Rating: 
Summary: A waste of time
Review: What happened to Elizabeth Moon? Paksennarion was so good!The heroine of this book is fairly likeable, but she spends way too much time just thinking about how confused she is. I also had a problem with the way she treats her life like a multiple choice test. Sure, she stops the occasional mutiny single-handed, but she's always reacting to other things - she doesn't have goals of her own. After a strong beginning, pages and pages of the book were just sheer boredom. She and her mother buy dresses; she rehashes things in her mind; she talks to people about trading details which just don't matter; quaint local cultures are described which we don't need to know about; and the action doesn't pick up for another hundred pages or so. A lot of things in the book make no sense, but we're expected to accept them to advance the plot. For example, she agrees to resign from military academy for something which someone else did - and unless cadets are prisoners he could have done it at any time on his own without involving her. And I can't even bring myself to talk about the fruitcake. Plot elements which would actually be interesting are introduced and never resolved, like the coded message from her Seargent at the academy, about which Kylara vaguely thinks, 'maybe I'll get back to it later'; and the actual war Kylara is caught up in, where we never find out who blew up the ansibles, or how it got resolved so quickly, or even who the different sides were. At the end of the book the heroine is still confused, only now she has her own ship. It's remotely possible that this could still turn into a decent series, but it would be a stronger one without this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good action story with fine 3-dimensional character
Review: When she's kicked out of the military academy, Kylara (Ky) Vatta is quickly assigned to be Captain of one of her family's aging merchant ships. The journey will keep her out of the public eye, and give the Vatta family a chance to see what Ky can do on her own. Although Ky had been certain she would pursue a career in the military, she quickly turns to the family creed of making money. Unfortunately for Ky, a civil war in the system where she goes to pick up agricultural machinery and problems with her faster-than-light drive lead her to more adventure than most of her academy cohorts will ever see. TRADING IN DANGER starts slowly as Ky deals with her rejection at the academy, her first command (almost babysat by extremely senior crewmen and crewwomen) and her grandmother's notorious fruitcake. Once mercenaries attack the system where she is taking on cargo and intersystem communications are lost, the pace picks up as Ky is forced to deal with irrational crewmen, mercenaries who would as soon shoot as ask questions, and passengers who have their own ideas of what to do and aren't ready to take Ky's decisions as final. Author Elizabeth Moon delivers a satisfying story and an intriguing character in Ky Vatta. There did seem to be a number of loose ends that Moon could have integrated more fully into the story, however. The spaceship model seems just a little too perfect. How could the Master Sergeant have guessed exactly what Ky would need? And how did Ky persuade herself not to crack the obvious code that he left her? I also expected a bit more of a bang from the frequently mentioned fruitcake. This type of 'artifact' is common in first drafts but an author with Moon's skills normally eliminates them before the novel sees the printing press. Despite its slow start and some extraneous pieces, TRADING IN DANGER is a generally satisfying read and Ky makes an interesting and multidimensional character.
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