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

Terrible narrator!

Ug. I’ve been reading this series and had to make a 2 hour car trip so thought I’d download this one. I couldn’t listen to mare than 10 minutes so as not to ruin the book. The narrator reads like a robot. No inflection and robotic over pronunciation of words. Very unpleasant. May try to return this one if I remember how. Must remember to listen to samples before purchasing!!!

Good read

The reader was very good, voices had good tone and rhythm, this authors series is well written

forming a fleet

I enjoyed the first two books in this series and I thought this book would be the battles but that only happened at the end of the book. The book goes back and forth between Kylara, Sara and Grace. Lots of suspense, legal trial, Ky had to prove she is Ky and the communication to her home planet is still out. Some one is trying to Kill Grace. This book sets up for the next book that looks like it will have the battles. The narrator is poor.

Action Packed

Now that I’ve finished the entire series, I realize she gets help to process all the traumatic things happening to her. I totally identify with her motto of “just do the next thing that you have control over ” ...

Taking The Battle To The Enemy

This third book feels like the middle of a series - Ky is trying to form a space navy to fight the pirates but still battle with issues with the Vatta shipping empire. Elizabeth Moon has some fun moments with various cultures on different worlds but the heart of the novel (and the series) is the importance of family.

Story: Kylara has wrested a very fight-capable ship from her pirate uncle and now has the assets needed to begin building the navy needed to stop the coming war. Unfortunately, she has to deal with various governments, endless red tape, and her own issues with diplomacy and communication. At the same time, she is fighting a battle with her cousin, Stella, who is needed to run Vatta Shipping while Kylara goes off to war. Can the cousins come to terms with each other in order to keep everything from falling apart? All Kylara knows is that it is time to take the war to the enemy.

This book hinges on Kylara putting her foot in her mouth or running afoul of various governments. The letter of marque puts her in a precarious position: is she a dependable and reliable trader, a pirate, or a political agitator? Stella, meanwhile, gets sidelined on the undefensible Gary Tobai and begins to question her cousin's actions. Is Ky undoing everything she is trying to build by seeking to create a military? Rafe begins to fall hard for Ky while revealing he has family issues of his own to address and fix. Aunt Grace, cut off from the world on Slotter Key, works on the politics of the world while discovering there is a much greater threat, of which the Vattas were only a small part.

In all, fun bubble gum sci fi you don't take too seriously and just enjoy the ride. Of note, I listened to the audio version and the narration is very hard to listen to - the characterizations are simplistic and odd and have an impact on the enjoyment of the story. I suggest listening to a sample first.

Bad Narrator

Of all the many books I have listened too over the years (I started listening when they were just on tape), Cynthia, for this book, has the worst voice I have ever endured. She sounds like she is trying to portray a hard military female (very cliped, flat and emotionless). She has no noticeable voice change between characters. I agree with the one reviewer who said the series is now ruined for her. I need to start checking the reviews before I buy. I would try to return the book it it was allowed. Wonder if she was approved by the author?

Excellent continuation of the SF series

The third book in the Vatta’s War science fiction series.

In the previous book, an unknown enemy almost destroyed Vatta merchant family and their company Vatta Transport Ltd. Now, Kylara Vatta is determined to fight back and rebuild the family and the company.

The book was just full of interesting female characters! Ky herself has mostly gotten over her insecurities and isn’t afraid to be in charge and make independent decisions. However, she can be rather abrasive and isn’t at all subtle about her goals. But she does the best she can in a very difficult situation. She, and by extension Vatta Ltd., has two merchant space ships. She has taken over the larger and armed ship while she’s given command of her original ship to her cousin Stella Vatta. The ships part ways because of trade, Stella following in Ky’s wake and trying to sort out the messes Ky has left behind. They stretch her diplomatic abilities to the max and she starts to doubt Ky. Perhaps not surprisingly, Stella starts to resent Ky and she’s also quite jealous of her. This is quite a departure from the previous book. There are also some very interesting repercussion from the previous book, which I didn’t see coming and which I quite enjoyed.

But my favorite character was aunt Grace. The Vatta family considers her a doddering old aunt but secretly she’s much more! She’s protecting her niece and her family from assassins while trying to piece together the larger plot.

There are a couple of other women among the other ship captains. One of them is even unlikable which is still pretty rare for a woman who isn’t an enemy.

This was a fast-paced and very entertaining book. We get to see a couple of new cultures which I rather enjoyed, too. One of them requires politeness from everyone and has extreme consequences for who don’t. I also enjoyed the dog situation. However, one culture is distrustful of women in power which is, now, a bit tired trope so I didn’t enjoy that as much.

Engaging the enemy is actually my favorite book of this series, so far.

Lousy narrator

Years ago I enjoyed reading this series and I expected to enjoy listening to the books now. The narrator, however, is SO bad that it’s difficult to enjoy the stories. Her attempts at different voices are poor and I don’t know where she learned how to pronounce certain words, and her pronunciations may reflect a regional accent, but in standard American English, the second syllable in words like “rigor” don’t sound like they are spelled with the letters “ure”. One of the books mentions a character performing an EVA; this is generally pronounced as the 3 separate letters and I’ve never heard it said like the name Eva. I suggest the publisher make new recordings of all of the books in this series done by a far more able narrator.

reread first the 5th time so far. love it!

I would love to see more in this series it was an incredible read from start to finish

Go Vatta!

Originally posted at Fantasy Literature.

“I do not intend survival. I intend victory.”

Engaging the Enemy is the third book in Elizabeth Moon’s VATTA’S WAR saga. Young captain Kylara Vatta, her beautiful cousin Stella Vatta, and their elderly Aunt Grace continue their quest for revenge on the people who destroyed the Vatta shipping empire and most of the Vatta family. They are just beginning to realize the extent of the vast conspiracy which brought the Vattas down — it involves space pirates, a disgruntled renegade cousin, a traitorous ship captain, and the government of their home planet, Slotter Key.

While Ky and Stella are out in space dodging assassination attempts and looking for allies, they have to deal with mercenaries, ship captains from different cultures, and more than one planet’s ridiculous system of government. Finally Moon begins to show us the cultural distinctions between the different planets we visit. Some of this is pretty amusing and reminds me a little of Jack Vance’s ability to highlight silly human behaviors by emphasizing a particular inane behavior in one of his created cultures. Elizabeth Moon does something similar here. Mostly she’s making fun of bureaucracy and it adds a nice bit of levity to her story.

Ky is getting stronger and growing into her role as the commander of an interplanetary military force. She’s still worried about her discovery that she enjoys killing bad guys and we, along with her cousin Stella, are starting to worry a little, too. There are some moral dilemmas for Ky — on more than one occasion she has to decide whether it’s ethical to kill or torture one person for the greater good. Ky doesn’t think about this for very long before making her decisions — does that make her morally inferior or superior?

Aunt Gracie is probably Elizabeth Moon’s best character in this series. Because the enemies have brought down the ansibles that allow for interplanetary communications, she’s out of touch with Ky and Stella. Here we see her scheming in the background, targeting the president of Slotter Key. Her story takes less space than Ky’s but it’s always exciting. Elderly Aunt Grace may not be involved in space battles, but she kicks butt nonetheless.

Stella, on the other hand, is weak in this installment. She has so much potential to be a great strong character, but so far Moon doesn’t seem to be sure what Stella’s purpose is. In the previous books she seemed to be a hero in her own right, but this time Moon seems to be using her to make Ky look better in contrast. Too bad. Why can’t Stella be awesome, too? I hope she’ll be back on track in the next book.

Most of the plot of Engaging the Enemy focuses on Ky meeting and strategizing with potential allies, equipping her ships, hiring crew, worrying about her relationship to her home planet, and trying to decide what her role is in the struggle for revenge. Too much of this is tedious and repetitive. I’ve mentioned in a review of an earlier book in this series that I enjoy the focus on trading and transportation logistics, so I feel a little forgiving about this, but many readers will think it’s just plain boring. There’s not much action from Ky’s storyline until the very end of the book when there’s a trial, a surprising revelation about the Vatta family, and a major military engagement.

Despite the deceptive title of the book, there isn’t a lot of action in Engaging the Enemy. However, the story advances and there are welcome revelations and some good character development. I’m rating Engaging the Enemy a little lower than the previous installments just because there’s less action, some of the plot elements feel like they’re there just to add drama, and there’s too much boring red tape. Still, somehow Elizabeth Moon keeps me reading and there’s no way I’m giving up on the Vatta family now. Go Vatta!