Trapped in a warzone
Trading in Danger (Vatta’s War, volume 1)
By Elizabeth Moon

1 Jul, 2015
Military Speculative Fiction That Doesn't Suck
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If I am going to review MilSF that doesn’t suck, at some point I need to address the Elizabeth Moon issue. On the one hand her books (or at least some of them) are clearly candidates. On the other hand, many of them have been published by Baen, whose publisher is a willing participant in this year’s attempt to nobble the Hugos. Baen is a company whose works I don’t review. A company that’s dead to me.
However … thanks to various events that are Googleable, Moon moved over to Del Rey. That company is not colluding in an attempt to nobble the Hugos and is not dead to me. The system works!
2003’s Trading in Danger kicks off Moon’s Vatta’s War series. Well-meaning Ky Vatta is booted out of the naval academy when a well-meaning attempt to help a friend results in a PR-disaster for the service. The navy doesn’t consider “meant well” a defense. Former cadet Ky finds herself on the curb outside the Academy, waiting for a ride home.
This is a bold opening gambit if the series as a whole is supposed to be military science fiction.