#vatta's war

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[endoplight]

I think my current mood has been reflecting in my art lately. Here I go again drawing someone relaxing. XD

Anyhoo! Enjoy some art of Dillyn my #oc relaxing after a long day of heroing. Yes, she's a nerd. This is the first time I've ever drawn a picture with a background that has that much detail. XD

[noah-luck-easterly]

Responsibility goes up, authority goes down.

Command Decision, Elizabeth Moon

[owlbear33]

can people recommend any good millSF (novels), that's not written with a rightwing slant

in the past, I've enjoyed Tanya Huffs' Valour series, and Joe Haldimans' Forever War and Forever Peace were some of my fave books as a teen

but I tried reading Elizabeth Moons' Vatta's War, and I just found the Corporate heiress MC and the constant brr capitalism frustrating

I kinda like the ooh military tech cool (guns, tanks, power armour, spaceships, whatever), and the community in adversity, but all that needs to be tempered with a big load of war bad and pointless, military-industrial complex evil

[clownfurbies]

top 9 people you want to get to know better

@aristotels Thanks for tagging me, much appreciated.

favourite colour: I feel like as a kid I could pinpoint this without question. Now it's a lot more complicated? If you met us you'd probably think it's black, and we do be big fans of the color black (yes, color) I also really love different shades of orange, yellow, and green. Red is also just. Classic.

currently reading: It's always my goal to read more but the I just don't because reading is hard. I feel like I've actually gotten more dyslexic with age. I do got Lucifer: Princeps Princeps by Peter Grey on the end table right now. Last time I visited the boyfriends on the drive there and back I finally finished the Vatta's War series by Elizabeth Moon in audio book format and fuck that was such a good series. Also have manga that I bulk ordered for collecting reasons that I need to actually sit down and read. Things that I read scans of that I wanted physical copies of, like Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, and My Dress Up Darling. Manga easier for dyslexia to read.

last song: My phone went to video game lofi for some reason while driving home from therapy on Tuesday so that was... Kakariko Village by Mikel & Gamechops.

last series: Spy x Family because I needed something wholesome and this series is so cute. Today's Jujutsu Kaisen new episode day though, so I'll be sitting down with the cule for that. Ironically before these two series I hadn't been watching any anime for literal years.

sweet, savoury or spicy?: I have the biggest sweet tooth. It's so bad.

currently working on: I'm FINALLY getting a replacement replacement ds lite top lcd screen in the mail because the first one I got was faulty. That reminds me when I go out today, I should bring the faulty screen to a staples or bestbuy for ewaste recycling. But yeah if everything goes well I'll have a gorgeous new navy blue ds lite for more pokemon shiny hunting and a youtube video that documents cleaning it up and fixing it. Just gotta test the new screen, solder the speakers in place from the original screen, and then reassemble everything. My next project is a blue wii that has no working disc drive and no gamecube ports on it anymore. Which is very. Interesting? I'm VERY curious about it. Also have a $4 portable dvd player that I found at goodwill that needed a power cable for so I ordered one and I'll be interested to test that out. Would be cool if I could get it to read movies off of a usb or hard drive but it doesn't have any usb female slots in it so that might be beyond my abilities right now. Wanna stress that anyone who wants can do this. If you do it because you saw me do it, tag me even if I didn't tag you, I wanna read. But to keep the tradition alive, I'm tagging @mel-kore @ashenrenewal @mspreciosa @revesvagabond @ideas-of-immortality @phantomroyalty @octopi-wall-street @theconstellarium @nymori there's absolutely no pressure here tho, do what you want to.

[snuh]

Fred Gambino: Engaging The Enemy: Vatta’s War: Book Three - Orbit Books #84149, March 2006

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Book series that would make good movies/TV shows if done properly

With all this talk about Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones and now Harry Potter being remade for TV, there are a number of popular book series that I am surprised no one has (by now) done a proper film or TV series about. Here are a few that I think are overdue for adaptation on screen. Spoiler break here as this will be a bit long:

(n.b. all cover scans are from my collection)

1. Honor Harrington

This post was inspired by the fact David Weber’s military SF series Honor Harrington - which traces the career and exploits of the titular character - turns 30 this year. There is some immense world-building by Weber here, more than enough to sustain a TV series and spin-offs. And Honor had the “tough hero with cute cat” look down pat while Brie Larson was still in her crib. I feel old because I read On Basilisk Station when it first came out!

2. Killashandra Ree

I’m surprised there haven’t been movies adapting Anne McCaffrey’s novels. The Killashandra Ree trilogy - about a young woman who uses her singing voice to mine a precious commodity called crystal. This would be a perfect role for a singer-actress.

3. Illuminatus!

Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy has been called the ultimate fairy tale for paranoids. Most of not all references to “the Illuminati” which appears in films from time to time take some notes from the Illuminatus! Trilogy. It would have to be NC-17 if done for movies, so this is more likely a Netflix-friendly concept. And once the trilogy is done, Wilson went on to write a number of novels called The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, another semi-related trilogy, Schrodinger’s Cat, and also Masks of the Illuminati. 

4. Vatta’s War

If they don’t want to do Honor Harrington, there are other female-led military sci-fi series available, such as Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War series focusing on space academy dropout Ky Vatta’s attempts to redeem herself as she commands a trading vessel caught in the middle of a war.

5. Modesty Blaise

It’s true, there have been 3 attempts at adapting Peter O’Donnell’s comic strip for the movies: indeed, his very first full-length novel adapted his original script for the 1966 movie version that threw everything out the window in favour of goofy comedy. A 1980s TV pilot was Americanized. A 2004 prequel movie called My Name is Modesty failed because it was a prequel. But if properly cast (Gal Gadot), and properly written, a Modesty Blaise movie would make everyone forget the entire notion of casting a woman as James Bond - they don’t need to do so with retired crime lord-turned-unofficial MI6 spy Modesty Blaise around.

6. Old Man’s War

I was going to include John Scalzi’s amazing Old Man’s War series next, but apparently they are doing a TV series of that one.

7. Harvard Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings

OK, maybe not - but it would be funny to see someone release this as counter-programming to Rings of Power!

[fuckyeah-nerdery]

So hey, I’ve decided to do a monthly or bi-monthly thing where I recommend books to read!

Sometimes it’ll just be one book a month, sometimes two. I’m doing three to start out with both because I’ve been wanting to do this since May (so I’m playing catch-up) and to give y’all an idea of what kind of books I’ll be recommending: mainly SF, fantasy, and mystery.

So here we goooo:

Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey. The first book in both the Arrows Trilogy and the Heralds of Valdemar series, I first read this book a couple of years ago and loved it, which is surprising because I resisted reading it at all. The book is about a 13 year old girl named Talia who is Chosen by Rolan, a magical being that looks like a horse but isn’t a horse - to become not just a Herald, but the Queen’s Own, a very high-ranking Herald who acts as the chief advisor and confidant to the Queen of Valdemar (and also King if it’s a dude on the throne).

Needless to say, a novel about a young girl and magical “horses” was not something I wanted to read when I first came across Arrows of the Queen, but the thing got into my head and I eventually gave in and read it and loved it. The sequels are pretty good too.

One important note is that you will get the feels reading this book. Talia is a young girl who grew up in a community where women are barely treated as people and are more akin to baby factories and servants. As such, she has been abused physically, mentally, and verbally for her entire life and it shows in how she struggles to adjust to life at the Collegium and learns to trust and befriend others. There are several points in the book where you’ll want to either hug and comfort the poor girl or beat the living shit out of her family for all the mistreatment. Or both. Both is good.

At the same time, there are also moments where you’ll smile and cheer Talia on as she grows as a person. You’ll also love Jadus. I won’t say anymore on the latter, but anybody who has read the books knows what I’m talking about.

Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon. TiD is an odd book because while I found it fun, others might not. It’s very much an “establishing” book that sets the stage for everything that happens in the rest of the Vatta’s War series. But it’s still well-worth reading.

Trading in Danger follows Kylara Vatta, a member of a family of a major interstellar shipping company after she’s expelled by space academy for unintentionally causing a major political scandal. Her father bundles her off to space to put time and distance between her and the scandal, so while her career in her planet’s space navy is destroyed, she still finds herself in command of a ship.

Granted, the ship is small, aging, and ultimately destined for the scrapyard, but it’s a ship and she’s the captain. What follows can only be described as a clusterfuck. Ky decides to go off the plan (hit a couple trading spots on the way to the ship breakers, sell the ship, and travel back home on a passenger liner) by pursuing her own trading opportunities. This is actually my favorite part of the book because when she goes to tell the rest of the crew about her plan, she expects them to veto it (they’re all older than her and handpicked by her father for this cruise). Instead, she finds out that there’s a betting pool on when she would decide to go off on her own because she’s not even remotely the first Vatta to do it.

The clusterfuck begins when they end up in a star system with a busted FTL engine, the system’s ansible (the faster-than-light communication system) is destroyed, and the two inhabited planets decide to go to war with each other.

Meanwhile, all Ky wanted to do was buy some damn farm equipment. But like I said earlier, Trading in Danger chiefly sets the stage for everything that happens in the other books in the series, so it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s not bad, though.

The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver. I had a heck of a time deciding on what mystery novel to put, but finally settled on this one because it’s interesting. Lincoln Rhyme is a highly skilled forensic criminalist who, three years prior to the start of the story, is left a quadriplegic after having his neck broken at a crime scene. He still has movement and feeling from the shoulders up and some movement in his left ring finger, but otherwise he’s confined to bed.

Needless to say, this doesn’t do him any favors for his temperament and this is where I need to set out a trigger warning for suicide ideation because one of the plot threads that runs through the novel is that Rhyme wants to commit suicide because of his condition. Part of it is self-loathing, but also fear that he could either end up completely paralyzed due to a stroke or suffer a dysreflexia attack and die in agony. If this is something that’s triggering to you, then do.not.read.this.book.

The plot follows Rhyme as he’s convinced to help the NYPD find and stop the Bone Collector, a serial killer who kills his victims not long after kidnapping them and leaves behind clues pointing to his next victim. The book alternates between Rhyme, the Bone Collector, and Amelia Sachs, a young patrol officer who was set to transfer to the NYPD’s public relations department but instead finds herself acting as Rhymes’s eyes and ears (his body, really) at the crime scenes.

I really enjoyed The Bone Collector when I read it back at the beginning of the year, so much so that I finished it in less than a week! The scenes where the characters use forensics in their hunt were all fascinating to read. I also liked that we don’t find out the Bone Collector’s identity until the very end. Rhyme is an asshole, but he grows on you, helped along by his rocky relationship with Sachs.

[laserswordsanddragons]

One of my favorite series. The only knock I have against the covers is that Ky is described as darker skinned in the books. It’s never said what her ethnicity actually is because her family is from another planet, but I’ve pictured her as being South Asian. A character in one of the books says that the Vatta’s trade language was based on the language their ancestors used on Earth. He can’t remember the name other than it was “tam-something” which I’m assuming is Tamil. I’ve pictured her as being Malay or Indonesian.

Then there’s the cover to Into the Fire, the second book in the Vatta’s Peace series.

It’s definitely nice to see a WOC as the main character in a SF.

[wolframpant]

I am on the last book of Vatta’s War series and I’ve only just realized that I imagine sergeant Pitt as Gwendolin Christie

[asimovsideburns]

Cannon AUs in Harrow the Ninth:

1) “I do not have access to my greatest skill, I am cast out, I will fight my way to what is mine with tooth and claw or die trying.” (Roleswap AU)

2) “I am attending a fancy party where the heir to the throne will choose a bride, and I feel just so out of place.” (Royal AU, subtypes Reluctant and Cinderella-esque)

3) “I have for some reason joined the military, but I think I’m falling in love with the cute barista at the cafeteria who will likely comfort me during the grueling adjustment period and the aftermath of combat—she will be linked thematically to stability, peace, and healing.” (Military/Coffee Shop AU)

I’m thinking about it and like… underdog fighting for respect… peasant at a royal ball… finding love in the midst of adversity… oh my god.

Harrow is a romantic.

[ontheedgeofgreatness]

Has anyone read Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon? My mom gave it to me to read and it's super cool it's set in space and the main character is awesome

[lianabrooks]

Where’s The Fandom?

Where is the Vatta’s War Fandom?

Where’s the wikipedia articles about Slotter’s Key and the number of weapons Ky carries? 

Where are the people who have read these books?

[avalonarchive]

AVALON ARCHIVE YEAR IN REVIEW 2021

So I kinda didn’t do a year in review post for last year because ... um ... 2020 was a year. In which I read books.

2021 was also a year in which I read books. Not as many as usual since I had to deal with work and a family emergency and a last-minute move. But still. Books were read. And here are the highlights.

Chaos Station series

Or, Stucky in Space. Probably the most fun I've had reading M/M romance. If you like your romance heavy on the plot, worldbuilding, and character moments, with only a tiny smattering of NSFW stuff, this is the series for you. Obviously, I didn't do a series review for this.

Animorphs series (books 33-37, plus some side stuff)

And now I'm deep in the ghostwritten stuff, which is very much a step down from the first 20 or so books. I hear it gets better soon, though?

Wicked Outlaw

Oh great another installment in Adventures in M/M Romance: The Quest for More Money. This time it's a computer security expert laying low on a Texas ranch. And by "laying low" I mean "helping his host deal with shady real estate agents and slowly discovering that he was Gay After All." Why am I still reading this series?

Cazadora

Lobizona was a book I mildly liked last year: undocumented girl with Steven Universe eyes discovers that she's a werewolf and that her existence is even more illegal in the magical world because of Rigid Gender Roles / Grammatical Gender. Unfortunately, the sequel (conclusion?) jumped all over the place and had (for me) a deeply unsatisfying ending that left a lot of loose ends hanging. Not even the Borges references could make up for it.

Trading in Danger

Was your favorite part of The Phantom Menace the first 10 minutes when they were talking about intergalactic trade? Then the Vatta's War series is right up your alley. Unfortunately, it wasn't my cup of tea. Too much talk about trade contracts and bureaucracy for my tastes. I made it through the first book and 25% of the second before I dropped it.

The Weavers' Circle series (books 1-4)

Six men were reincarnated throughout the ages to stop sorcerers from a dying world from taking over ours. Unfortunately, they failed each time. This time, they might succeed ... but only if they find their Designated Love Interests. Who also get to be immortal and have magic powers. (Yay?) This year's installment features a M/M/M threesome. So if you're into that ... check it out.

Terciel and Elinor

Oh look it's a Sabriel prequel. Which I thought was kinda dull compared to the OG Abhorsen trilogy.

Leviathan Falls

Look, I don't usually put books that I'm still reading in my year in review posts. But I don't want to end this list without mentioning the final book of The Expanse. This is the series that got me through the lowest points of the past two years. I'm halfway through Leviathan Falls and simultaneously dreading and anticipating The End. (No spoilers please.)

As always ... let's hope that the next year is better than this one.

[snuh]

Fred Gambino: Engaging The Enemy: Vatta’s War: Book Three - Orbit Books #84149, March 2006

[jamesdavisnicoll]

Victory Conditions  (Vatta’s War, book 5) by Elizabeth Moon https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/of-our-elaborate-plans