Valor's Choice
282 pages
The Better Part of Valor
315 pages
science fiction
by Tanya Huff
Okay now that I'm (mostly) recovered from Election Week and am writing again, it's time to get back to the books. Or book. Or books.... A Confederation of Valor is two books in one, which made my wallet kind of happy because I'm old enough to remember when paperbacks weren't eight or nine bucks a piece. *rattles walker and shouts at clouds*
Tanya Huff is one of those versatile authors who really should be more popular than she is. She writes pure fantasy (the Quarters series), modern/urban fantasy (the Keeper series), the vampire/magical detective genre (the Blood Ties series and the Smoke series) and military SF (the Valor series) and all of it's good. She's also a filker* and a lesbian who frequently puts gay characters in her books--Tony, the protagonist of the Smoke series is gay and, unfortunately, in spite of the fact that the books are really good and properly creepy, there probably won't be any more in the series because her publisher pulled the plug on it. Apparently gay doesn't sell enough books. Her Blood Ties series was made into a really cheesy, but fun TV series; it was filmed in Canada on the cheap and then played on Lifetime for two short seasons.
I happen to have a soft spot for military SF and, honestly, I don't really know why. Most of the people writing it are pretty right wing/Libertarian and their politics often show up in their work. Still, gimme a band of Marines battling the odds on an alien world, or a steely-eyed starship captain going up against the enemies of her empire and I'm a happy camper. So finding out about this series was great because I know that Tanya's politics are much closer to mine and I already like her writing.
The Valor series is about Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr of the Confederation Marines. The fact that she's female isn't such a big deal; David Weber's Honor Harrington series is about a female starship captain, for example. Still it's not all that usual in the space marine genre, which made it a nice change.
The other really nice change is that unlike most of the books you run across in this genre, which are about Humans only or Humans fighting aliens, Huff's Confederation is made up of many different species. The older and wiser species have sociologically evolved beyond aggression, which created a problem when they encountered the Others, who were not interested in peaceful negotiations. And so the Confederation recruited younger, more aggressive species, including Humans, who had barely made it into space when the Confederation came calling.
In addition to Humans, the Marine corp includes the di'Tayken--an elf like species who give off so many sexual pheromones that they have to wear mechanical maskers--and the Krai--a species that can and will eat literally anything, including the bodies of both their enemies and their own honored dead. So in addition to the usual personality tensions in any military unit and military politics in general, there's also some species tensions.
Valor's Choice is the first book of the series. Kerr and a platoon of Marines are sent on what is supposed to be easy duty: guarding diplomats and helping show the flag on a mission to the planet of the Silsviss, a reptilian race that is looking to join the Confederation. As the senior NCO, Kerr is also responsible for breaking in a new Second Lieutenant, something made complicated by the fact that he's a di'Tayken she had a one night stand with, not knowing he was an officer.
Of course things go awry; after an initial round of "getting to know you" encounters, the suborbital ship containing the diplomats and the Marines is shot down over a wilderness preserve used to test Silsviss males during their aggressive adolescence. It's up to Kerr to see that everyone survives and the ensuing struggle is exciting, to say the least.
Kerr's a good character--smart and dedicated but not without a dry sense of humor--and it's easy to like her and to give a damn about what happens to her. Huff also does a good job making what could be boring stock characters come to life; the baby officer from a military family who's afraid he's not up to the task; the trouble-maker with a heart of gold; the card-shark; the alien who knows more old Earth expressions than the Humans, and so on. There's even a nod to a common trope of these stories; one of the guys is reading letters from home and counting the days until he sees his family, and his friends all remind him that in movies, he's the guy who always buys it. The diplomats from the older species of the Confederation are interesting as well; not only is she good at inventing aliens with cool cultures, Huff does a good job envisioning how true pacifists would react to a sudden plunge into a combat situation.
The Better Part of Valor takes place shortly after Valor's Choice. Having insulted a general, Kerr gets pulled from her platoon and is given the dubious honor of leading a recon squad and a bunch of scientists into a mysterious derelict ship floating in space. In addition to a thrown-together squad, a politically appointed officer who's more concerned about his PR status than anything else, Kerr has to deal with a news crew and the wise-cracking salvage operator who discovered the ship.
One of the things Huff's good at is setting up a good creepy situation and then running with it. (The mummy in Blood Lines, for example, is really fucking freaky and I don't normally find mummy stories to be all that scary.) A big abandoned space ship with an interior that changes into rooms pulled from the minds of the explorers offers plenty of opportunity for creepiness, particularly when a group of the mysterious Others--the Confederation's bug-like enemies--show up to explore the ship as well.
Both these books move along a nice clip; they're fun and exciting and, unlike so many books in the genre, there aren't any right-wing politics buried under the surface. There are two more books in the series and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them. If you like the genre, run, don't walk, and if you're not sure about the genre but like a good, well-written SF adventure, give them try.
Next up...Neal Stephenson's latest masterpiece. That's not a word I use lightly; Anatham is utterly fantastic.
*For people who don't speak Geek, filk is folk music for SF/Fantasy geeks. The songs are usually SF/Fantasy based, but there's filk about computers as well. Sometimes both the music and the lyrics are original, but a lot of the time people rewrite popular songs with their own lyrics. It's a true nerd pastime that mostly goes on a SF cons. Thus endth the lesson.
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