The Outback Stars

The author is straight on with military life, You could put the characters on a modern navy ship instead of a space-ship and they would fit right in! The story is fast-paced and with some great action! I highly recommend this for those who like military sc-fi. When are the sequels arriving! Put me on the per-order list!

I have been reading Sandra McDonald's fiction for over 11 years. I've read many of her short stories and way back when, in another life, I was the flagwaver for her fanfiction. (Don't ask.) So that I'd love her first novel is no great surprise to me. What do I like about it? The crew of the Aral Sea seems a very realistic portrayal of sailors/ spacefarers. Unlike Star Trek, on McDonald's ship they can't replicate whatever it is they want. When you want a uniform, a machine part or food it is Underway Stores that must store, find and inventory it. The Aral Sea (a nod to the Vorkosigan saga only in my mind-- these ships are named after environmental disasters) is an unhappy ship and Jodenny is assigned the unhappiest department: Underway Stores, but that's where Terry works. She's an officer and he's enlisted, but that doesn't stop the attraction they have for each other. The mystery of why the ship is so very unhappy is part of what Jodenny & Terry must solve-- and that's terrific, and, well, Bujold-like. What I also like is that after ~400 pages, I don't know everything about this universe. Why is nearly everybody Australian -- or their forbearers are? Why are so few characters born on Earth? Why did the aliens give this technology and leave? It means that Sandra has many more stories in this series to tell! Like Bujold's Vorkosigan series in some ways, both are about military & quasi- military ships. Jodenny and Terry would get on very well in the Dendarii Mercenaries. Actually, though, it's more like Tanya Huff's Valor books, with Sergeant Torin Kerr. I'm sure Kerr'd like Terry, but Jodenny... (Kerr, like Terry is enlisted and spends much of her time protecting officers. Unlike Terry, Torin is a warrior.) Unlike Star Trek and unlike the Vorkosigan series, this isn't about feats of derring do and military prowess. It's about the guys in the red shirts that make the ship go and whose names we never hear. People who are just as courageous, in their way, as Captain Kirk and Miles Vorkosigan, maybe moreso. "I saw something," Jodenny whispered. Neither of them moved to investigate. Being in Team Space had never demanded much bravery, Myell knew. It required endurance of petty annoyances and mammoth wastes of time, and the discipline of listening to superiors talk of nonsense and trivia, and the ability to think one way and act another, for days and months and years at a time. He had been truly scared only a few times in his military career-- once while doing firefighting training in boot camp, another when Chiba's men entereted his Security cell duing the Ford affair - but all in all, he could safely say he had never been asked to chase something down in the icy darkness, something only his lieutenant thought she saw. "There's nothing there," he said.

I have to confess that I would never have read this book if I didn't know the author. I usually give military SF a wide berth. ;) And I had a hard time getting into this one; the first few pages whacked me with all the elements that usually turn me off military SF: action and "drama" that's undramatic because you don't know or care about the characters yet, lots of bureaucratobabble about ranks and duties and day-to-day operations, etc. But once I got past that, I discovered two things: I really liked the protagonist, Jodenny. She's that rarest of female characters in SF -- intelligent but not a genius, pretty but not a sexbomb, competent and level-headed and funny. In short, a normal human woman. And as Jodenny dealt with an increasingly tangled conspiracy web and her inappropriate feelings for one of her subordinates, I more than liked her; I *cared*. The other thing I realized was, military SF is actually kind of interesting when it's not all about the captain or the admiral or the guy with the big gun. Jodenny's "office politics", her personnel issues (like who's sleeping on the job), her effort to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder while still trying to have a career -- I could really identify with all of this, even though it took place on an Australian spaceship that travels through an alien wormhole. It's plainly military SF, but so real-world and human that it feels like something very different. And better, IMO. So definitely a recommend. =)

I love lots of different kinds of science fiction, and this book satisfied so many of my readerly cravings. It's got space opera and romance, and it's also got really cool science fictional ideas. A perfect book in so many ways! If I could compare it to anything else on the shelves, it would be the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold--and believe me, that's a very high compliment! A strength is the characterization. From the moment Jodenny Scott tells Terry Myell that his shoes are dirty, I fell in love with them both, and read along avidy as they fell in love with each other. Their romance is complicated--both of these people carry heavy baggage into the relationship. Jodenny's previous ship went down--supposedly in a terrorist attack--and Terry has been accused of an assault he didn't commit. Plus they're both raving individualists--what Terry's doing in the military is beyond me! But they do come together, in a most satisfying way. Another great strength of this book is the ideas. Science fiction is all about new ideas--"what ifs". The "what if" at the center of this book is wicked cool--aliens have built the "alcheringa," which enables humans to engage in space travel, and thus colonize other planets. Humans aren't simple creatures themselves, however, and their use of the Alcheringa is complicated by their own intrigues and the interference of the aliens themselves. Finally, something I appreciate very much about this book is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. Some of the themes here are quite serious, but over all the book is a tremendous amount of fun. I give it my very highest recommendation!

When I read the first few pages of this book, I was not impressed. It seemed hard to understand and used a background that was strange. The next day, i picked it up again and before I quit, I had read it from cover to cover, twice. It could use more explanation as to the background universe but the main beauty is the developement of the characters. They were well written, believable, and likeable. The author, having served as a U.S. Naval officer, has the military down pat. Don't give up after the first few pages, keep reading, it's worth it. I hope this is just the first in a long series.