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

Highly Recommend

Let me start by saying I'm an Elizabeth Moon fan and have enjoyed everything she's written - some more than other, but to date I can't say I didn't like anything she's written.

This is fairly typical Moon - strong female character with strong work ethic and sense of right and wrong, independent, decisive leader, a little on the innocent/naive side, but learns lessons - gets into trouble for all the right reasons and works hard to get out of it generally with some help from tough "gunnery sergeants" (Moon was a Marine and some of the best stereotypes generally show up in her work).

I give this audiobook a 4 out of 5 because it's a good book if you like her style, although in my opinion not her best book (which I happen to think is the Deed of Paksenarrion). Also, the narrator could be better - her reading is a little stilted - areas where a character should be speaking casually are read too literally and I'd like to see her develop a greater range of character voices. But she does ok and I enjoyed both the story and narration enough to download the next book in the series.

Ky Is No "Honor" And It's A Good Thing!

Being a fan of David Weber's Honor Harrington Series. and being a fan of Elizabeth Moon's Deeds of Paksnerrion (Spelling) I had high hopes for this title. The story is a good start with a likable character Ky. Ky starts the story a promising young recruit who ends up in hot water. To alleviate this her family trusts her with a mission that ends her up in more hot water. The narrator does an excellent job. By only giving Ky a specific voice she escapes the mistake some narrator make when speaking for a character of an opposite sex by speaking in the irritating falsetto. I look forward to see what happens next. The story moves at an excellent pace and builds the characters enough not to be blanks.

Moon's writing is great, Narrator is not so hot

The author, Elizabeth Moon, has written another excellent series here, but the narrator leaves plenty to be desired.

After the first few hours, she figures out the rhythm well enough that listening is fine, but she consistently mispronounces certain words... and after awhile, each time she says those words I want to cringe.

Give it a listen anyway, because it's a great read -- but Moon needs to find better narration for her other works!

Oh boy, I found a new series

This is my first time read a Elizabeth Moon book. I had never heard of her before I listen to the interview with her and David Weber. After listening to the interview I was interested enought to give her a try. I enjoyed the story of a young girl from a shipping family that was asked to resign from the military academy because she helped an underclassman find a priest outside of the school who then went on media campaign against the school. Her father makes her a cargo ship Captain (she had her master's license) and sent her off in a old ship to make some trades on way to wrecking yard. The story is interesting and their is lots of adventure, suspense and battles. She is attracted to the military life and the story sets up and leaves you with the question will she stay as a cargo captain or join a mercenary company. This is the first book in a series and set up the character and story line for the series. Cynthia Holloway did okay narrating the book. Can not wait to start book two.

Sounds Like a very young female reading the book.

I have enjoyed every book written by Elizabeth Moon. The Kylara Vatta series is one that I have long awaited in audio book format. Unfortunately, Cynthia Holloway sounds like a very young female child and she can't do male voices. This makes the leading mens voices sound ridiculously. Needless to say, it ruins the story completely and I could not finish listing to it. We can only hope that in the future the producers of this series will make a better selection of female reader since the books have many older male characters.

Great Series

I was reluctant to purchase this book for fear I really wasn't going to like this series at all. I was pleasantly surprised with it. The first book can be a little slow at times, but it was an overall good plot, and the books get increasingly better as the series progresses.

The story focuses on Kai, a young adult in her last year at her planets space academy. She has a run in with another student in the first few minutes and is forced to resign. As a member of a wealthy family that owns a vast interstellar shipping company, she is quickly given a Captains slot on a small, slow freighter. As the story unfolds, she begins a series of missions and jobs to make a much greater profit than her family expects, and to possibly save the ship from being scrapped at the end of her voyage. This includes being stuck in a system at war, and actually getting a chance to use some of her military training.

The first book, as I said, can be a little slow, but in the later books (when she starts getting weapons and faster ships) include full space battles and much more action.
Would definitely recommend this series, BUT, if you don't like the first book, listen to the second before you decide to drop the series altogether.

Good with an *

I really enjoyed this book for many reasons: The plot was interesting, the main character was very easy to relate to and there was some very good action.

I put the * in the title, however, because I do not believe that the person that was chosen to read the book was the most qualified to do so. I mean no disrespect to the woman, but the reading style came across as very robotic and mechanical without a whole lot of emotion or distinction between characters. This did improve somewhat, however, the later you got into the book.

I would recommend this book to a friend, though, despite my misgivings about the person chosen to narrate it.

Good book, Bad Narrator

Knowing this is just the first book of a series and how most series start off kinda slow, I enjoyed this story even tho it started very very slowly, but I found it very hard in some places to distinguish the difference between character's voices. I imagine if i were to read a hard copy of this book I would enjoy it more and be able to follow certain sections better.

I really like this book

I have read the book many times. I like the story and plot and characters and I am a fan of the author but I am having trouble with the reader. Her pseudo haughty delivery plus nasally Midwestern twain that finishes off the words sounds phony. She is reading words not telling a story. The reader hasn’t prepared herself for the reading, her phasing is often wrong or is off just enough to be irritating. I am hoping to overcome my objections to the reader because I would like to get the rest of the series. Maybe as the reader gets into the books her delivery will improve.

Elizabeth Moon rocks.

I have been an Audible listener since 1999 and this is my first review. I am enjoying this series very much. I thought the first book started off a little slow, but this one made up for that. I am going to buy the third one in the series as soon as I finish this review. Ky Vatta is a cool character. She has hidden strengths.
I disagree with the previous reviewer about the reader's voice. Pleasant and concise.

Good book - read badly

I have previously read this book and enjoyed it. However I felt the reader for this audio is not good at all. Sounds stilted and hardly any good inflection. Her heavy American accent really gets in the way.

I still liked the story though.

Enjoyable sci fi

Good well written sci fi adventure,with a female lead character. I also found the narrator difficult to listen to and almost didn't download the book because of that,but found that I did get used to her style,and that the book was gripping enough to carry me past it.I'm looking forward to listening to the rest of the series.

A great space adventure !!

I was first introduced to Elizabeth Moons' Vatta War series when I got hold of a copy of the second book in the series, purely by accident. I read it and loved it. So I decided to start reading again from the first book and I'm glad I did.

Its a brilliant story, and gives a nice believable insight into a life in space which lots of sci-fi fans love so much. The one thing I like about this story is that it doesn't try to stick with combat all the time. (I've read the second book and it does have more combat in it, but its paced and not overdone.) I must admit I do like the boring details, i.e. docking procedure, trading etc.

There has been some critisism on the narration style. Personally, I like it. Cynthia Holloway does have a heavy accent, and a reading style that can seem robotic, but its clear and easy to follow. She manages to convey the emotion and characters really well.

Definitley a good sci-fi story and I really do recommend it. !!!

Narrator no good

Did not enjoy the narrator and I struggled to finish, not sure if it's the story or just the narrator

Good story, bad reading

As the headline says. the story is good, but almost ruined by the reading. She makes the main caracter sound like an idiot.

Struggling with the narrator ...

I can't comment on the story or the quality of the writing because, for me, this is unlistenable. The narrator's voice grates on me, she puts odd inflections at the end of words and mid sentence, and sometimes almost sounds computer generated, in that she doesn't have a natural sounding rhythm of speech pattern.

Good start

Good start to a series. I will definitely continue to read.




(Fifteen words total required)

Good story, bad narration

I loved the nitty-gritty details of daily life as a new starship captain. So believable.

The narration was a constant irritant, though. What with the over-enunciation and stresses in the wrong place, it was constantly pulling me out of the story.

The prologue to a wider character story.

Story gets its points across but this is no action series.

I already know and like the author so the plot and pace of development are familiar while the general focus on suspense and “what if” may put off others looking for an action/intrigue based novel. Elizabeth Moon is far more of the Arthur c Clarke style of story where the selected cast encounter an unusual situation and act mostly professional about resolving it, with a few side-cast to throw wrenches into an otherwise stable plan of action for not unreasonable reasons.

It’s a relatively slow burn with a character very much in their formative years as a young adult with a caring family (direct and social) on her first time out in a generally safe universe.

Narrator pot on just enough voice inflection to carry characters but some of the scene descriptions didn’t help her, a decent overall performance of a tad warble at times.

The introspective moments reminded me somewhat of dune, but where the frank Herbert characters are far more concerned with long term impacts the MC here is far less self confident. It makes sense given the situation but I’d say a little too much time is spent in her head on the rationalisations, hopefully something there more to remind the viewer that this is a big change after an unexpected event rather than an ongoing feature within the series.

Plot was good enough it’s a slice of life and suspense or threat of danger story rather than a military officer novel.

The MC while written to be second guessing a lot is generally willing and able to act.
The wider cast (father excepted) remained fairly undeveloped throughout, understandable but something to be aware of.

Overall vocal performance was good though the “accents” are likely to vary in enjoyment by listener.

Not bad, but some parts drag.

It's a good idea, some good action scenes, but the author spends far too much time on irrelevant details. This is almost an excellent story, but it isn't. The secondary characters are poorly drawn, and the work lacks the faintest trace of humour that I like in a book.
The reading struggles to be average.
Would I spend a credit to buy the next book?
Absolutely not.