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Kylara Vatta is the only daughter in a family full of sons and her father's only child to buck tradition by choosing a military career instead of joining the family business. For Ky, it's no contest: Even running the prestigious Vatta Transport Ltd. shipping concern can't hold a candle to shipping out as an officer aboard an interstellar cruiser. It's adventure, not commerce, that stirs her soul. And despite her family's misgivings, there can be no doubt that a Vatta in the service will prove a valuable asset. But with a single error in judgment, it all comes crumbling down. Expelled from the Academy in disgrace--and returning home to her humiliated family, a storm of high-profile media coverage, and the gaping void of her own future--Ky is ready to face the inevitable onslaught of anger, disappointment, even pity. But soon after opportunity's door slams shut, Ky finds herself with a ticket to ride--and a shot at redemption--as captain of a Vatta Transport ship. It's a simple assignment: escorting one of the Vatta fleet's oldest ships on its final voyage...to the scrapyard. But keeping it simple has never been Ky's style. And even though her father has provided a crew of seasoned veterans to baby-sit the fledgling captain on her maiden milk run, they can't stop Ky from turning the routine mission into a risky venture--in the name of turning a profit for Vatta Transport, of course. By snapping up a lucrative delivery contract defaulted on by a rival company, and using part of the proceeds to upgrade her condemned vehicle, Ky aims to prove she's got more going for her than just her family's famous name. But business will soon have to take a backseat to bravery, when Ky's change of plans sails her and the crew straight into the middle of a colonial war. For all her commercial savvy, it's her military training and born-soldier's instincts that Ky will need to call on in the face of deadly combat, dangerous mercenaries, and violent mutiny.… (more)
User reviews
I haven't read much in the space opera genre, but wow. This book completely swept me away. Ky is a believable and imperfect heroine, surviving by her wits in a situation that gets worse by the minute. The tension at parts was absolutely unbearable. I've enjoyed Moon's Paksenarrion fantasy books and her Speed of Dark, and I'm very glad I have a wonderful new series to fall in love with. I'm starting the next book, Marque and Reprisal, this very day.
Once again Moon has captivated me with her characters and her plots. This author has the ability to create a character that is like the girl next door but with super powers. Kylara Vatta is no super hero but she has grit and determination that overpowers all
Kylara’s introspection into her own motivations and her questioning attitude flesh out her character with reality. Kylara’s character becomes real and you keep paging because you begin to care for her and want to see what she is facing next. The book is the first in a series and I have refrained from reading it until I could acquire all the books or at least all that have been announced and published at this point. This looks like the beginning of a terrific series with some similarities to David Weber’s Honor Harrington and as far as I am concerned that is a very good thing.
I highly recommend the book.
I am glad that I did.
Set in a space opera universe of FTL travel, ansibles for FTL
Scandalous! Her family decides that a change of scenery and away from the media lights of her home planet of Slotter's Key. The Glennys Jones is one of the oldest ships in the Vatta trading fleet and due for scrap. Send Ky to captain the falling-apart ship for one last mission, with the end point of the mission having the ship being scrapped on a distant planet, and have her charter transportation back home for her and her crew. In the meantime, the scandal will have been forgotten
Simple, right?
Although she assiduously avoided joining the family business to this point, Ky cannot resist the chance to make some "trade and profit." And in the quest for that, winds up in an unfamiliar solar system that is just about ready to break out into civil war...
Moon is the sort of space opera writer that reminds me of Bujold in many ways. The technical details are plot oriented and relatively general in their details. Readers looking for lovingly thought out technical details of an FTL drive are going to be disappointed here. The technological details here serve character development and plot. And it is there, especially the character development, that Moon shines. Ky is a fully formed and envisioned three dimensional character, who has strengths, weaknesses, personality and who grows and changes in the course of the novel. Even when she does the wrong thing (for the right reasons), she is a sympathetic viewpoint character and Moon makes her the hard core of the novel. Her secondary characters are also well drawn as well, and contrast well against Ky, ranging from her family, to her crew, to those she tangles with in the course of her story.
The pacing is a bit slow as far as the action goes, its clear Moon is more interested in character development and starting the building of her world here than anything else. I was never precisely bored, but there are stretches that are less action packed than others. I also suspect that there might have been a larger book here that Moon decided to trim. Some subplots and ideas are mentioned and dropped in, but not fully explored. This may be a case of Chekov's Law, as applied to subsequent novels.
Speaking of subsequent novels, despite the relatively minor detractions, I definitely be looking to continue to read Ky's story in the subsequent novels in this series.
was typical fantasy, and that's not really my thing. However, this book is typical space opera, and that is my thing. I personally enjoyed it.
the review just below mine, I even thought the plot was a new one. Yes, I know, I know: I'm probably the only SF fan in the entire history of the universe
not to have read anything by Lois Mcmaster Bujold. Look, I've only been around for 18 years or so, and for the first 8 of those I wasn't really reading
all that much. I can't have read everything.
Trading in Danger is the first book in Moon's Vatta's War series. Described as military science fiction, we follow the story
Her father sends Ky off to a distant part of civilised space as Captain of one of the oldest ships in the family fleet on what should be a safe and routine trading trip. But things don't quite go according to plan and soon Ky must draw on all her military training to ensure she and her crew survive.
After a rather slow start (70 pages in it was still all trade and no danger) I enjoyed this story. I'm still not sure what I think of the military science fiction sub genre. I missed the world-building that I enjoy in other science fiction novels; Ky's universe felt like ours just with more space ships. But the characters were good and once it got going I was gripped by the storyline.
Kylara Vatta was a top cadet at her local military academy. In the opening scene, she is thrown out in disgrace (through no real fault of her own). Luckily she is a daughter of a very wealthy shipping family, so she automatically lands on her feet. To get her away from the spotlight and give her a chance to stretch her legs, her father gives her command of a freighter ship that is heading for the scrap yard. On the way she sees a chance to make a trading run for some extra profit that might allow her to fix the ship herself. Then Murphy’s Law kicks in: her FTL drive fails and she winds up in a system in the middle of a war zone, short of funds. Many problems spring up and are solved with varying degrees of elegance. It’s a textbook illustration of how much trouble you can get into even when you do everything right.
As the start of a new series, not every plot thread is wrapped up. Kylara may not stay forever in the trading career her father envisions for her, and there seem to be some elements in the military that may well still be interested in her. Some things seem unlikely, but don’t let that spoil your problem-solving fun. All in all, this book is a fast paced enjoyable adventure story.
Although shocked and upset by this abrupt end to her lifelong dream, Ky slips back
The first part of the story, with Ky's home life and long days in transit in space on a trading run, doesn't have much action, but the pace does pick up when she takes her ship off their pre-planned route in search of extra profit.
I enjoyed this book, and I liked the strong sense of family that comes through.
N.B. You may want to know what an ansible is, since they (or, rather, lack of them) play a large part in the story.
From Wikipedia : An ansible is a fictitious machine capable of instantaneous or superluminal communication - coined by Ursula K. Le Guin in [Rocannon's World].
As
Overall, Trading in Danger didn’t quite go the distance for me, but I still enjoyed it. The solid worldbuilding and interesting plot offset the thinness of the supporting cast. And as long as Kylara doesn’t stray too far into Mary Sue territory, I don’t mind the occasional cheesy, wish-fulfillment moment. I would be interested to read the rest of the series at some point in the future.
1 Trading in Danger
2 Marque and Reprisal
3 Engaging the Enemy
4 Command Decision
5 Victory Conditions
These 5 books are not so much a series as one long novel - there's one story arc, and you really need to read all five to get to the (satisfying) conclusion. (I somehow had the
Due to a misjudgement, Kylara Vatta, scion of an interstellar shipping business, gets kicked out of military academy shortly before graduation. She's pretty crushed by the end of her hopes for a military career, but there's always the family business to fall back on... or is there? Someone's apparently got it out for her family, and before Ky knows it, she's catapulted into the midst of a space war, seeking justice and vengeance against an unsavory alliance of pirates.
These are first and foremost action-adventure books, with plenty of shoot-em-up scenes and an uncomplicated moral compass - you know who the 'bad guys' are, and although Ky is normally affected by the trauma of war (even seeking therapy at one point), she's always clearly on the side of right. The one thing I wished the story had was more exploration of the bad guys' motivations - OK, we know they're racist, and bigoted against 'modified' humans (people who've had either genetic or physical/technological augmentation), and of course they want power - but what's the story behind it all?
However, the characters of the 'good guys' are well-drawn, and the story's definitely recommended for those who like strong female characters: there's Ky, with her military and strategic brilliance, her cousin Stella, who has the financial and business acumen to bring Vatta Enterprises back from the brink - and there's their grandmother, Grace, who is far from being the harmless old lady people might assume. (Grace might be my favorite character - it's wonderful to see an older woman portrayed with such verve.)
As many have mentioned, there are some definite parallells here with Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga. I'm not sure these are *quite* as good, but if you like one, I'd guess you'll like the other.
I am glad I own the complete set and hope to keep it together and send it off to one of you as soon as I'm done. ;)
The
The story is told mostly by the main character (Ky Vatta), although there are a couple of short switches of viewpoint to her father. This limited omniscience drives the story well, although the only character that is well developed is Ky herself. That said, she is a very interesting character, she knows she has flaws and tries hard to come to terms with them. The pace of the story is very good, and it kept me reading to find out what happened next, even getting to the end of the chapter wasn't enough to stop and I found myself reading it when I was walking along the train platform at the end of my commute!
In outline, Ky is kicked out of the local naval academy for helping the wrong guy. Her family run their own merchant shipping line and they send her off with an experienced crew in a ship destined for the breakers yard at the end of the trip. She succumbs to the Vatta instinct for 'trade and profit' and decides to make a side trip to fill a need for agricultural supplies at her first port of call. This takes her to another system. On the way in her ship's hyperspace drive fails, and while she's trying to scrape up funding for both the repairs and the tractor parts a war starts.
From there it becomes a very interesting sequence of events in dealing with the crisis and its fallout. Ky's ship ends up being used to intern the captains and senior officers of the other ships in the system, largely because it has no working hyperspace engine. This causes another set of interesting twists and turns in the story. Throughout the background to this we see a few glimpses of other things happening in other parts of the universe, which cleverly expands the background and lets the reader join some of the dots before Ky does it.
Overall an enjoyable and compelling read.
I really enjoyed this book, It is a coming of age book, in that Ky is trying hard to be her own person and break out of assumptions everyone has made about her. She's intelligent, thinks, and considers her actions. But sometimes your choices are limiting and you have to choose the best of multiple bad choices.
Ky grows a lot during the course of the book, learns from her mistakes, and faces her demons.
Having been in the military myself, her training and her reactions to situations felt very real to me, so props for that especially. Looking forward to more of this series.
Ky Vatta is kicked out of the local military academy in disgrace - more as a scapegoat than her own mistakes, and much to the relief of her trading family, as she can now join the family business as was expected. Her first mission is a quiet milk run, to get her used to command, and out of the limelight. An aging freighter has one last trade journey to do, before being scraped as too expensive to repair. Ky and her experienced crew just have to shepherd it across a few months of travel, and a couple of ftl transitions. Ky is proud to be trusted with captaincy, dismayed by her dismissal, unsure of her parent's love, and wanting to do a good job. En route the opportunity arises to make some extra profit, perhaps enough to refit the ship, and with the backing of the crew she diverts from their expected course - an action not unexpected by her family - Unfortunately the system she diverts to has become embroiled in a local war, and before she knows it, she's adrift with a failing spaceship in a system occupied by mercenaries, but at least she can trust her shipmates.
There's a lovely hat-tip to Clarke with the interstellar communication devices being known as 'ansibles'. The universe is sensible, with a balance of trading families, small worlds, etc. and the characters work well, Ky is exuberant where needed, remorseful but not melancholic and determined to do her best. There is only a little focus on the technology with components of engines and signals being important to the plot - mostly and sensibly contained as 'sealed units' that aren't interfered with by normal spacers. A few choice conversations balance the romance of Ky's active space life with the more routine experiences of normal trading or downworld life.
It's not all brilliant - the side plot of the fruitcakes is just silly, I've never yet encountered an inedible fruit cake, and more importantly they could so easily have been disposed of. The POV switches away from Ky just occasionally enough to be annoying. There is little need to jump to either the mercenary or Ky's family, as Ky's encounters with them would have been sufficient to convey that information. It may be a subtle hint for the future episodes of the series. The ending is prolonged with the action concluded fairly rapidly, and quite some time spent tying the various loose ends together. It is good that they were all securely tied, and yet leaving sufficient scope for more books.
Well worth reading, and I'm looking forward to the sequels.
At first things go well, but things spin out of control in ways that leave Ky and her command in real danger of their lives. How well will the untried captain cope with these unanticipated problems?
This is very definitely a stand alone novel despite the five or six books in the series to follow but it does give us an introduction to Ky and her universe and does have some set up for the later books.