2015 SF, second of a trilogy. Torrin has got her new love Jak back to
Torrin's home world, but that isn't by any means going to be the end
of their problems.
And this is a very different book from the trek across hostile
country that made up much of the first volume. Back home, Torrin is
not a lone smuggler but one of the partners in her homeworld's largest
business enterprise, an offworld trading concern that somehow has to
keep the existence of that homeworld entirely secret. (How's that
again? There must be some really comprehensive faking of manifests
going on. Not to mention that nobody ever thinks to point a telescope
at this partly-terraformed "abandoned" world and look for signs of
civilisation, like localised IR or city lights.)
But yeah, this universe is basically cinematic SF, the sort of
environment where you can genuinely say that the asteroid field stops
people from easily getting between the hyperspace entry point and the
planet. Which would be frankly dull if this were a story about
terraforming and spaceships and things, but they're background; much
more than that it's a story about the people, Torrin making the
transition back into her civilisation having been out on a long solo
run, Jak being in a civilisation that sees women as people at all (in
fact it's women-only), and both of them adapting to the idea of having
a permanent partner (Torrin's been playing the field for years, while
Jak's culture doesn't even admit that lesbians are a thing) and
dealing with people's reactions to that. Both of them are trying to
help the relationship to work without either the tools or the time to
make it happen.
So all right there's a "This Isn't What It Looks Like" moment leading
to a Big Misunderstanding, a thing I never really enjoy even if it's
carefully set up to seem more or less plausible in this case, and an
obvious evil person whose motives seem straightforward but might be
something more. The narrative goes out of its way to keep Torrin and
Jak from talking to each other, when that's clearly what they need to
do. A resolution to just why Torrin was so badly briefed in the last
book (being sent to negotiate an arms deal with a culture where women
are property) is perhaps a little too pat, making the universe seem
smaller. But there's also consideration of just what sort of job an
expert sniper is fitted for in a military that's all about close-up
shipboard engagements, and how the world will have to adapt to
changing circumstances.
Middle volumes are traditionally lacklustre, but this one's an
interesting change of pace while carrying on the themes from the first
book. I'm impressed; I've read much worse from much bigger publishers
and better-known authors.
(If you don't want to read the setup/teaser for book 3, skip the
epilogue; this story is complete at that point.)
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