Trading in Danger

It has been years since I first read Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion. That lovely work firmly set the author in the “Fantasy” category in my mind. Years passed, and I never thought to look at SF by Moon until I saw a Redditor recommending a very unusual SF book with and older female protagonist: Remnant Population, which turned out to be excellent!

Now, I've finally turned my attention to Vatta's War (solely because it was written by Elizabeth Moon), and I am disappointed that I did not read this sooner! This is excellent character driven Science Fiction. There are events in plenty, but the meat of the book is still the central character and her interactions with others. This is realistic coming of age: not in a typical YA pubescent sense, but instead a more realistic “ just out of high school or college and adapting to independent responsibility” sort of way. The protagonist is problem solving, personnel managing, etc. amidst a chain of unexpected complications. We get the main character's self doubts, anxiety, and internal development without the fetish-like pathological level of whining about anxiety that plagues so many characters in the past decade. This balance takes more skill as a writer, and Moon has the skill to give us that. I fully intend to dive right into the sequel next!