Book Review: A Confederation Of Valor by Tanya Huff - Page 2

Staff–Sergeant Torin Kerr is everything a good sergeant should be. Mother hen to her troop and babysitter to young commissioned officers, she does all that sergeants have been doing probably since Roman times; she knows everything and is prepared to deal with everything else. Unfortunately for her, in both books, she has to deal with every soldier's worst nightmare, a two-star general who's never seen action and wants a third star.

In Valor's Choice that involves being part of the diplomatic mission trying to convince a new species to join the Confederation against its enemy, while in The Better Part Of Valor it involves being part of a team investigating a mysterious, seemingly empty, ship found floating near the border of known space. Of course, after being asked by the aforementioned general in advance of the first mission, what could go wrong, everything did.

But that was still no reason to be stupid enough to call a two-star general a bastard to his face while spoiling his attempt for historical immortality and ensuring his nose was broken and eyes blackened. Not that it was her fist that did the breaking, but she did guide a large prehensile tail into doing the job for her.

Probably any one of the three would have been sufficient to engrave her on his memory, so she really shouldn't have been surprised when he picked her for the reconnaissance mission involving the mysterious space ship in The Better Part Of Valor. It turns into something that stretched her abilities and ingenuity to the maximum.

As is usual for a Tanya Huff novel, both stories are well written and well paced. While activity never slows to crawl – an inactive Marine is a bored Marine, and a bored Marine is asking for trouble – she has the good sense to modulate the speed of the action. When Kerr and her platoon come under attack in Valor's Choice, Huff captures the chaos of a flurry of combat activity wonderfully, and uses the downtime between assaults to give us and the Marines a breather, continue to develop the story, and ratchet up the tension.

Although the small group of heroic soldiers facing numerous enemies is all too familiar, it really depends on how well the author is able to depict the situation for it to be effective or not. In the case of Valor's Choice, Huff has created characters who we like and whose company we enjoy. By having to experience them coming under heavy fire after we have spent the best portion of a book with them, she has created a situation where we are genuinely concerned for their welfare. In some small way we experience a little of the camaraderie that exists within such a group.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the forthcoming book What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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