Book Review— The Heart of Valor

Tanya Huff's "Confederation" series has a fabulous heroine, Torin Kerr. As the series begins, in Valor's Choice, Kerr is a Staff Sergeant in some futuristic Marine Corps. In this opening yarn, Huff demonstrates good character development, better world building, and a wonderful flair for dialogue. While I really like other heroines of military sci-fi yarns such as David Weber's Honor Harrington and Elizabeth Moon's Esmay Suiza, those characters are officers. Huff's non-com is gritty and more realistic than either of those officer-characters.

Recently, I purchased The Heart of Valor, the third installment in the series. Kerr has been promoted to Gunnery Sergeant after her exploits in books one and two of the series. Her new found fame is unwelcome, so she jumps at the chance to accompany a platoon and some observers to Crucible, a frozen planet where recruits complete their training. Kerr is there mostly to watch, but once the training platoon arrives on Crucible, there is a series of unfortunate events. A longtime drill sergeant becomes ill, the training drones are out to kill rather than test the recruits, and something odd is happening with the the single officer in their midst. Of course, Kerr works overtime to save her comrades, by using all of the knowledge she has accumulated in her career.

While not boring, this third installment seems rather predictable, until Kerr figures out why things have come unglued, and the plot becomes much more interesting. Unfortunately, that happens about two thirds of the way through the book. The suspense ramps up along with the action, and a three star book becomes a five star read.

I enjoyed The Heart of Valor, but I can't say it lives up to the first two novels. Readers who like feisty heroines, humor, and lots of action should enjoy it, and the series continues with two more installments. I'm reading the next one now.

A Time to Stop the Series

Readers love series fiction. Writer's love it even more— because when writing a series, an author doesn't have to create a new world or many new characters. Instead, the author can pick up a minor character from a previous tale and follow him or her for a bit. Or the author continues the story of a beloved hero or heroine, and some of the story is already written and is retold via the "backstory."

Recently, I purchased some eBooks, and the first download I read was Beloved Traveler, by Janet Miller. Previous titles in this series include Beloved Enemy (a wonderful read), Promises to Keep (also a good yarn, if not quite as suspenseful and exciting as Beloved Enemy), A Promise Made (a novella that serves merely as a bridge between the other tales) and now Beloved Traveler. This one just did not work for me. As I slogged through it, I realized that Ms. Miller needs to stop the series. When there is nothing novel about a novel, it is time to write about something else. Modern readers of romance undoubtedly dream of a society where people find the right mate on the first try and stay together until death, but even that dream can't support a lengthy series without some novelty for each story.

Some authors can seem to keep a series going indefinitely— Lois McMaster Bujold's stories about Miles Vorkosigan are an example of that. However, that is really an achievement. Even the Star Wars trilogy, with many characters and worlds to explore, lost some of its shine when it became six episodes long. David Weber's Honor Harrington yarns, which are among the best space operas I have read, have gotten longer and more boring with each book, and I gave up somewhere around book eleven.

Like many readers, I do enjoy a good series, so in that same set of ebooks, I have the sequel to Tigra, and a new entry in a long running series by Angela Verdenius, so I will be talking about those in an upcoming post.

Summer is a great time to read, so let me be about it.

Shards of Honor— the audio book

One of the first books I read when I decided to abandon the best seller lists, the books perched on those little display stands at the library, and recommendations from well meaning friends and family was Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor. I have devoted an earlier entry to it, and have mentioned it in other posts as well. Still, it is difficult for me to explain how good this novel is, both as a stand alone, and as the basis for a long-running series. Although I am not a fan of audio books, I plan to give this one a try.

Big Books

I tend to shy away from big books— not big words, which I rather like, but big books. Since mom recommended Gone With the Wind, which I put off until the lazy days of summer after my eighth grade year, I have had a love/hate relationship with big books. As a youngster, I didn’t want to commit myself to the 1066 pages of GWTW, but once I got into it, I was glad that mom had insisted. Indeed, I wanted to read more fiction by Margaret Mitchell and was disappointed when I learned that she did not publish any other novels.

While I was in college, I read Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance, which was so long that the publisher divided into it two volumes. That, along with The Winds of War, taught me more about WWII than all of my history classes combined and remains on my “keeper” shelf. Bigger books can contain more ideas and more entertainment, so I do sometimes tackle a big book.

Science fiction authors often write a series of novels set in the same universe, and publishers, in hopes of attracting new readers, will package those books together in an omnibus edition, which often means a really big book.

I mentioned one of my favorite omnibus editions, Cordelia’s Honor, in a couple of previous entries. This single volume contains the two early novels in Lois McMaster Bujold’s award winning Vorkosigan series, and is still in print. Very few writer’s have as much to offer as Bujold does— her characterization, her world building, and her prose combine into very satisfying books. Cordelia’s Honor is a great place to begin reading her work.

Another omnibus published by Bean books is The Planet Pirates. I read this one some years ago, because I have enjoyed books by Elizabeth Moon and Anne McCaffrey. Although I managed to get through the entire big book, this book suffers from too many cooks in the authorial kitchen. Oh, and the cover is especially ugly. Fans of the authors (and there are three) will enjoy it, however.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller have written numerous volumes together, and the omnibus edition of their Liaden trilogy, Partners in Necessity, goes together quite nicely. Putting their books into a pigeon hole isn’t easy. While set in another universe, this series is more about characters and their relationships with each other. I enjoyed this big book quite a lot, so I’ll call it science fiction romance, but that doesn’t quite describe it either.

Currently I am reading The Complete Ivory, which is an omnibus of a trilogy by Doris Egan. Thus far, it reminds me of Lee and Miller’s work— not a space opera, but a romantic comedy set in another universe. While not a “page turner” there is enough world building and sufficiently engaging characters to keep me making steady progress through these 896 pages.

The Series

Writers sometimes create characters, settings, indeed entire “universes” which they revisit for several books. This technique is termed writing a series. There are many positives in this approach. Sales of series titles tend to be better, because a reader who enjoys one title will want to read the others in the same series. Also, a nifty character can be revisited, even if a main character in one tale becomes a minor one in another. However, a great character can succeed as a main character again and again. Here are three diverse examples—

One of my first experiences in reading a series began with Lois McMaster Bujold’s Shards of Honor. The first two books (now available in a single volume) focus on Cordelia Naismith, who marries Aral Vorkosigan. Their son, Miles, becomes the main character in the rest of the series, and what a marvelous character he is! Alternately humorous, cunning, and inspiring, Bujold’s Miles has enough problems and strength to carry him through many adventures. I’ve pictured one of the better late entries in the series, A Civil Campaign, which describes Miles’ matrimonial adventure, but my absolute favorite Miles adventure is a short story, The Mountains of Mourning. Regarding the writing of a series, “Bujold has also said that part of the challenge of writing a series is that many readers will encounter the stories in ‘utterly random order’, so she must provide sufficient background in each of them without being excessively repetitious. Most recent printings of her Vorkosigan tales do include an appendix at the end summarizing the internal chronology of the series.”

Another science fiction writer, but one with a different approach altogether, is David Weber. His Honor Harrington series is ongoing, but I have given it up. I found the last few entries stray farther and farther from focusing on his main character. The earlier books, especially the first eight, are among the best space opera I have read. Weber has a wonderful grasp of technical matters, and his books are sorta like the Tom Clancy of science fiction. Honor is not particularly successful as a female, but she is wonderful as a military heroine. My most favorite entry in the series, The Honor of the Queen, is pictured. Weber has stated that this series began as an 80K essay which he terms “Honorverse.”

Several years ago, a friend loaned me a mystery by a local author, Kathy Hogan Trocheck, and I enjoyed it enough to revisit the Callihan Garrity series, set in Atlanta. A former AJC reporter, Trocheck often bases her plots in crime stories in the Atlanta area. I was fortunate to hear her speak at a writer’s conference in Athens, and she let her audience in on some of the problems facing the series writer. Her main character is the owner of a cleaning service, which serves as a way to let her be a private detective and get into the homes of her clients and her suspects. This series is often humorous, but she admitted that it is hard to keep everything straight. An example she cited was using a beat up Chevy van in one book, but switching to a Ford in the next one. Her editor’s suggested solution was a writer’s guide, where she kept track of these details. In recent years, she has moved to the more popular “chick lit” perspective, writing as Mary Kay Andrews, but she is still writing a series.

My editor for Trinity on Tylos suggested that I make it a series. That is still a possibility, and I did use a guide when I was writing Trinity on Tylos, so that I could keep the characters and the physical layout of the Excalibur straight. If you want to see part of it, just flip to the back of that book; my editor suggested that the character list be a part of the book so that readers could keep them straight as well. If I ever revisit the “Trinity on Tylos” universe, I will certainly use that guide again.