Engaging the Enemy

Vatta's War, Book 3

By: Elizabeth Moon

Narrated by: Cynthia Holloway

Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

The brilliantly unorthodox Kylara Vatta - black-sheep scion of Vatta Transport Ltd., one of the galaxy's wealthiest merchant houses - is a heroine like no other, blessed with a killer instinct both for business and for battle. Now, in the aftermath of cold-blooded assassinations that have left her parents dead and the Vatta shipping empire shattered, Kylara faces her greatest challenge yet.

There is a time for grief and a time for revenge. This is decidedly the latter. Placing her cousin Stella in command of the trading vessel Gary Tobai, Ky embarks aboard the captured pirate ship Fair Kaleen on a twofold mission: to salvage the family business and to punish those responsible for the killings...before they strike again. Since the network providing instantaneous communication between star systems has been sabotaged, news is hard to come by and available information impossible to trust. But as she travels from system to system, with Stella a step behind, Ky pieces together the clues and discovers a conspiracy of terrifying scope, breathtaking audacity, and utter ruthlessness.

The only hope the independent systems and merchants have against this powerful enemy is to band together. Unfortunately, because she commands a ship known to belong to a notorious pirate - her own relative Osman Vatta, whom she killed for his part in her parents' deaths - Ky is met with suspicion, if not outright hostility. Rumors swirl about her intent and even her very identity. Soon, even Stella begins to question her cousin's decisions and her authority to make them.

Meanwhile, the conspiracy Ky hunts is hunting her in turn, with agents insinuated into every space station, every planetary government, every arm of the military, and every merchant house - including her own. Before she can take the fight to the enemy, Kylara must survive a deadly minefield of deception and betrayal.

©2008 Elizabeth Moon (P)2008 Tantor

good story, cheap tricks...

While I enjoyed part one and two in the series, in this book I was extremely annoyed with the repeating description of Stella's stubborness and her hurt feelings. Instead of creating a more intense listening experience, the author got me more and more annoyed and I fast forwarded the rest of the book.
I am not sure if I will read the other books, for now I am a bit tired of this. Pity. It felt to me as if the author was pushed to do this, it doesn't fit the book.

Finally, a space battle!

“Engaging the Enemy” indeed, the third installment of the series finally gives readers a genuine space battle. But it also introduces an odd assortment of cultural eccentricities which seem in line with some of the more unbalanced societies given passing treatment on one-off episodes of Star Trek. There’s humor in it though and that is sufficient.
Somewhat necessary nowadays is the need to impart the difficulty of light lag in space combat which is achieved here to good effect by the now obsolete tactics demonstrated at the end of the book. Very well done also is the showing of a need of a certain kind of officer to adapt to the demands of changing technology to both innovate where needed while respecting the principles of tradition and discipline.
The one blemish is one seems a tired, but still amusing, convention of a planet in the far future which has resurrected the veneration of honor expressed in duels at the slightest insult. An amusing sideshow is a legal proceeding in a system that seems to have taken love of nature, particularly the forest, and absolute adherence to decorum and politeness to a ludicrous extreme.

Well into it now...

...as the war ramps up for real, our heroine....oh, wait; no spoilers...that's right! My bad...

I love this series,the narrator voice, not so much

I read the series and loved every book. That said I wanted something for a plane ride and decided to get the audio book this time. I tried very hard to get used to the narrator voice but simply could not. The best description I could use is 'haughty' I will not be listening to the rest.

My rises again

I love the Vatta books. I think they are a great read for people who like Honor Harrington.

Good story

Third in series depends on familiarity with previous volumes. Good story, despite some mispronounced words.

Character personality change

Where does Engaging the Enemy rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Among the top listening

If you’ve listened to books by Elizabeth Moon before, how does this one compare?

I was disappointed in this book. The author spent too much time with other characters and their viewpoints which were very different from the main character's. It detracted from the storyline.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Cynthia Holloway?

Yes, I think she does a good job overall although at times it seems as if she was reading it for the first times as voice inflections, tones, are misplaced and character identity is not clearly recognizable by voice intonation.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Audacious Captain struggles against all including family!

Unfortunate narrator

I really enjoy Elizabeth Moon's books but the narrator makes it very difficult to appreciate this one. The narration is flat, poorly paced, and the little variation in tone that exists makes every character (as well as the rest of the text) sound arrogant, angry, or snide. I hope that I can get past the narration to finish the book. This is one of the few audiobooks that I regret having bought.

First Series I just can't finish

I hate to say it, but this is the first series of books I've just had to give up on without finishing them... Book 1 was bad enough, but book two was supposed to be a little better... it was, but it was just more of the same lame rambling around while pursuing "Trade and Profit", and basically rolling belly up for every ill tempered "Inspector" and "Pirate" in the multiple universes, giving up their basic human rights, and acting like any privacy is a luxury to be given up without much more than a token "internal" fuss...

The narrator just drones on and on, until I can't stand to hear ANY more words like "EE-nteral", "EE-mergency", "EE-motional", "EE-rased" etc, etc...

Just not going to bother with book 4, and wish I hadn't even started book 3, but there seems to be a "Book Slump" right now and it's hard to find anything worth listening to at the moment... so I think I'll just let credits build up a while and hope that some decent authors and narrators put out some some new decent books worth listening to.

I hate to bash a Book, Narrator, or Series, but this just got ridiculous... Mostly just Over-Pompous language, giving up all basic human rights with a smile, and more worry about "Things being Fair", and repetitious hammering on "Her secret Love of Killing", and only the most slight glossing over of her loss of her entire family, with no realistic reactions to anything at all, and so little action you look forward to more talk about their food preparation and clothing choices... her "War" seems to mostly be repeating things other people say, as questions... "We're going out of the lock", "Out of the Lock?" "Yes, out of the lock"...

Highly disappointed in this series.

Ouch My Ears

I have downloaded approx 130 audible books, I have seldom felt compelled to write a review. However, this narrator is so hard to listen to, this is the first book I cannot get past 1/2 hour. Just the way every word is given the same inflection, the 'he said', 'she said' becomes irritating. If audible gave refunds this would be my first request. Sorry if this is overly harsh, but it is.. that bad.