Shannon C.’s review of Conflict of Honors by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Science fiction released by Del Rey May 88, re-release by Ace 30 Dec 08

Every once in a while, I like to revisit my teenaged reading self. This is probably the only part of my teenaged self that doesn’t perpetually irritate me, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, in my teens, I read lots of science fiction and fantasy of the pretty girl has unusual powers, grows up, saves the world, rides a dragon and finds romance with a sensitive man that doesn’t exist in real life type. Reading Conflict of Honors, I was brought back to those stories, although Conflict of Honors has a surprisingly adult feel to it, all things considered. [Ed.: Mouse over the cover to see the original release cover.]

The plot of this novel goes like this. Girl gets exiled from her home world, falls in with the crew of a bad ship, including a psycho lesbian. She eventually escapes and winds up on a good ship, captained by our hero, who has a vendetta against the owner of the bad ship. The girl begins to heal from the horrible things that happen to her, and eventually falls in love. Things move swiftly, and I was never bored, nor was I stuck on too many scientific terms. There was the right amount of adventure and diplomacy to keep me interested, and no extraneous space battles and high-tech futuristic weapons descriptions.

To be honest, Priscilla Mendoza, our heroine, is a bit of a Mary Sue. She is pretty and special, and doesn’t seem to have very many character flaws, and people are drawn to her in order to cure her various issues. But despite all that, she worked for me, although I wasn’t really clear on exactly why it was that she was exiled in the first place.

Shan, our hero, on the other hand… Oh, Shan. How much do I love him? I am a sucker for characters who are smart, and who spend the book actually demonstrating superior intelligence. Shan comes off as a bit of a nattering fool, which seems to be what he goes for, but beyond his genial, talkative facade is a man with a quick mind and a big heart. Though there was no actual sex between Shan and Priscilla, they definitely had chemistry, and I believed the relationship.

The other secondary characters are well-drawn, as is the setting. This is one of the earliest books in the authors’ Liaden Universe series. It’s clear that they’ve thought a lot about their world-building, and I am left wondering about the Liadens themselves, and wanting to explore their culture, which is quite fascinating.

This book gets an automatic A from me because of the fact that I stayed up way too late finishing it. Even though it is not the first book chronologically, nor is it the first published, it was easy to follow and was a good starting point for me. Ace is reprinting this book in December, and I think it’s definitely something to order if you like science fiction. I am so glad that whoever it was who pointed this series out to me did so, and I intend to read the other books as soon as I can.

Grade: A

Summary:
Betrayed and abandoned by her shipmates, Priscilla Delacroix is left to fend for herself on a distant planet and joins forces with starship captain Shan yos’Galen to seek revenge on the sinister crew and to confront the demons of Priscilla’s past, in the third novel of the Liaden Universe. Reprint.

No excerpt available.