Okay, I actually dived into the second book of theVatta’s War series faster than anticipated. Apparently, I underestimated by desire to devour science fiction and fantasy novels.

The second novel is Marque and Reprisal and it suffers a bit by being in the middle of the series, as one of the connecting novels, if you will. The author is moving us along to the real meat of things, but without the newness and character building of the first novel.

Kylara ‘Ky’ Vatta also seems to be pushed along in her development a little faster than seems natural and her preternatural skills at tactics and combat seem to be coming along faster than I can completely accept.

And sometimes money seems to be problem for Ky and her spaceship and then sometimes she seems to be able to afford an awful lot of stuff.

But, that won’t be a deterrent to reading the next book. It’s a fast paced bit of military science fiction and it’s got me sufficiently hooked. I’m eager to find out what happens when Ky starts using her letter of marque authorizing her to operate as a privateer on behalf of the interests of her homeworld, the improbably named Slotter Key (which confused me a bit in the first book – I had trouble catching on this was the name of an entire planet and not just a picturesque island on a planet, but maybe that’s the Floridian in me; I hear a place called ‘key’ and I think ‘Key West’ or ‘Key Largo,’ not ‘Earth’ nor ‘Mars’)

Look, it’s genre fiction. No one expects it to be Thomas Pynchon or Leo Tolstoy. We expect it to be Isaac Asimov with more explosions.

Read and enjoy.