Into the Fire by Elizabeth Moon

Into the Fire by Elizabeth Moon

My rating: 3.68 of 5 stars


Book received from both Netgalley and Random House/Del Rey for an honest review

Two things to be noted immediately: 1) this is the second book in the Vatta Peace series, which follows the Vatta War series (with about a 5 year chronological gap between the last book in War, and first in Peace) – and yes, at the very least, book one in the Peace series needs to be read before reading this book here, and, preferably the War series; 2) only the action that started to build up near mid-point, well, more around 70% plus, kept this book from receiving a lower rating than it did.

Another thing to be noted slightly less immediately: people’s personalities change over time, that’s reasonable and expected, and several characters in this specific book showed personality changes from the prior series. One, though, seemed to have changed more than time would allow. To explain what I mean would be too spoiler-y; I’ll attempt to give a hint without spoiling stuff – there’s a scene during which Stella Vetta very reluctantly puts on body armor, she’s quite prissy about it and thinks it’s stupid to do so, then is all panic-y and oddly confused about guns (momentarily) – the problem? You know the first time Stella was meet? It probably wasn’t then, but the first time Stella and Rafe shared a scene together in this multiple series thing had Stella wearing body armor and being quite masterful with a gun and showing a weird lack of panic in a dangerous situation ((view spoiler)[counter to my comments would be that she quite handily took care of the house invaders in this book, true, but she did it while whimpering, panic-y, and not at all like she’d previously been shown (and yes, I’m talking about Stella here, it’s true that Ky’s the ‘enjoys killing’ one, but that didn’t mean Stella couldn’t kill, she just was reluctant to do it and disliked doing it and couldn’t imagine enjoying killing – which is a far cry from panic and whimpering) (hide spoiler)]).

Right, so, after all these ‘immediately’s are out of the way, what can I say about the book? *thinks*

I do not wish to give a recap of the book or anything like that, especially as this book is the second book in one series, and the . . . 8th, I think, in the extended Vatta series (combining War and Peace). So I won’t.

There are books that start strong, edge of the seat type stuff, kind of fumble around in the middle, then either have a great ending or stumble trying to find an ending. This book? Started slowly, and was somewhat tough to get into. Middle was frustrating legal and political stuff; while the end (well before the end, the end of the middle) turned up the action (which literally just means that Ky finally left the house she was in, that kind of action), and built up to an exciting near climax. Then we, the readers, had to get to Rafe and Ky stuff to close off the book. So I guess the book ended somewhat annoyingly there as well (okay, I never liked the Rafe & Ky stuff at any point in this multiple series situation and so that probably helps increase my negative feelings about this book here).

So long and short: once I got past a certain odd reluctance to dive into this book brought on by how the prior book ended (there was a glimpse of how the series might turn from there, an exploration, adventure type of glimpse, which was immediately shut down by weird legal and political stuff – picked up by the beginning of this book here), the book turned out decent, then got quite interesting and even, pardon the phrase, ‘not-put-down-able’.

Rating: 3.68

February 5 2018




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