Book Series Review & Recommendation – The Confederation Novels, Tanya Huff

Valor's Choice (Confederation, #1)

We will not forget. We will not fail you.

Sci-fi, secret missions, rebellion?! What could be better than that~ If you like conspiracy novels with an extraordinary setting, this series is definitely for you! It’s time to bring it on with another book review from shl!!! 🙂

Note: Review is MAINLY spoiler-free!

Valor's Choice (Confederation, #1) The Better Part of Valor (Confederation, #2) The Heart of Valor (Confederation, #3) Valor's Trial (Confederation, #4) The Truth of Valor (Confederation, #5)

Titles: Valour’s Choice, The Better Part of Valour, The Heart of Valour, Valour’s Trial, The Truth of Valour
Author: Tanya Huff
Series: The Confederation Novels
Rating: ★★★★★
Re-readability: 4/5
Synopsis: The main protagonist of the Confederation novels is Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr (later Gunnery Sergeant) of the Confederation Marine Corps. This military SF series is set in a time when various ‘Elder Races’ have approached the ‘Younger Races’ – humans, Taykan and Krai – to join the Confederation and fight against the ‘Others’ (later known as the ‘Primacy’) in exchange for advanced technology and access to planets for settlement (and, presumably, profit). The Elder Races themselves don’t take up arms; all the fighting is done by the Younger Races. The diplomatic overtures, such as they are, tend to be handled by the Elder Races, such as the Mictock (arachnid life forms) and Dornagain (who have names like ‘Strength of Arm’ and ‘Walks in Thought’).

Individual Synopses:

‘Valour’s Choice’ (#1) has Torin and her comrades serving as an ‘honour guard’ for a diplomatic mission to the Silsviss, whom the Confederation is trying to recruit. It turns out to be anything but a diplomatic mission.

In ‘The Better Part of Valour’ (2), Torin is sent on a top-secret reconnaissance mission with a hastily drawn together squad of Marines to investigate a mysterious, alien spaceship (nicknamed ‘Big Yellow’).

In ‘The Heart of Valour’ (#3), Torin (now Gunnery Sergeant) accompanies Major Svensson, who has been almost entirely ‘regenerated’ (he was reduced to little more than a brain and spinal cord in his last combat), to the Crucible – a planet set up to simulate battle situations for training new recruits – so that his doctor can field test his new body. The troops are attacked in earnest.

In ‘Valour’s Trial’ (#4), Torin’s company is almost entirely wiped out in a battle, and she finds herself in an underground POW camp that shouldn’t exist (because the Others take no prisoners), and where discipline has broken down. Torin and the Marines seeking a way out with her realise they are not the only POWs on the planet – the Others’ soldiers are here too.

Finally, in ‘The Truth of Valour’ (#5), Torin has left the Marines, but her civilian life with salvage operator Craig Ryder (introduced in # 2) is challenged when he is taken prisoner, and there are bigger players afoot.

(Tanya Huff was a recommendation by my favourite steampunk author, Gail Carriger.)

Review/ Thoughts:

PROS:

There’s plenty of action. I don’t read much military fiction (or non-fiction), so I have no idea if the battles and strategies are accurately portrayed, but the scenes and set-ups seem pretty tight to me. Whenever Huff has based her scenarios on actual battles, she knowledges it in her end notes.

There’s loads of camaraderie. Both in action scenes and in reflective moments, Huff describes, implies and celebrates the bonds between soldiers who have each others’ backs in combat. As part of this, there are all the ‘in-jokes’ linked to the different species. The di’Taykan constantly emit pheromones (they have to wear pheromone ‘maskers’ to protect other people from them), and thus are the most sexually non-discriminating and active species around. Loads of jokes about this, as you can imagine. The Krai, whose natural habitat is in the trees, and who have prehensile toes, can eat anything – including humans and plastic – and do. One of the elder races, the H’san, seems to be partial to cheese (a joke about this pops up every so often).

There’s a lot of heart. Torin is firmly of the belief that no Marine gets left behind, and she does her utmost to live out that creed and instill it in her soldiers. (Side note – when a Marine dies in combat, his or her comrades bag the body and incinerate it, storing the ashes in a small cylinder which the senior NCO carries with him/ her). Every novel has both an action-based plot-line and a heart-based plot-line. For example, in #3, apart from the attacks, Torin and the others have to manage when the Staff Sergeant Bey’hn (a di’Taykan) moves from the ‘di’ phase to the ‘qui’ (breeding) phase.

Huff has done adequate world-building. By the end of the novel, you’ll be tempted to swear at ‘serley‘ machinery or officers who don’t know what they are doing, swear “What the sanLi is that?” and refer to people who are good at their job/ attractive/ approved of as ‘chrick‘ (i.e. ‘edible’ in Krai, also used sarcastically). It won’t faze you when the di’Taykan stay in communal quarters and make sexual overtures at every opportunity, or when General Morris makes yet another decision without thinking about the effect on combat troops.

Interesting (and attention-grabbing) secondary characters e.g. Presit a Tur durValintrisy – news reporter extraordinaire, a Katrien (I imagine them as badgers for some reason). She’s incredibly funny, but she’s also a vivid reminder that the media is a force to be reckoned with, and sometimes, the only force that can bring out the truth.

There’s not a lot of existential thinking in the novels. Unlike other series which make it a point to explore inter-species relations (read ‘inter-racial relations’), the sad state of humanity, the dangers of space travel, or the inhumanity of war, Huff is focused mainly on the action. That’s not to say she doesn’t have opinions to voice. For example, she pretty much brings up the pointlessness of war when both Primacy and Confederation soldiers realise how similar they are, and even more so when they discover the war was incited so the Big Bad could analyse the different species. Huff is also pretty strong on the ‘we leave no one behind’ mantra. In #2, when one of the Navy pilots (‘vacuum jockeys’) sacrifices himself and his plane (after ejecting his gunner) to take out the enemy, the unstated thought, ‘It was never a stranger’, speaks volumes.

(For the record, I think a novel which explores some of the areas mentioned above sensitively and well is ‘The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet’ by Becky Chambers.)

CONS:

The plots are pretty simplistic. There’s a set-up, it all goes haywire, and Torin has to keep everyone safe and get everyone out.

Torin is pretty much a superwoman. We rarely see her moments of weakness – she doesn’t seem to have any – as she just grits her teeth and carries on until everyone is safe. She draws fire, rescues comrades, leads her troops, and faces down enemies without breaking stride or getting badly hurt. This is not a series where much character development should be expected; what you see is what you get for all the novels.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I enjoyed this series. It’s uncomplicated, there’s action and heart, and a vividly imagined world. It’s not for people looking for philosophical explorations, complex intrigue, and character development. I highly recommend it for light reading (‘light’ in terms of ease of reading, not in terms of subject matter)!

Note – I think #1 is the best novel, and it can actually stand alone. Thereafter, #2 to #4 are connected due to the same Big Bad, and it would probably be better to read them in sequence. #5 shifts attention to a new scenario (although Big Bad’ is still clearly present), which is unsurprising as it is the introduction to a new series featuring Torin and her crew, the ‘Peacekeeper’ series.

Random note – when Torin mentions in #1 that she joined the Marines because she couldn’t take living on a farm any more, I immediately thought of Judy Hopps from Zootopia. And Trixie Belden (which totally shows my age).

SPOILER! If you want to know who Big Bad is: the plastic aliens from #2 – sentient, polynumerous molecular polyhydroxide alcoholydes i.e. ‘hyper-intelligent, shape-shifting plastic’.

This is an edited version of the review originally posted on liftingupmyeyes.wordpress.com