Trading in Danger

Vatta's War, Book 1

By: Elizabeth Moon

Narrated by: Cynthia Holloway

Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

The first of the acclaimed Vatta's War books, the exciting military science fiction series that features a swashbuckling spaceship-captain heroine who mixes commerce with combat.

©2004 Elizabeth Moon (P)2008 Tantor

galactic inner space travel and fruit cakes

This is down to earth daily life on a galactic scale interspersed with high adventure. It reminds me of Sophie, Captain Aubrey and Dr. Matterin in all 20 of Patrick O'Brien's books. Okay Elizabeth Moon, how fast can you rite these? I'm hooked.

An interesting beginning to an SF series

The first book in a space opera series.

Kylara Vatta is the youngest of the Vatta family who owns a very successful space shipping firm. But Ky wants to be a soldier and so she goes to the military academy even over her family’s objections. However, another cadet tricks her and she’s kicked out in disgrace. She’s now an embarrassment to her family so they want her out of sight. At least until everyone forgets her troubles and her mother can marry her off.

However, her father and brother conspire to give her a star ship to captain. The ship is an old one and in fact Ky is expected to take it to a scrapyard. But along the way, she finds opportunities to trade and takes them. Unfortunately, the ship breaks down and leaves her and her crew in the middle of a war, without a functioning FTL drive, so Ky will have to grow up fast and think quick.

This is Ky’s coming of age story as a captain. For her maiden voyage, she’s been given a very experienced crew. She knows that and learns to rely on them, even though at first she wants to do herself everything she can. Her previous experience at the academy serves her well and even though she isn’t a teenager, she still has some flaws to overcome. Other people don’t expect much from her because of her youth and those who know about her previous blunders think that she wants too much to help other people. But she’s very resourceful and a no-nonsense character. She also has a dark side.

The other major characters are the crew members. One of them Ky has known off and on her whole life. I also rather enjoyed a certain senior Vatta captain when he made an appearance later in the book. Ky’s family is very supportive of her but they definitely treat her like a little princess who needs to be rescued. But that did mean that even if Ky had screwed up, her family would have bailed her out which diminished the danger somewhat.

However, only Ky herself is really a memorable character. Also, the story devotes more time to business dealings and trying to get enough money for repairs than action. I was a bit thrown by the fact that this universe uses ansibles for communication because I though Ursula Le Guin invented them.

Even though this is the first book in the series, it doesn’t end in a cliffhanger. But I enjoyed the book enough that I’ll continue with the series.

Go for a readable version.

The narration is really really bad. My workaround was to speed up the narration to 1.25 -1.50 which made it easier to listen to and eventually got me through the series.
The story line was OK but perhaps more suited for young adults.It lacked depth and did not engage in the same intense way as for example the Honor verse series.
Ok if you need to pass some time.

Best read since I finished the Vorkosigan Saga!

I loved it! An adventure with a female protagonist!! The characters develop and evolve as the story unfolds!

Narrator continously mispronouncing words

The story is very good. It's well written, the characters are well developed, the concept is good. The narrator, however, almost ruined the experience for me. She constantly mispronounced common words.

Excellent story, narration so-so

I’ve read all these books multiple times and it was time to listen to them. Books are amazing! The narration was hard to get used to at first but then you hardly notice the odd style. Not to mention multiple mispronunciations that were distracting. Ultimately, it’s worth the $7.50 I paid since I already owned the kindle book.
Now I’m moving onto the second book! Very excited! Maybe the narrator fixed the weird stuff...

I’m addicted

I fell into the Vatta series backwards (I started with Cold Welcome) and then circled back to this one to fill in the blanks. With apologies to to Ms Holloway, I prefer the narrator for Cold Welcome, if pressed. I’ve already got all the other books in my Audible que.

Do you like space sims?

listening to this I felt like I was vicariously experiencing a space simulator. maybe a business slash trade in space simulator. this is not a bad thing I actually found the business talk interesting, but know there is a lot of it. I'd have to say the main character feels a little bit stilted. she is in general a little stiff and the rest of the characters aren't any better. that said she does develop throughout the book. if you're curious what a well-developed take on Interstellar business looks like I'd recommend this book.

Great story, inaccurate reader

I loved the story and have been a fan of Elizabeth Moon for years. Unfortunately the narration suffered at times due to Ms. Holloway’s unfamiliarity with the full scope of the language used in the book. While her characterizations were well done and consistent, the misreading of some words was jarring and upset the narrative flow.

Good book

I read the series several times and enjoy it. The only problem I have is the way the narrator says “he/she said”. After a few times it gets annoying. But other than that I enjoyed listening to the story.