I do not know that I would want to read an entire series that just presents the endless story of wrangling cargo, but for this one novel it was interesting. Some of the things I liked about it involved the contracts, organization, and general concerns involved in shipping cargo via space freighter. Maybe Moon’s other works are like that, but this was a unique novel. Frankly, I’ve read some of Bujold and I was rather bored with the whole mess.

I have never read any of Moon’s work before, but I ran across a lot of people relating her works to that of Lois McMaster Bujold and others. In this novel, Vatta shipping is highly respected around the various star systems and their cargo and crews are significant. So many s0-called space operas focus a lot on pirates and on military ships and in so doing, treat merchant ships as expendable, irrelevant, and even as sub-standards. This means that the story is focused on merchant ships and crews. The thing that makes Kylara unique is that she is the daughter of a family-owned and operated shipping company. Obviously, there is the Honor Harrington series, but there are other examples like Kris Longknife and Boss ( Diving Series by Rusch). I am a little suspicious of the tendency to write space opera novels with female main characters because it seems to be an effort to “show us how cool women can be” rather than present a really great story. Immediately, I felt that the main character was interesting and going to make for a worthwhile read. Hoping to get her out of the limelight and make the best of her skills, her family gives her the command of an old, decrepit freighter Glennys Jones on its final journey to the scrapyards of Lastway. Kylara Vatta the daughter of the CFO of Vatta Transport Ltd., a space shipping firm based out of the wealthy world of Slotter Key, is forced to resign in disgrace from the Slotter Key spaceforce academy after she is tricked by another cadet. However, I am not sure that the accessories shown in the picture are very relevant to the story.

I like Seeley’s depiction of the main character, Kylara Vatta. It’s actually a fairly decent piece of art. The cover art for this novel was illustrated by Dave Seeley. This is also the first novel that I have read by Elizabeth Moon. This is the first novel in the Vatta’s War series written by Elizabeth Moon.

Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon