Review: Cold Welcome, by Elizabeth Moon

Review: Cold Welcome, by Elizabeth Moon

by Rich Horton

I really enjoyed Elizabeth Moon's Aunts in Space*, er, Familias Regnant Space Opera series, 7 books published between 1993 and 2000; and I also loved her Vatta's War books, five more Mil SF/Space Opera stories published from 2003 to 2008. (Ky Vatta's universe is not the same as that of Heris Serrano and Esmay Suiza, but it does feature one formidable (Great) Aunt.) So I was quite glad, back in 2017, to see that she was publishing sequels to the Vatta's War books -- Cold Welcome in 2017 and Into the Fire in 2018. I didn't read the books right away -- too much other stuff on my plate -- but my wife (not an SF reader) did tackle Cold Welcome. And now I finally have gotten around to it.

Ky Vatta, after the events of the Vatta's War books, has been named the Admiral of the Space Defense Force, a multi-planet peacekeeping organization. And now she is returning to her home planet, Slotter Key, for some ceremonial reasons, and also to clean up the ownership status of the Vatta family business. Her redoubtable great aunt Grace is the Rector of Defense for Slotter Key, her cousin Stella is the primary leader of the Vatta businesses, though she's now based on another planet (Cascadia), her sometime lover Rafe, a criminal who has gone more or less straight as the head of ISC, is also off planet. And pretty much as soon as she enters Slotter Key's atmosphere, her shuttle is shot down over the far southern seas of the planet, as winter approaches.

Ky and the 20 or so survivors manage to survive ditching into the ocean, and to get into a couple of rafts. Ky, with the able help of a veteran Master Sergeant Marek, and with the less able presence of her Cascadian personal assistant Jen Bentik, organizes things to eventually bring them to shore on the deserted continent of Miksland, abandoned as a terraforming failure. Her job is to find a way to survive for a few months until the weather makes it possible for a rescue mission to get to them; and at the same time chivvy the other survivors into becoming a disciplined team, and dealing with the malcontents and a potential traitor.

Meanwhile Grace Vatta and Stella and Rafe and other mobilize to deal with making sure a rescue effort is mounted, to find out who is responsible for the attack on the shuttle, and to give what help is possible to Ky, which is precious little except for one bit of magic secret tech that Ky and Rafe share. (This tech was introduced in the previous series.) There are bad guys on Slotter Key, and on other planets. There is political maneuvering, such as people who want Ky declared dead so they can assume her powerful position. And there are some mysteries -- the continent of Miksland isn't quite what it seems, and there are unexamined secrets about the history of Slotter Key, such as who terraformed it and why and where are they, that only now start to come to light. 

The novel is just lots of fun. Elizabeth Moon is a first rate adventure writer, and I found it gripping throughout. She also makes the political intrigues, well, intriguing. The bad guys, mind you, are really evil, to the extent we see them. And Ky has some superpowers (or it comes off that way) and a lot of luck. But that comes with the territory for this sort of book. I also found the ending just a bit disappointing, though I think this is largely because room was being made for the sequel. In particular, some of the new questions the books raises -- particularly the mystery of the terraformers -- are dangled in front of us but never addressed. That will come later in the series, I trust! 

*Full credit should be given to James Davis Nicoll for coining the term "Aunts in Space".