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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Tanya Huff rarely disappoints and - indeed - this is another page turner. I'm not particularly into Military SF but I like Torin Kerr, Huff's rough, tough Marine sergeant. She's already had two outings in `Valor's Choice' and `The Better Part of Valor' both of which I read in a Huff-binge when first I discovered her a few years ago. She's a storyteller with an eye for detail, a good insight into character and thoughtful world-building. One of the things that both attracts and repels me about Mil-SF is the alphabet-soup language. Did the NCO stay with the VTA or did she go back for the remains of the PFC? And when the gunny is off duty in the SRM should she be thinking about the CSO or worrying about getting the KC-7s safely back beyond the ZP? Combine this with a large cast of characters - some from previous Valor novels - that include three different races sporting unfamiliar name types and my head is in danger of exploding. I can just about keep up, carried forward by the tremendous pace of the action, but I do have the occasional WTF moment! Despite the totally believable but sometimes hard-to-remember military dialogue there's a good mystery in this book. A training exercise gone wrong turns into a nightmare and newly promoted Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, (only there as a temporary aide to Major Svensson who is on a field-test to work out regrown body parts after major battle trauma) has to more than babysit a bunch of untried recruits when the expected test scenarios turn lethal. In the end it's all fall-out from something that happened in the last book (so I recommend starting with the other two Valor books if you can and they're well worth reading, too). There's a new Torin Kerr book out in 2009 - Valor's Trial - and I look forward to seeing where the overarching story takes us.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I admit I am an unabashed fan of Tanya Huff. Whether she's writing fantasy - the "Quarter" series - witchlit - "Blood" and "Smoke" series or the Valor books, of which this is the third (you need to read the other 2 first to make sense of this one), Huff makes her characters come alive. Gunnery Sergeant Kerr is as tough a military scifi heroine as you could want; but all the backfills and quirks of a real personality are there, tucked away in mental asides. Its got all you would want if you like Davids Weber and Drake or Elizabeth Moon - plenty of action, blood, militech and surprises, but the secondary characters are fully formed, even if they are going to end up in a bodybag, which in this universe shrinks to a pocket-sized cylinder because "no marine gets left behind". Clever, gripping and as realistic as space opera is ever going to be - in this timeline anyway.
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I am still loving this series. Torin, newly promoted (though she really would rather stay away from being top brass) to gunny sargeant has agreed to accompany Major Svensson as an aide to Crucible. Crucible is the training planet for the Marines. That's where they put all their learning to practical applications. The planet sounds kind of cool - the marines have a few different training situations complete with terrain and weather variations;winter with below zero temperatures or tropical with all the accompanying bugs and heat. There are drones and other dangerous things that are programmed to run certain scenarios to put the marines through their paces - it's supposed to be dangerous, but non-deadly.
At the same time Torin's new man - Craig Ryder - is wondering where that escape pod is. The one he used to escape Big Yellow and bring help back to the others. Weirdly, it seems that only ones who remember this escape pod are him, Torin and Presit (the reporter). Strange. In fact, Torin was almost in trouble over asking questions, something that makes her think she's being used,making her angry.
Back on Crucible, Major Svensson (who has recently regrown almost his entire body and nervous system - I love futuristic sci-fi) seems just a bit odd to Torin. She's being his aide, managing him and protecting the civilian doctor who is monitoring him while the recruits they are accompanying are being put through the beginnings of a training program. The Staff Sargeant in charge of the recruits is the same staff sargeant that Torin trainined under years before, and she's surprised that he's still in the marines (something to do with Di'Taykan culture and his age). In fact, she finds something off about him also....
Things go from a bit off to that incredibly descriptive old anachronism - SNAFU. Yep - situation Normal-All F-d Up. Love that phrase. The training drones are suddenly deadly, the major is behaving strangely inconsistantly, the staff sargeant in charge suddenly is incapacitated and things go horribly wrong.
I enjoyed the return of a few characters from The Better Part of Valor - Craig Ryder (the man for Torin), Presit (the reporter who irritates Torin and who doesn't really like Torin), and General Morris in all his pompous glory. The man tries so hard to be a good general, but he's....well he's a bit pompous - he had a smaller part to play in this book, but important. I also really enjoyed a few new characters from the recruits and the Navy spaceship. There is a recruit that is so enthusiastic that she packs everything on the suggested list - something that the other recruits thought unnecessary. She's the first to volunteer answers and actions, and she has developoed a crush on Torin. There's the tech whiz, who's good at all things programming and hacking. The Di'Taykan cultured is almost a character in itself.
Ms Huff has written a great series and I've enjoyed this third novel very much. After finishing this novel, I grabbed the fourth novel off my shelf right away.
At the same time Torin's new man - Craig Ryder - is wondering where that escape pod is. The one he used to escape Big Yellow and bring help back to the others. Weirdly, it seems that only ones who remember this escape pod are him, Torin and Presit (the reporter). Strange. In fact, Torin was almost in trouble over asking questions, something that makes her think she's being used,making her angry.
Back on Crucible, Major Svensson (who has recently regrown almost his entire body and nervous system - I love futuristic sci-fi) seems just a bit odd to Torin. She's being his aide, managing him and protecting the civilian doctor who is monitoring him while the recruits they are accompanying are being put through the beginnings of a training program. The Staff Sargeant in charge of the recruits is the same staff sargeant that Torin trainined under years before, and she's surprised that he's still in the marines (something to do with Di'Taykan culture and his age). In fact, she finds something off about him also....
Things go from a bit off to that incredibly descriptive old anachronism - SNAFU. Yep - situation Normal-All F-d Up. Love that phrase. The training drones are suddenly deadly, the major is behaving strangely inconsistantly, the staff sargeant in charge suddenly is incapacitated and things go horribly wrong.
I enjoyed the return of a few characters from The Better Part of Valor - Craig Ryder (the man for Torin), Presit (the reporter who irritates Torin and who doesn't really like Torin), and General Morris in all his pompous glory. The man tries so hard to be a good general, but he's....well he's a bit pompous - he had a smaller part to play in this book, but important. I also really enjoyed a few new characters from the recruits and the Navy spaceship. There is a recruit that is so enthusiastic that she packs everything on the suggested list - something that the other recruits thought unnecessary. She's the first to volunteer answers and actions, and she has developoed a crush on Torin. There's the tech whiz, who's good at all things programming and hacking. The Di'Taykan cultured is almost a character in itself.
Ms Huff has written a great series and I've enjoyed this third novel very much. After finishing this novel, I grabbed the fourth novel off my shelf right away.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not quite combat ready
The third of Tanya Huff's Confederation series. For those who haven't encountered the series yet it's a boots' eye view military sci-fi, heavy on command structure but always... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Michael Finn
Boring
I purchased 4 books in this series, largely because someone said it was a similar style to the Death Head style books. Read more
Published on 2 Aug 2009 by Benjamin Bruce
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