Without a Front: The Producer's Challenge by Fletcher DeLancey

Without a Front: The Producer's Challenge
by Fletcher DeLancey
Pages: 461
Date: October 23 2015
Publisher: Ylva Publishing
Series: Chronicles of Alsea (2nd in series)

Review
Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0
Read: February 23 to 24 2016

The seventh book that I’ve read by Fletcher DeLancey. Second one in the Chronicles of Alsea series. I’d actually read the first book in that series, ‘The Caphenon’, before I had read the five Star Trek Voyager books. Meaning that it’s been a month and roughly 20 days since I read the first book in this Alsea series.

I had initially planned to read the second book immediately after the first, but then I noticed that the Captain and her bonded mate weren’t in the second book. Which confused me since the first book seemed to have ended with them saying ‘bye for now, we’ll be back shortly.’ Well, however long shortly is, it’s not short enough to include them in this here book. Granted only sixth or so months have passed between books – I just thought more time was going to pass between books, for some reason. That time I just mentioned, the months, is internal chronological time. Not my time or publication time.

Right, so, this book here. It is six months later in story time and Lancer Andira Tal is suffering greatly. So much so that she ducks out on her own guards so that she can have some time by herself. It takes her friend and chief guard, Micah, to pull a blaster on her for Tal to realize that there are other options available to her. So, after a lot of work is done to make it possible, Tal goes on vacation for a short while.

Why is she suffering? She has a ton of people pounding her regarding that new technology that she had gotten from the Caphenon (well through the treaty with the Protectorate). And the various castes are not agreeing with each other or with Tal about the pace of change. In addition, Tal is suffering from an unexpected source – separation. She had made it about a month operating ‘relatively well’ regarding that separation, since the departure of the Caphenon, but then communication got reestablished and adversely impacted her. Adversely impacted because she had shared, intimately, with a tyree connection – and it’s almost like her own tyree mate was dead/gone/etc. Doesn’t help that she, in addition to that, actually did develop a love for one of the pair. Which was further not helped when she learned that the other would have been agreeable to seeing what might have developed if she hadn’t been a part of a tyree. And so, suffering.

Tal, Micah, and a bunch of guards visit the beach. Run around, kick the sand, etc. During one of her jaunts around, Tal runs into a woman and they strike up a nice little relationship. Is she the one? Has Tal found someone for herself? Well, things are complicated, because Tal hadn’t been running around as herself – she’d been in disguise. And failed to reveal who exactly she actually is before things went too far and the woman got pissed at her.

So. That happened. And Tal had not, in fact, ‘found her one’. She’s somewhat better, though, from having had a vacation. So, back into the political combat of her life.

The book is subtitled ‘The Producer’s Challenge’. Am I actually ever going to mention said challenge? Well, just like me taking a while to get to it, the book itself took a while to get to this challenge. As I’d mentioned, the various castes were fighting/bickering/arguing over the new technology, and the pace of interdiction. As part of this, Tal meets with various delegates. One such delegation involves the Producers caste. After returning from her vacation she has a meeting with the delegates. But immediately calls into question the appearance of one member of the delegation. Apparently that woman, Salmon Hol-Opah (there’s a good chance I’m misspelling her first name), was taking the place of another member ‘because he is ill’ (he isn’t ill). One thing leads to another and Salmon makes some comment or another, or some words occurred that lead to ‘the challenge’. The challenge consists of Hol-Opah hosting Tal for a month (or was it nine-days? I forget now; there was some argument over the length of the challenge, but I believe it ended up being a month). Thereafter, Hol-Opah would be hosted, in turn, by Tal. Hence the second part of Without a Front being subtitled ‘The Warrior’s Challenge’.

This was an interesting book. More interesting, actually, than I had expected. And the romance that occurs, and yes one does occur beyond that vacation fling one I mean, seemed quite good. Unique ‘relationship troubles’ occurred that was both innovative and not stupid.

I liked roughly 95 to 99% of the book. The part I didn’t like? Well, two parts actually. Somewhere near the end, but not specifically the end, the author suddenly switched from ‘showing’ to ‘telling’. It’s as if she knew that she would need to ‘wrap things up’ shortly and didn’t have room to ‘do it right’. Show she speed things up by ‘telling’ things. Then the ending returned to the more accepted ‘showing’ style of writing. And immediately ran into the second part I didn’t like. The abrupt ending to this specific book. Lives are literally hanging in the balance. Or however that’s worded. Right, but that’s okay-ish and didn’t detract from the rating.

An enjoyable book. My understanding is that this book here used to be combined with ‘The Warrior’s Challenge’ and be called Without a Front – and stand on its own without the Caphenon book. Since that is the case, I’ll note that there is a good enjoyable story in this specific book here, though it kind of ends in a cliff-hanger, and – while it can be read without the first book in the series, there are many issues that will be much easier to understand if the first book is read before this book here. And so, with all that, I say that this was a good almost solid second book to a series. Almost solid because of its cliff-hanger ending.

February 25 2016