Sporting Chance

Elizabeth Moon is a wonderful writer and her books fill a craving. I really enjoy reading her books and when she and Anne McCaffrey put their heads together it get's really astonishing and gratifying what they can come up with.

Heris Serrano, who resigned her Regular Space Service commission after disobeying orders for good reason, chose not to go back when her chance came at the end of Hunting Party. In this trilogy's second volume, Heris is still captain of Lady Cecelia's yacht; but she now has several members of her former crew with her, including the man who couldn't be her lover in the old days. After delivering Prince Gerel home following certain embarrassing events on Seralis, Lady Cecelia orders the Sweet Delight into a redecorating company's drydock. As Heris prepares to oversee the yacht's refitting, she feels great uneasiness about Lady Cecelia's safety. But trouble, when it comes, strikes the unconventional old lady down in one of the places where she should have been safest. The family rebel, who never needed anyone before, lies helpless in a blind, mute, paralyzed body; and the only people who know she's aware inside that body, Heris and two of her employer's young relatives, also know that what felled her wasn't a massive stroke. As her enemies move to lock Lady Cecelia away permanently and take control of her vast holdings, the disgraced ex-RSS officer and two young socialites form a desperate plan. This story works well on all of its several levels. It's a seat-of-the-pants adventure, set in a well-conceived future universe, cast with characters who change in believable ways as a result of their experiences. It also manages to delve into such serious themes as how families behave toward their nonconforming members in time of crisis, how societies treat their disabled citizens, and how fear of aging can stunt - or even warp - not just individuals, but entire cultures. An excellent read!

This is probably one of the most satisfying books in the long series of the Familias. Though the plot unravels a little bit too fast and too easily at the end, the book is packed with action, full with non-related plots that intersect each other anyway. There is also a comforting sense of completion at the book's end, something which is often missing from Elizabeth Moon's books (on her series).

The first of Elizabeth Moon's Familias Regnant novels, _Hunting Party_, was enjoyable, but the second, _Sporting Chance_, is much better. It was, for want of a fresher word, gripping. It compels reading, it's very exciting, the character are extremely involving, and it has some interesting ideas too. Heris' employer Cecelia has noticed that the Crown Prince appears to have been tampered with: he's acting unusually dull. She tells the King, which turns out to be political folly. Cecelia ends up poisoned in a scary way: she is paralyzed, still conscious but unable to communicate or convince anyone else that she is not a vegetable. She has left Heris her ship in her will: thus Heris becomes a prime suspect. The story follows several threads: Heris takes a secret mission for the King, trying to find the Prince's illegal clones; while Brun and Ronnie, two younger members of the nobility who were "reformed" by Cecelia and Heris in _Hunting Party_, take action to get Cecelia appropriate medical treatment, and Heris' new employee Sirkin deals with a foolish lover who gets her involved in some very dangerous situations. The action is pretty much nonstop, despite much of the story being told from the viewpoint of a paralyzed, incommunicado, individual, and the resolution is solid. My main quibble is that the villains are too too BAD.

In CAPT Heris Serrano, Ms. Moon has a heroine capable of holding her own with, and maybe ever surpassing, Weber's Honor Harrington. Teamed with Lady Cecelia, CAPT Serrano is a formidable opponent capable of handling any action -- or intrigue -- with aplomb. Dealing with the genetic marvels and monsters of some of the more powerful and unscrupulous of the Familias families gives her plenty of scope for both. This book is essential reading if one is to have a full understanding of some of the complex politics covered in the later Suiza books and, unlike Rules of Engagement, tells a complete story that stands alone. Here's hoping that Ms. Moon brings CAPT Serrano back to center stage soon.