The Future Falls by Tanya Huff

Due to the busy-ness in my life right now, I'm not going to write a long-winded essay about the latest in the Gale Aunties series by Huff. Huff is a superb and well-established author who writes very readable fiction. BUT...this particular iteration of the series spends most of its time going nowhere, while indulging in maudlin whining from the main character, Charlie (Charlotte) about the unable-to-be-consummated love affair between herself, and Jack the Dragon Prince. The plot should have been about the existential threat of global extinction posed by the asteroid which is about to strike Earth, and about the characters and their friends doing everything in their power to stop it, but instead it was mostly about interpersonal power juggling and emotional foolishness. I still love Huff's writing, and it was vastly entertaining, but if you're looking for adventure, it ain't here.

The Truth of Valor by Tanya Huff

 What does a gunnery sergeant do when there's no longer a war going on, and she's been set loose on the universe? Well, Torin Kerr thinks she's going to enjoy a "peace dividend" of a long space cruise with her salvage operator boyfriend, Craig Ryder, introducing him to her family, getting to know his family and friends, learning the trade of CSO. Not so fast, there! No idyllic, out-to-pasture lifestyle will be forthcoming in this novel. When pirates attack a pair of salvage operators and steal a sealed Marine armory full of advanced weaponry reserved to the military, things get unpeaceful real quick.

Matters are further complicated when Craig and Torin follow a bum tip from an incognito member of the pirate crew and are attacked in the middle of a huge debris field full of good salvage material. Torin is knocked out by an explosion, and the pirates kidnap Craig in order to force him to help them unlock the CSO seals on the armory. They've already tortured one old salvage operator to death trying to get the information, so both Torin and Craig are aware that whether he decides to help or to resist, he could end up in a world of hurt either way.

The pirates, of course, haven't yet connected retired gunny Kerr with Craig's girlfriend whom they left unconscious in space, and it may prove to be a fatal mistake. When she recovers and drags herself back to Craig's ship, she starts a new and intense mission - find Craig and destroy the people who have captured him, no questions asked, no quarter given. She recruits Presit the journalist, who is very nearly one of Craig's friends by this point, to help, as well as a trio of her former marine buddies, and the pirate base is not going to have any idea what hit it shortly.

Great adventure and a good time is had by all...of the good guys.

Valor's Trial by Tanya Huff

 One of these days, I'm going to have to go back and re-read and review all of the other Huff books in the collection, the "Smoke", "Blood", and "Keeper" series. She's been turning out good tales for an amazingly long time. Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr gets a fresh assignment to take the greenest troops from Sh'quo Company into a brand new war zone against the Others. The battle doesn't last long, as some unknown party deploys a new type of weapon which vaporizes the entire battlefield and all of the troops from both sides...except for Kerr and a select few.

Kerr awakens in a cave complex which turns out to be a prison for Confederation Marines, monitored and run in some automated fashion by indeterminate parties - everyone knows that the Others do not take prisoners. The area where the gunnery sergeant awakens has descended into an anarchic situation where a strongman, "Colonel" Harnett, and his cronies have taken over, and rule over the weaker prisoners. Wounded arrivals are killed and robbed, and the survivors are kept in a state of near starvation to keep them cowed and suppression any sign of rebellion. Kerr arrives like a force of nature and single-handedly kills nine of the oppressors, puts the camp under command of the ranking genuine officer there, and proceeds to try to find a way to escape.

Other areas of the cave prison complex have actually managed to maintain military discipline, though most of the prisoners who have been there any length of time have been subtly drugged into complacency and are not interested in escaping. Kerr gathers a small band of those who have the will to leave and leads them on an adventure through the caves, cave-ins and earthquakes to an entirely new section, where they discover that there are Others imprisoned here, as well. She and the NCO from the enemy band, who have also been recently captured and still have the will to escape, manage to keep their troops from killing each other and pragmatically join forces to attempt to get out of the caves, off planet, and back to their home bases.

The wrap up to this story is pretty predictable, in my opinion, and I've suspected as much since about the third novel in the series. I won't spoil it for you here. This is another fun read that kept me up way too late finishing it.

The Heart of Valor by Tanya Huff

 Once again, (now) Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr is off on a "cake" assignment - escorting a severely wounded Major who has had his body rebuilt to a final test of his rehabilitation - the planet Crucible, where the space Marine recruits all must go for final testing to become Marines. As one might suspect, it turns out not to be a simple or safe assignment after all. Torin and her lover, salvage operator Craig Ryder, have discovered that they're the only people from her last mission who recall  the escape pod from the alien spacecraft, Big Yellow. The military and scientists took it away to study further, and now no one has any idea that it ever existed in the first place. She suspects that the Elder Races are playing around with mind control, and sends Craig off on an errand to talk with a journalist who went through the same experience, to see if their common experience of being scanned by Big Yellow has also made her immune to memory erasure.

When Torin arrives on Crucible with her charge, Major Svensson, and his personal physician, who is along to monitor his medical condition, things begin to go awry. The scenario that the recruits are scheduled to face gets thrown out the window, and the orbital platform which controls the drone enemy forces is blown up by persons unknown, though Torin suspects the Others. The limits on lethal force go out the window, and Torin and the DIs try to herd their platoon of recruits to a location that they can defend against all of the drones, tanks and aircraft that have suddenly focused on their destruction.

Another light and adventurous tale, with a good twist close to the end.

The Better Part of Valor by Tanya Huff

 Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr is wondering whether implying that General Morris' parents were not married was such a good idea when she is picked especially by him to head up another difficult mission. An alien ship has been discovered by an independent salvage operator, Craig Ryder, and the Space Navy and a detachment of Marines are being sent to escort the civilian scientists of various races investigating the craft. Sound familiar? Kerr has her hands full keeping her Marines in line, and dealing with the civilians' foibles, as well. In addition, she's been assigned a grandstanding political commander for the mission, Captain Taryk, whom she is expected to bring back alive and covered in glory.

The alien ship is full of surprises, and things end up in a situation reminiscent of Captain Kirk's battle with the Gorn in a long ago Star Trek episode. One of The Others' ships arrives shortly after the Navy's, and both "landing parties" are trapped on the vessel, battling each other on their way to the next usable airlock. Whichever force is victorious will be allowed to leave, apparently.

While Kerr doesn't manage to get all of her charges home safely, she does her usual bang-up job, accompanied by explosions and destruction. A fun read, with plenty of witty dialog, but nothing deep or meaningful in this story.

Valor's Choice by Tanya Huff

 I've always enjoyed Tanya Huff's work, though for about a decade I feel behind in reading her latest novels. Had to do some catchup on the "Blood" series a while back, and now when I noticed that she had three recently published novels in the Valor/Confederation series, I had to go back (like I did with Weber's War God series recently) and grab the first two books off the shelves upstairs and re-read them, so I could feel like I'm aware of the situation and characters once again.

Sometime in the dim past, a group of old starfaring races have joined together to form a Confederation, peacefully assembled to trade and explore. The fly in the ointment, however, is The Others, an undescribed race (or perhaps a confederation of their own) or warlike aliens who have attacked the Confederation's planets, people and interests. To save their bacon, the elder races have recruited some more aggressive beings to fight the war for them, as they either disdain to do so, or are by nature unable to. Haven't we heard this tune before? or after?

The three races that ARE aggressive enough to battle The Others are the humans, first to join the Confederation, the Krai, and the Taykan. At this juncture, however, a fourth race of warriors has been discovered, the lizardlike Silsviss, and Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr is assigned as the senior noncom in charge of a Space Marine detail tasked with guarding the diplomatic mission to their home planet, where negotiations will take place to attempt to convince the lizard men to join the Confederation, rather than throwing their forces onto the side of The Others.

I'm certain my son, a U.S. Marine sergeant, would have some pointed comments about how the Marine units are organized, how they fight and how they interact with one another, but this is fiction, futuristic, and the Corps has integrated alien races into its forces, not merely different flavors of humans, so I just figured to relax and enjoy it. That said, I think it at least captures some of the spirit of our current forces with its "no being left behind" philosophy and refusal to give up in the face of massively superior forces.

Early in the mission, a barroom brawl that erupts between some of the Marines, befriended by one group of Silsviss, and another rival group of Silsviss, seems to bode well for the future integration of the lizard fighters into the Confederation military. After that, things get complicated.

While on a flight to the capital city, the airship carrying the Marines and their diplomatic charges is shot down by unknown enemies, and they are forced to evacuate, move to a secure location, and improvise nearly everything. They come under attack by thousands of near-savage adolescent Silsviss, who are sent away to wilderness preserves to fight for dominance when their hormones take them out of control. Huff weaves a good tale of survival, heroism and battle - and blows up lots of stuff, too.

Fun tale, good military SF.

The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff

In this sequel to The Magic Emporium, I felt like I had a bit more of a clue what's going on with the whole Gale family, though it took a bit to get back into the flow of family politics. The focus of the action moves from Allie to Charlie (Charlotte), one of the younger members of the clan who has not yet been forced to take her place in the hierarchy, and who is, indeed, a bit of a wild child, spending most of her time on the road playing music, whether it's rock & roll, country, or Celtic. After returning from a long country tour, through Canada, she gets an offer to go on the festival circuit with a Celtic group, and rapidly decides, with a little prompting from the magic mirror in Allie's shoppe, to go for it.

Allie's grandmother, Catherine, is stirring up some trouble again, by getting into the middle of a political battle between an "evil" oil company that wants to drill offshore on the Breton coast, and a group of environmentalists trying to stop the project. The environmentalists' core leadership turns out to be a band of Selkies, whose primary concern is preserving the pristine nature of the oceans for their race; any benefit to humans is purely incidental. When one of the band members' girlfriend turns out to be a Selkie, and Charlie finds out that her skin (which allows Selkies to transform between their human and seal shapes) has been stolen, and along with four others' skins, being held hostage by the head of the oil company, it only follows naturally that she'll bring her Gale powers to bear on the situation.

There's a lot of fun stuff in here about the antics of the band members on tour, and some references that will probably make a lot of sense to Celtic music fans, and some subtle moralizing on the dangers of offshore drilling, while acknowledging the need for cheap energy and jobs. I figured out fairly early that Aunt Catherine's motivations weren't quite what they seemed, though I didn't find out the full truth until the big reveal at the end

Charlie and Allie's "nephew", Jack, becomes an integral part of this story. He's a teenager, and that's a dangerous thing for a Gale sorcerer, and even more dangerous time for a dragon Prince. Coming to terms with his odd status in the family, both for him and the elder Aunties, is fraught with trouble, but by the end of this story, his character gets a bit more fleshed out and he seems to secure a place for himself. I wouldn't be too surprised to see him as the primary character in a sequel, actually.

Short Takes

8/17/07 I finished Bujold's latest in the afternoon (in the Sharing Knife series), Legacy. It was delicious.

8/21/07 Been re-reading the old Blood Lines, Blood Pact, etc. series by Tanya Huff. It's been fifteen years or so, so it's all new to me now. Pretty fair stuff. Need to hit a couple of the used bookstores and see if I can find #s five and six in the series, as I sorta tapered off of her stuff for a while in the collection.

8/23/07 Reading Quantico, by Greg Bear. It's classified as SF, but is really more of a very near future scenario with terrorists. If Michael Crichton had written it, they would have just called it a thriller.

The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff

Either it's a strange coincidence, or it's just my week to read books with a heroine named Allie. In between Allie Beckstrom books by Monk, I begin reading a new novel by Huff and the protagonist is Allie Gale, a member of a very strange family from rural Canada. Huff begins with and maintains a little mystery about what's really going on in this one. We meet the Gale family as they're preparing for a ritual in the woods, and, from a not-so-casual observer, we see that the men of the family sport somewhat spectral antlers during the ritual. Are they shapeshifters, or what?

The Gale family (no relation to Dorothy from Kansas) is ruled by the Aunties, who may or may not have supernatural powers; it's a little vague at the beginning. Allie's grandmother, who technically was one of the Aunties, has been away from the family for a long time, and when she apparently dies, she leaves control of her junk shoppe in the big city to Allie. Allie leaves the family farm and heads to Calgary, where she finds out quickly that Grandma's shop is more interesting on the inside than outside. The merchandise in the shop ranges from the mundane, like boxes and boxes of yoyos, to the macabre, like the monkey's paw with one wish left on it.

The shop also serves as a mail drop for some of Calgary's denizens who aren't exactly Canadian citizens, a variety of shy and magical immigrants from the Under Realm. While Allie is getting a handle on the business end of things and looking into her grandma's disappearance, she gets tangled up with some interesting folks, such as a too-tall leprechaun named Joe, a tabloid reporter named Graham, a sorceror named Stanley, and a baker's dozen Dragon Lords.

This novel moves along steadily and enchantingly, with lots of interesting characters, dialog, and a great sense of humor. I've liked Huff's writing for years, and she may have the beginning of a wonderful new series here.


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