2016 SF, first of a trilogy. Hailimi left the court to become a
gunrunner, but now the other heirs are dead and her mother the Empress
is going mad…
There's quite a different voice here from Wagers' later NeoG
series; found family is still important, but the military structure is
largely missing. Instead, Hail has allies and enemies, but at least in
this book is essentially working inside the bounds of her own society,
a somewhat ritualistic matriarchy that's slowly making the transition
to a constitutional monarchy.
An obvious romantic setup seems, indeed, obvious, and reminds me of
the sort of meet-cute one might get in a Jessie Mihalik or Jennifer
Estep SF-romance. But actually it goes off in a different direction,
of gradually increasing mutual respect without any jumping of bones
being involved; one of them is married to someone else, and they do
have more urgent things to do, like stopping the Empire from
collapsing in the face of what appears to be an alliance of internal
and external enemies. (Meanwhile the terrorist group everyone's ready
to blame for any outrage may kind of have a point.) And the skills of
a freelance gunrunner turn out to be surprisingly useful at court.
I can work out at least roughly the path of this plot, but I enjoyed
the book even so.
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