Trading in Danger

Vatta's War, Book 1

By: Elizabeth Moon

Narrated by: Cynthia Holloway

The first of the acclaimed Vatta's War books, the exciting military science fiction series that features a swashbuckling spaceship-captain heroine who mixes commerce with combat.©2004 Elizabeth Moon (P)2008 Tantor

Oh boy, I found a new series

This is my first time read a Elizabeth Moon book. I had never heard of her before I listen to the interview with her and David Weber. After listening to the interview I was interested enought to give her a try. I enjoyed the story of a young girl from a shipping family that was asked to resign from the military academy because she helped an underclassman find a priest outside of the school who then went on media campaign against the school. Her father makes her a cargo ship Captain (she had her master's license) and sent her off in a old ship to make some trades on way to wrecking yard. The story is interesting and their is lots of adventure, suspense and battles. She is attracted to the military life and the story sets up and leaves you with the question will she stay as a cargo captain or join a mercenary company. This is the first book in a series and set up the character and story line for the series. Cynthia Holloway did okay narrating the book. Can not wait to start book two.

Tough transition from Paksenarrion

From free wheeling to slogging. The books of The Deed Of Paksenarrion, Moon'[s first trilogy, entertained, stimulated and amused me from page one on through the end of the fourth book (actually a new trilogy with roots in Deed). I expected the same of Trading but was massively disappointed for about the first fourth of the book. The book started slowly, I did not have a clear sense of the environment and culture surrounding the characters...I may have found it hard to transition from fantasy to sf...and maybe narrator Cynthia Holloway's lack of variability between character voices worked together to stunt my interest. All of this said, I finished the book and immediately downloaded Book 2 of the Vatta's War series. Why? I am finally enjoying the plot, the action and most of all, the character of Kai Vatta. All of this said, I found the imbalance between treatment of genders hard to handle. In this book Moon's women are generally unbeatable Amazons who develop character traits throughout the story. Her men are stick figures with little importance and little else, too. This is tiresome stuff. This book is no better than average, but there is enough promise to get me to continue on to the next book.

Recommended

1. Book: Grade: A. An excellent series. It's lots of fun to listen too. It's action-adventure sci fi with a bit of political intrigue mixed in. Readers will hardly be surprised to find (in Elizabeth Moon) a young hero, unfairly disgraced, who must now prove herself -- and in the process learn who she is and what she is capable of -- against overwhelming odds. As usual, Moon gives us plenty of female characters who are not one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs, as is all too common in fantasy and science fiction. If you enjoy strong female protagonists, Moon is for you.

Note: It's also true that this is no "Deed of Paksenarrion," but given that that was Elizabeth Moon's "home run" and one of the best fantasy novels of the past 50 years, the comparison isn't really fair. "Deed" is on the short list of top fantasy I recommend to people, along with things like Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and Song of Ice and Fire.

2. Reader: Grade: A/A-. Audiobook listeners look for two things in a reader, skill and a "good fit" with the book. In my opinion Cynthia Holloway satisfies both very well. She does sound young, but the protagonist is young. I think her "fit" this series is very good, and I hope of Brilliance does any of Moon's other sci fi series (like the Esmay Suiza series), that Holloway does the reading for that too.

The complaint that she "can't do male voices," doesn't seem to me to amount to more than her not sounding male -- but so what? Think of a top reading like George Guidall trying to "do" female voices. Not going to happen.

Ok

I enjoyed the story, liked the raw energy of the character; the truths she discovers about herself are not just her military training. However i give the story a 4-5 but the narration is poor. The voice actor has no depth does not develop other voices well. I'd get another reader if i were the author. I will listen to book 2 but i may read the others just because of the narration.

Interesting story, ruined by bad narration

Would you try another book from Elizabeth Moon and/or Cynthia Holloway?

I'd try another book from Elizabeth Moon, but the Narrator really didn't do a good job with this one.

If you’ve listened to books by Elizabeth Moon before, how does this one compare?

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Would you be willing to try another one of Cynthia Holloway’s performances?

No. Her performance was seriously awful and made the story nearly impossible to listen to for me.

Was Trading in Danger worth the listening time?

I listened to it while doing other things, so it wasn't a major loss, at least.

Any additional comments?

Cynthia Holloway's narration focused way too much on proper pronunciation and clear speaking, which resulted in a really distracting, unnatural, and overly dramatic pace that made it very very difficult for me to make it through this audiobook. Oddly, the narration style ended up highlighting a lot of the awkwardness that some of the writing showed, particularly the 3 minutes of "Mac Roberts said" that occurred near the start of the book.