Reading Request - military SF novel recommendation

Hiya Glenn,

The second book in this series, "The Better Part of Valor" (these are
published by DAW) has just been released. I read it a day or two ago. Lots of
fun.

This one is about a group of highly-qualified recon soldiers (couple of
squads worth), recruited from throughout the army who are brought together to
explore a very large, derelict alien space ship. (The business about getting
them together from different units is to maintain extremely high
security - mostly from the media, who follow troop movements closely).

Classic sf plot, interesting characters and story. Interesting ideas re the
alien ship too.

For those who aren't familiar with the author or her books, she's known much
more for her fantasy, of which she's published a ton (something like 18
published novels now, I think). "Valor's Choice" and "The Better Part of
Valor" are her first ventures into Military SF, and are quite interesting. In
her universe, there is an alliance of various intelligent species (including
humans) who've joined to fight a common enemy, and have
mixed military forces.  The action is mostly small-scale (squad and
platoon, at most), and the characters are from several of the different
races.  The main character is a hard-as-nails female human NCO.

I recommend them, though with the caveat that Huff sometimes takes a rather,
er, liberal attitude toward certain social conventions, and that's reflected
in the novels (though not in what I would call an offensive way
at all) - stuff like interspecies relationships, etc.

As a side note, Huff and her S.O., both of whom lived here in Toronto for
years and years, were for a time part of the regular RPG group that my
friends Gord and Dave were involved with (D&D, mostly - back in the
early '80's). Tanya Huff has a habit of finding ways to get her friends into
the novels in some way, and both Gord and Dave (who are my two most regular
gaming buddies - both wargaming and RPGs) appear in these two books.
"Captain Gord Rose" is the main character's Company Commander (IIRC), and
"Warrent Officer David Graham" is a naval technician NCO who knows the main
character from way back...

Kinda fun.

I met Huff at the Toronto Trek convention a year or two ago. Very nice lady.

> Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2002 21:11:02 EST

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