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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780345447593
ISBN number: 034544759X
Label: Del Rey
Manufacturer: Del Rey
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 400
Printing Date: August 30, 2005
Publishing house: Del Rey
Release Date: August 30, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 36065
Studio: Del Rey
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Amazon.com:
Marque and Reprisal is Nebula Award winner Elizabeth Moon's second novel about Kylara Vatta, starship captain in her family's interstellar shipping business. Fresh from war, Ky is trying to resume a normal trading schedule when an unknown enemy attacks her prestigous family. Though her family is large, Ky may be its only surviving member. But she cannot confirm this, for sabotage has cut off communications between star systems. And Ky has other problems. She's been turned into a privateer against her will. Her family's mysterious foe knows where she is, and is trying to kill her. And she has a bloody secret of her own.
Packed with action and intrigue, Marque and Reprisal and its prequel, Trading in Danger, are as strong and interesting as Elizabeth Moon's popular Serrano Legacy series, which also successfully combines hard SF, military SF, and adventure SF with interstellar and familial politics. The Kylara Vatta novels will please fans of the Serrano Legacy, Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan saga, David Weber's Honor Harrington series, and Robert A. Heinlein's juvenile novels. --Cynthia Ward
Product Description:
Kylara Vatta, risk-taking, rule-breaking, can-do heroine of Trading in Danger, is back in business–the kind that’s anything but usual–in the new military science fiction adventure by ace action storyteller Elizabeth Moon.
The exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground–but Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family’s fleet . . . and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off: because this time, the war has come to her. To be exact, someone unknown has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky’s father’s interstellar shipping empire. In short order, most of Ky’s family is killed, and subsequent attacks sever vital lines of communication, leaving Ky fighting, in every sense, to survive.
Determined to identify the ruthless mystery enemy and avenge her family’s name, Ky needs not only firepower but information. And she gets both in spades–from the band of stranded mercenaries she hooks up with, from her black-sheep cousin, Stella, who’s been leading a secret life, and from Stella’s roguish ex-lover, Rafe. Together they struggle to penetrate the tangled web of political intrigue that’s wreaking havoc within InterStellar Communications, whose effective operation their own livelihoods–and perhaps lives–depend on.
But the infighting proves to be infectious, and it isn’t long before Ky’s hired military muscle are turning their suspicions on the enigmatic Rafe, whose wealth of knowledge about ISC’s clashing factions and startling new technologies has begun to make him smell like a rat . . . or a mole. With swift, violent destruction a very real possibility, the last thing Ky needs is a crew divided against itself–and she’s prepared to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that Vatta stays in business, as well as in one piece.
What she’s not prepared for is the shocking truth behind the terror– and a confrontation with murderous treachery from a source as unexpected as it is unrelenting.
From the Hardcover edition.
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CHAPTER ONE
Kylara Vatta looked at the mass of paperwork from Belinta's Economic Development Bureau and sighed. The real life of a tradeship captain: paperwork and more paperwork, negotiation with shippers, customers, Customs officials. The life she hadn't wanted, when she chose to enter the Slotter Key Spaceforce Academy, and the life she had fallen back into when she was expelled. Boring. Mundane.
Not that her recent experiences in Sabine had been boring or mundane--terrifying was more like it--and no one would want another trip like that.
Except that she did. She remembered very clearly the rush of excitement, the soaring glee of the fight itself, the guilty delight when she'd killed Paison and Kristoffson. So either she wasn't sane or...or nothing. She thought of the diamonds tucked into her underwear drawer. Not enough to restore her old tub of a ship completely, but enough to take her to somewhere else, somewhere she could make the kind of life she really wanted. Perhaps the mercenaries would accept her violent tendencies; they'd offered a chance. Perhaps someone else. It would annoy her family, but not as much as the truth would hurt them.
No. She had to finish one job at least. Crew depended on her. The ship belonged to her family, as well, and she could not possibly earn enough to buy it away by the subsequent stop or the next. She sighed again, signed another sheet, and stared at the next. All right, then. Take this old tub to Leonora, deliver that cargo, then to Lastway. If she couldn't finance a refit by then, return to the original plan and go home by commercial passenger ship. If she made enough profit, enough to do the refit, she could get that done and bring the ship back to Slotter Key, and then resign. Or--she stared into a distance far beyond her cabin bulkhead. She could send the ship back with someone else. Quincy, for instance, knew enough to run the ship herself.
In the long run, her family would be better off without her. If her father knew how she'd felt when she killed...no. She had had those nightmares, trying to explain to that gentle man, hoping for his understanding but seeing the horror in his face. Better the smothering, overprotective love that had annoyed her in their last conversation than that horror, that disgust, that rejection. If she went home, he would sense something; he would try to probe, try to get her to confide in him, and eventually he would wear her down. It would be worse than anything else that had happened, to have her father sorry she was ever born.
She should just go away. Years later, maybe, she might be able to explain it to him, and he might be able to accept it. Years might put a safe skin on the raw truth of what she was.
She worked her way through the rest of the forms, then decided to take them to the local postal drop herself. Belinta Station had few amenities, but a walk would be refreshing in itself.
'Quincy--I'm going to drop the paperwork off,' she said into the ship's intercom.
'Find anything to load, or do you want us to start transferring what we left in storage?'
'I haven't found anything yet,' Ky said. 'I may have to go downside for that. Go on and load...see if you can get some of the station dockworkers to help with that. Usual rates and all.'
She glanced at herself in the mirror and decided she was presentable enough. She needed a new uniform--the one she had left after Sabine no longer had the crisp, perfect tailoring her mother had paid for--but only if she was staying with Vatta. If she joined a mercenary company, she would wear its uniform; if she stayed independent, she'd have to find one of her own design. But to drop off forms to be transmitted to a bureaucracy, gray tunic and slacks should be sufficient. She clipped on the Belinta Station acess pass.
Outside the ship, Belinta Station hardly bustled with activity.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
This is a very well put together "who dunit" and what are we going to do about it. I liked the main character and the secondary characters were very well fleshed out and given enough substance to appreciate their contributions to the tale. Give this book a try, if you enjoy a bit of chicanery, mystery and comeuppance, you will like this book.
Rated by buyers -
Second book of the Vatta Series. Ky Vatta, young captain of a trading ship, tries to find out who is trying to destroy her family.
If you plodded thru Trading in Danger, you will be pleasantly surprised by Marque and Reprisal. It is a big improvement. The overall plot was interesting and had several twists. The book feathers military strategy, combat, spies, and deception.
Moon introduces some much needed new characters. I particularly liked Stella. The dog was just dumb. As usual, Moon's sense of humour is on target in this book.
I am looking forward to the subsequent book in the series.
Rated by buyers 
-
This book continues on the not-great not-terrible coat tails of Trading in Danger. It's just good enough to keep me engaged, though I read it over the span of about three months as the book I keep in my bag for slow moments.
One of the things that's got me worried are the Mary Sues on the horizon in the form of Rafe and Toby. Toby is giving off that ever so foul Wesley Crusher odor with a dash of Boxy with his daggit. Oh, and the dog, whatever its name is, not cute.
I could have gone for a lot less of Ky's "I'm a KILLER--Rawr!" introspection. Yeah, we get it that she's a displaced marine-type and that she'd rather be out there kicking butt and letting the bodies drop where they fall, but there's no need to repeat it in nearly every chapter.
I'll continue reading this series mainly because it's not totally unbearable, and there's a lot of that on the market these days.
Rated by buyers -
A space opera that reads like a written cartoon. Overgifted good guys, undergifted villains. Clever good guys, stupid bad guys. Overequipped good guys' ships, underequipped villains' ships. And, eventually, surviving heroes and dead rascals. When in need of some miracle, just make a good guy (in disguise) appear to take the snag away. Everything transparent and predictible. Don't look for more.
Rated by buyers -
Picked up Trading in Danger from a bargain bin a while ago and quite enjoyed it. Saw this sequel (Marque and Reprisal) in the bookshop and picked it up for a bit of light reading. Was pleasantly surprised - far better than the very first book in the series, not much by away of plot but lots of good action, well-written, all in all it delivers what it promises. Don't expect a David Weber & Honor Harrington saga, but on the other hand I did have a hard time putting it down.
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