and then starts making moves on Esmay's man. The situation spirals out of control, and after Brun leaves she ends up captive in an impossible situation... one that leaves Esmay disgraced, but ready to come to the rescue yet again.

I didn't like this book as much as the previous show more one. The drama wasn't of the space opera variety (not until the end), but more psychological. It was very difficult to read about Brun's situation as captive of a sort of super-future Texan polygamist cult. Esmay's travails were also of a more personal nature, and rather frustrating at times. Most importantly, the major inciting incident of the book didn't feel that horrible to me, because I felt Esmay's sentiments on Brun were quite true.

In all, an uneven read, but I'm continuing with the next two books in the series. show less

(Alistair) Well, now. I should apologize somewhat, I think, for the fact what you are seeing is an entry about the 5th book in a series - the "Serrano Legacy" series - when you will not have seen corresponding entries before about books 1-4, seeing as I read those well before I started regular bookloggings.

Anyway, on with the bookloggery. I've enjoyed this series, in general, as fun, on-the-light-side space opera - which is, in essentials, what they are. It is flawed, certainly - the villains are drawn with a rather cartoonish extremity: the villains of the previous book, Once a Hero, known as the Bloodhorde, are essentially Vikings - without any of the Vikings good points, I stipulate - in space; and the villains of this book, the "New show more Texas Godfearing Militia", are a bunch of misogynistic woman-enslavers with a penchant for gang rape, forced breeding and mutilation...

...well, let me put it this way. They make David Weber's Masadans look like a model of enlightened tolerance.

I think I'd definitely still classify it as light spopera-ish because of aspects of the background (really, I can't see either of the above two groups functioning at all as starfaring-level societies, especially given how moronically the NTGM manage to act, and the patronage-infested, ever-so-slightly-corrupt, now-having-rejuvenation-problems society of the Familias Regnant that our protagonists come from gives me some plausibility problems, too), and the remainder of the plot - star-crossed lovers! soap-opera misunderstandings! daring rescues! aunts sorting things out (no, wait, that's Wodehouse, or maybe anti-Wodehouse)!

Anyway, that said: probably the weakest of the series so far. The villains were, frankly, too cartoonish, and I don't think their villainry and its effects are treated as well as it deserved to be, or needed to be, for this book. I'll continue with the series later, in the hope of seeing the good light spopera of the earlier books return, but probably won't be revisiting this one.

Warning: probably offensive to Texans who don't like seeing bits of their culture used as a model by future regressives.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2008/01/rules-of-engagement-elizabe... ) show less

Esmay and Brun and the young Barron Serrano go to space fleet school together and a romance novel follows, followed by a view of some fanatic anti women cult, followed by violence against women and conspiracies with magic resolutions.

Not the best book in the series by far. There are good parts. There are parts (or the lack of parts) that really hurts the overall picture.

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.

Excellent story. I especially like the space warfare scenes but enjoyed following characters familiar from previous books. I have the next book in ther seires on order from the library and I can't wait.

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