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Author: Elizabeth Moon
Publisher: Baen Books
Year: 1998, 1999
ISBN: 0671578421
Description: 400 pages; 18 cm.
Esmay Suiza is our heroine. She is a young woman from a semi-backwater planet who has joined Fleet to get away from her family and hidden, buried hurts. She has made it to the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade, by being competent but not outstanding. However, just previous to the start of this book, she has shown that she is more capable than she had been willing to show in previous postings and in tests. Suiza has just thwarted a mutiny and saved not only her ship from being handed over to the enemy Benignity, but saved several other ships as well. Now, she's about to stand before a Court Martial for her actions in commandeering the Despite from the traitorous Captain Hearne, and a Board of Inquiry for her actions after she had seized control.
After surviving both judicial processes, she returns home to Altiplano, for a short visit, to a hero's welcome. Briefly, she begins to fall back into the old, nearly-forgotten routines of her childhood, but those tormenting, haunting nightmares of something that had happened when she was young blossom with tremendous fury, leading to the realization that her family had lied to her years ago, supposedly to shield her from the torment. They try to get her to stay on Altiplano and to live the life that all women there live, but the briberies and kindnesses fail to hold her, and she returns to active duty.
Assigned to a gigantic deepspace repair vessel, she once again tries hard to become incredibly average. But unbeknownst to her or the authorities on the space-station sized ship, they have been lured away from safety in order to be captured and delivered to the enemy. Once again, Suiza finds herself having to overcome great odds to save not only herself but the thousands of Fleet personnel on board.
Score: 88 out of 100.
Suiza is a protagonist that you want to read more about. Coupled with a very good story, lots of anxious moments, and twists and turns, it's a book that is hard to put down. I'll be on the lookout for other Esmay Suiza books, as well as the other Fleet books that Moon has written.
