Trading in Danger

Elizabeth Moon
Completed 3/31/2024, Reviewed 3/31/2024
3 stars

This is the first book I’ve read by Elizabeth Moon that I didn’t think was great.  It was good, but not great.  I thought it was uneven in pacing and I had a tough time staying interested in what the character was doing.  Moon’s prose is terrific, as usual.  When I began the book, I was pulled in right away.  But as I reflect on the book to write this review, I have concluded that the sum of the parts was better than the whole.  In the end, I just didn’t quite care about the main character.  

The book begins with Kylara Vatta being kicked out of a military academy in her last year.  She helped someone whose blabbing to the press brought shame onto the academy.  Expelled, she is returned to her family which owns a huge interstellar transport company.  Her father gives her command of an old junker of a ship to deliver some cargo and then sell for scrap.  Once again, she makes a judgement call that blows up in her face.  She contracts to deliver agricultural equipment to a planet that’s been waiting over a year for another company to deliver.  On the way, the FTL (faster than light) console starts to go out.  She goes to another planetary system to acquire the ag equipment and get the necessary repairs.  However, the system is on the brink of war, leading her and her crew from one crisis to another.

Ky is a strong, well-developed character.  She’s the only daughter of the Vatta family and the only child who wanted to go into the military rather than the family business.  Her problem is she sometimes makes bad choices that lead to terrible consequences.  Her road to hell is always paved with good intentions.  However, she always seems to come out stronger at the other end.  But this time, she’s in the middle of a war, something no captain of her family’s cargo business has ever had to face.

She’s got a good crew, too.  I liked the “babysitters” that her father sent with her on the ship.  They were strong supporters of Ky and not annoying “told-you-so” characters.  The bad guys show up when her ship is contracted by mercenaries to carry some passengers from other ships.  That’s when the real action begins, testing Ky’s mettle.

While this wasn’t exactly military sci fi, it wasn’t space opera either.  It was sort of an old-fashioned space adventure with a modern female lead.  It was crafted well, with the character going from one bout of trouble to another, like a good plot should.  I think the problem for me was that the build up from the time Ky is expelled to the beginning of the war felt meandering.  Granted, the character was meandering as well, dealing with the expulsion, the loss of her boyfriend at the academy, the question of whether she’s worthy of commanding a ship, and debating about entering a contract on her own.  By the time the real action starts, I had lost my interest in her.  

The ending is good, however.  I was pretty satisfied with it.  But once I finished the book, I felt kind of meh.  Hence, I give it three stars out of five.  The characters are good, the prose is good, the world-building is good, all the parts are good.  I just don’t have any inclination to ready any other books in the series.  There are four more in “Vatta’s War” and two in “Vatta’s Peace.”