Trading in Danger is the first book in the Vatta’s War series by Elizabeth Moon, and is one of the books that I constantly go back to when I’m looking for good Science Fiction to read.

Kylara Vatta is a cadet in the honor corps at the Spaceforce Academy on the planet of Slotter Key. However, after inadvertently helping another student to badmouth the Academy she is kicked out of the Service. In order to keep her out of the public eye, Ky’s father (who is the Chief Financial Officer of the Vatta Transport Interstellar Shipping company) gives her the captaincy of the tradeship Glennys Jones, and tells her to take it to be scrapped on the planet Lastway. Ky has other ideas. Following the family motto of “trade and profit”, Ky picks up some cargo in the hope of earning enough money to save her ship from the scrapyard. That’s when things start to get exciting, as Glennys Jones suffers a major breakdown in a planetary system where war has just broken out--leaving Ky and her crew trapped. Ky has to deal with mercenaries, pirates and the backlash from her time in the Academy, making this a very interesting read.

I’m not exactly sure what genre Trading in Danger fits into. It has a bit of military science fiction with a hint of space opera but doesn’t descend into cloying sentimentality. Unlike other series, there isn’t a lot of hard science-fiction mixed up with the general storyline. For example, in David Weber’s Honor Harrington series he likes describing all of the technology in great detail--which is fine when you need to know how it affects the actions of ships in battle but does sometimes take the focus off the main characters; this is not a major criticism however, as I do like David Weber’s books. Elizabeth Moon manages to give enough technological information to the reader for them to understand how things work, without affecting the characterisation.

The writing style is great, as Moon uses a good balance of description and pace in her novel. This lets her flesh out the world and characters for the reader without losing any excitement along the way.

I highly recommend Trading in Danger, as well as the rest of the Vatta’s War series. In comparison to its sequels, this first novel is actually tamer than I remember it being, but even if you don’t find it as great as I do, you might want to go on to read a few more of the books in the series, which is where things get even more exciting.

  -- Amy Gordon