Marque and Reprisal by Elizabeth Moon
I’ll tolerate a dull non-fiction, but a fiction book has to, above all else, be entertaining. If judging by that one criteria, this book succeeds admirably. I’m already most of the way through the third (15+hour!) audiobook in this series, and I haven’t even cracked the nonfiction I’m reading in over a week. Swashbuckling adventure! In space!
There’s a lot of detail about how the world works here. Corporations, foreign legalities, high-tech physics considerations, personnel licensing qualifications, etc. If you’ve never run a business or filed legal papers, this aspect of it will seem even more alien than the FTL drives and airlocks. Occasionally the level of detail edges into the “is this really necessary?” territory, but some of the problems deal with “we don’t have enough money to pay this fee we’d never heard of before” and “what do you mean it’s illegal to find a dog in a trash can?”
The character of Kylara Vatta develops more in this book. In the first, she was a bright young woman dealing with new responsibilities. Now she’s completely cut off from home, trying to make the best of a horrible situation.
Ky is a fun heroine. She’s brave, impetuous, ambitious, and ruthless without being so evil that we lose sympathy for her. Like Kirk, even her stupid decisions end up having good results, but unlike Kirk, she doesn’t make stupid decisions all that often. I usually don’t get involved in long series (too many heartbreaks at unfinished stories) but I’m going to keep going with this one. I like to root for her, and want to see (hear) more of her adventures.
