The Heart of Valor
Tanya Huff
411 pages
published in 2007

I'm beginning to see a pattern here. The first Valor novel was a replay of every mil-sf writer's favourite Zulu War siege, while the second took on an equally venerable plot: the "let's investigate a mysterious derelict alien space ship" one. And now, with The Heart of Valor, the third novel in the series, Tanya Huff once again takes on an old mil-sf standby, the march upcountry across a hostile planet, though she doesn't go for the full Anabasis. In short, it looks like Tanya Huff is working her way through the Big Book of Stock Mil-SF Plots, but I'm not complaining. The general outlines might not be original, but as with everything, it's all in the execution.

It helps if you have a strong character to hang your story on of course, and I like gunnery sergeant Torin Kerr. She's a hardbitten, cynical career soldier keeping an eye out for her people, weary of her superiors and their inevitable fuckups. She also somebody we met in the first book waking up from a tryst with a di'Taykan, a somewhat randy alien species who never say no to a one-night stand, a di'Taykan that later turned out to be her commanding officer. Huff lets the reader spent a lot of time in sergeant Kerr's skull and she comes across as smarter than she presents, conscientious and slightly paranoid. The latter is probably not surprising, considering her previous adventure on a very alien spaceship.

The Heart of Valor starts with Kerr recently promoted from staff to gunnery sergeant, being debriefed over her adventures on Big Yellow, the alien spaceship and bored out of her skull. So when major Svensson suggests she joins him as a temporary aide de camp on an expedition to the marine training planet Crucible, she jumps at the chance. The good major wents to check how his almost entirely rebuild body functions under combat circumstances, having only recently been detanked after almost having been killed. Gunny Kerr will be there to keep the major and his civilian doctor safe, while they join a group of recruits off for a twenty day survival course. By pure coincidence, the same di'Kaytan staff sergeant Beyhn who was there when Kerr through her tour, is also in charge of this batch of recruits.

On Crucible, the platoon of 120 day recruits is supposed to survive for twenty days while fighting various combat scenarios against combat drones and other AI directed threats, all overseen by a staff of instructors safe inside an orbital platform. Major Svensson, his doctor and gunny Kerr will tag along. It all sounds simple, but of course things go wrong quickly. First there's staff sergeant Beyhn who carries a secret that could kill him and makes him fall ill at the worst possible moment. Then the Combat Processsing Node directing the "enemy" forces goes haywire and starts attacking with real life ammunition. Suddenly it's up to Kerr and the major to sheepherd the rookie marines to safety...

Meanwhile, in a subplot carried over from The Better Part of Valor, gunny Kerr is still worrying about Big Yellow, the alien ship she encountered and some of the things that happened after they had gotten off the ship, things that don't make sense, like a disappearing escape pod only she and Craig Ryder --the civilian salvage contractor she fell in love with -- remember.

The marines in which Kerr serves are multispecies, with humans, Kaytan and Krai all serving, these three races having been brought into the Confederation especially because of their aggressive natures, to fight its wars against another multispecies alliance, the Others. Not that any of these warrior species is much respected for their nature by the supposedly more evolved and pacifistic Elder and Middle races. It's a familiar setup we've seen in other sf novels. Both the Krai and the Kaytan are stereotypical alien races with one or two defining characteristics: the Krai are omnivores eating everything they can get their hands on, including fellow marines if need be, while the Kaytan are omnisexual and ready to hump anything that's willing and stands still long enough. For the various Krai or di'Kaytan marines this is the main thing that distinguishes them from their human counterparts: they either eat everything or fuck everything. Apart from that, they're marines.

I've got a fairly low standard for military science fiction: as long as the battles are good and all the military bits sounds plausible I'm not too worried about the writing or characterisation, which is why I can still enjoy David Weber's novels. Tanya Huff is a much better writer however and hence The Heart of Valor is much better than it needed to be, as a lightweight mil-sf romp. It's not world changing science fiction by a longshot, but it's the kind of novel you inhale in one long sit, then run out to get the sequel.