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Blood Trail — Tanya Huff

Published on July 24, 2014Leave a comment

Cover of Blood Trail

Blood Trail
Tanya Huff
304 pages
published in 1992

What do you call urban fantasy when it moves to the countryside? Because that’s what happens in Blood Trail as Vicky Nelson, ex police officer turned private dick and her vampire partner Henry Fitzroy trade the familiarity of Toronto for the charming wonders of the Canadian countryside. Vicky had met Fitzroy in the first novel of the Blood series, Blood Price, now in the second — as seems to be de rigeour in urban fantasy — she gets involved with werewolves. But these aren’t your average, shirt ripping, feauding with vampires werewolves: these are sheepfarmer werewolves, leading a quiet existence near London, Ontario, just another Dutch-Canadian family. Until somebody starts killing them, somebody who seems to know that they’re werewolves.

Which is when they call Henry Fitzroy, who first met the Heerkens wolf clan during WWII, when he was a member of the British secret service and they were in the Dutch resistance. Because the wer could obviously not involve the police without their secret getting known and since they’re mistrustful of outsiders anyway, Henry was their only option. And Henry of course in turn wanted Vicky to come along and use her investigative talents. Meanwhile, back in Toronto detective Mike Celluci, Vicky’s ex-colleague and still occasional love interest is convinced Henry is hiding something. Of course not knowning he’s a vampire, it may just be jealousy that’s driving his investigation…

The plot driving Blood Trail is on the slight side; though Huff does her best to mislead, it’s clear quickly who the killer is and what their motivations are. Motivations which, in their religious origins are a bit cliched to be honest, even for a novel first published in 1992. But then the plot isn’t the real point of this novel and series anyway, but there just to provide a scaffolding for the continuing adventures of Vicky, Henry and Mike and their relationship to each other. It’s a classic love triangle, with Vicky and Henry lusting after each other but wary of consumation, while Vicky and Mike dive in the bed whenever they’ve had a good fight.

There’s always an erotic charge to vampirism of course, what with all those aristocratic men drinking the blood of various sultry beauties, not always involuntarily. In Blood Price Huff already had Henry drink Vicky’s blood, but at the time it was for a purely practical reason, to enable him to defeat the big bad. Since then they neither had sex nor had Henry fed again on her, though both wanted it; the circumstances hadn’t been right. All part of that slow dance of attraction between the heroine and vampire in novels like this; less common perhaps is having Henry not only feed, but share the bed with Tony, a young streetwise protege of Vicky’s. This sideplot was never really followed up here, nor had Vicky much of a response to this.

With Vicky and Mike things are much more casual, colleagues turned lovers, though not in lover. Or at least that’s what they’re telling each other. Because Mike doesn’t know what and who Henry really is, his inexplicable to Mike relationship with Vicky makes him suspect. Which is why Mike comes butting in on her investigation: suspicion fueled by jealousy. Mike in general is a bit of a bull in a chinashop, very different from the urbane Henry.

Central to Vicky’s relationship with both men is her progressivily worsening disability, her blindness at night and at low light. She’s still trying to come to terms with it, while not wanting it to define her or admit to her weaknesses, especially not in front of either Herny or Mike. I found this to be the most realistic part of Vicky’s character.

What Blood Trail also does well is the nature of the werewolf pack. It’s clear that the werewolves are not quite human even apart from being able to turn into wolves; the relations between the members are wolf like already and they seem slightly less bright, more impulsive than “normal” humans. Their murderer uses those qualities against them and it’s only Vicky, Henry and Mike’s outsider perspective that enables them to track him down.

Blood Trail does suffer somewhat from being a series book, with slow moving subplots and the slow moving evolving relationships between the three main characters. Read on its own it’s therefore not quite satisfying; you want to have read the previous novel. As popcorn reads these books are great, but don’t expect anything profound.

Blood Price — Tanya Huff

Published on May 30, 2014Leave a comment

Cover of Blood Price

Blood Price
Tanya Huff
272 pages
published in 1991

Tanya Huff has quickly has become one of my favourite authors, ever since I first read Valor’s Choice two years ago. Which is why when the local secondhand bookstore turned out to have her entire Blood… urban fantasy series, I bought them all. Urban fantasy is a subgenre I can take or leave, but Huff is one of those writers of who I’ll read anything she writes. So far her novels have always been at least entertaining; Blood Price is no exception.

Vicky “Victory” Nelson is, retired from the Toronto police for health reasons, now turned private eye, is taking the subway home one night when she hears a terrible scream coming from the other platform and sees a man slumbed to the floor, dead. Taking a gamble as a train arrives, she sprints over the track to the other side to see that he’s had his throat ripped out and a shadowy figure disappearing down the underground. What Vicky witnessed is the first in what would become known as the Toronto vampire murders, as in quick succession several more people are killed this way, throat slashed and drained of blood. Though interested in the murders out of old police instincts, Vicky knows it’s not her problem anymore, not until the lover of the first victim hires her to find the vampire, as the police “insist on looking for a man”.

Meanwhile Henry Fitzroy has more personal reasons to be interested in this socalled vampire killer. He knows firsthand how dangerous the idea of a vampire loose in the city can be, not just for its victims, but also for any other vampires living in Toronto, vampires like himself. As you may have guessed from his name, Henry is the bastard son of a famous English king, Henry VIII, who was turned by his vampire lover and currently lives the life of a harmless if strangely nocturnal romance novelist. Over the centuries he, like every other vampire who wants to survive their first century, has learned to tame his bloodlust, rarely killing, merely taking enough to sustain himself and when killing to do so in much less …spectacular ways.

Inevitably they team up, once they both meet at the same time the killer strikes its latest victim. By then it becomes clear that it is not a vampire, but rather a demon they’re hunting. And if there’s a demon, somebody must be summoning it. To work together therefore makes sense: Vicky to sleuth around by day, Henry to stalk by night. Complicating matters is Vicky’s old police partner, friend and occasional lover, Mike Celluci, who has never forgiven her for chickening out the force, as he saw it. Vicky meanwhile is still resentful that her progressively worsening vision and night blindness had forced her to do so.

Compared to the Valor books, the characters here are slightly less threedimensional, both Vicky and Mike immediately familiar from cop tv series and hardboiled detectives. At times Blood Price reads more like a television script than a proper novel, which is sort of fitting as it was actually turned into a telly series a few years ago. Henry Fitzroy’s backstory meanwhile is told through various flashbacks and again is slightly stereotypical, the suave gentleman-vampire with the mesmeric effect on the ladies, a bit effete but much tougher than he looks at first.

That slightly stereotypical feel to the characters does start to disappear somewhat though during the course of the novel, with all three becoming slightly rounder characters. Huff luckily doesn’t go for the obvious solution for Vicky’s handicap, ie making her into a vampire or something stupid like that. She’s not invulnerable nor is she made invulnerable, but neither is she a damsel in distress.

In all Blood Price is a good entertaining romp with the occasional inspired flash of something deeper, as when an innocent night nurse is lynched on suspicion of being a vampire midway through the story. I also like the sense of place Huff gives Toronto, it feels like a proper city, rather than just a backdrop.

The Heart of Valor — Tanya Huff

Published on May 19, 2013Leave a comment

Cover of The Heart of Valor

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.

The Better Part of Valor — Tanya Huff

Published on March 4, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of The Better Part of Valor

The Better Part of Valor
Tanya Huff
411 pages
published in 2002

Once I had finished Valor’s Choice, I knew I was going to have to go back to the bookstore I’d found it in and get the other two Tanya Huff books I’d saw there too. To be honest, I hadn’t even taken me as long as finishing the first two chapters to decide this. I’m always on the lookout for good, intelligent military science fiction and Valor’s Choice was just that, which meant I had to get the sequels too. What I especially liked was the absence of the sort of nasty rightwing politics souring me on so many other mil-sf writers.

The Better Part of Valor starts with staff sergeant Torin Kerr just back from her mission in Valor’s Choice. Having had words with general Morris, who was responsible for said mission, she is immediately sent out on another one by him, without her own platoon even. Whether this is punishment or reward she isn’t sure, but it turns out she will join a new marine platoon put together from scratch to protect a scientific expedition to an “unidentified alien vessel drifting dead in space”. She hopes it will be an uneventful recon mission, but after the last one she was sent on by general Morris, she isn’t hopeful.

And since we wouldn’t have a story if her pessimism was unjustified, she turns to be right. The reason why her new platoon was put together from individual specialists was to help avoid the media, but they turn up at the shipwreck anyway, the first of things that go wrong. Then, when Kerr, her platoon and the scientific specialists and journalists actually enter the alien ship, things go worse as an attempt to drill through part of a wall leads to an explosion, the loss of the airlock and attached shuttle, with the surviving members of the expedition having to find another way off the ship. The ship in the meanwhile isn’t as dead as it first seemed and starts to throw “tests” at Kerr and her people and turns out to be capable of influencing events outside itself as well, as it takes over the expedition’s own ship. Then, to top it all off, the enemy shows up, racing towards the same airlock Kerr and her people need to reach…

In the Valor series universe humans are one of three races that perform military services for the Confederacy, a loose gathering of intelligent species who never needed any military support until they ran into the Others, the first species that listen to reason but wanted to conquer the entire Confederacy. Which were humans and the two other “primitive” races, the Taykan and Krai, came in, offered membership in return for their military services. The way Huff writes these aliens there’s little difference between them and the human marines, all are more marine than alien. There are just a few stock traits each has: the Taykan are perpetually horny and their pheremones can inflame human passions too, while the Krai are true omnivores always talking about how good their teammates might taste, who are as flexible with their feet as with their arms, sometimes to the disgust of their team mates.

The news crew that shows up is more alien, being Katrien, small, furry, very cute, somewhat on the obnoxious side, either a racial trait or just a consequence of being a reporter. Unfortunately, Katrien being the Dutch name of Daisy Duck, I kept imagine them as just that, as aliens in pantless sailor outfits…

The plot reminded me of the those old Spacequest/Spacehulk boardgames, where you have to get a load of spacemarines out of a similar situation while coming up against various alien menaces. It’s not a novel story by any measure, but well told, even if it could’ve been a bit more claustrophobic for my liking. On the whole Tanya Huff turned out to be a writer who is very good at making you want to read on and on; I finished this in less than a day again.

Valor’s Choice — Tanya Huff

Published on February 13, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of Valor's Choice

Valor’s Choice
Tanya Huff
409 pages
published in 2000

Tanya Huff is one of those science fiction writers I vaguely knew about but never had read anything from, nor to be honest, had heard much about. One of those authors that steadily plods along, has a decent following and career but never quite had a breakthrough novel. I never really had a reason to take a closer look at her work, until I found myself in the English Bookstore last Friday looking for something light to read and Valor’s Choice caught my eye. I’m always on the lookout for good, enjoyable military science fiction and continuously disappointed by what I find on the shelves, when even a cursory glance is enough to show me that yet again my expectations are set too high.

And yet my standards for mil-sf are set so low already; all any story has to be to get me to read it, is to beat the Weber minimum. If the politics are less annoying and rightwing than David Weber‘s, the writing can be just as awkward, as long as there’s something interesting the writer is doing with their story. Literary qualities be damned, just as long as you tell a good story. Tanya Huff, from what I saw in the bookstore seemed capable of delivering at least that much, so I took a gamble on her. You may guess from the fact that I’m reviewing this already that she more than succeeded: I started reading this on the way home from the bookstore and had finished it on Saturday evening.

Valor’s Choice is not necessarily a good novel: Huff’s writing is servicable, slightly better than it needs to be to tell the story she wants to tell, while her characters for the most part are the usual stereotypes found in any military story, with the plot cleverly swiped from real life. For those who know their military history, the cover above gives a huge clue to which particular Victorian battle is re-imagined here, not for the first time in science fiction. None of this matters however, as the story that Huff creates out of these less than inspired ingredients was gripping enough that I had to keep reading to see how it all ended, even if I could guess the broad outlines of the story almost from the start and knew roughly what the payoff would be. That is in fact part of the payout of mil-sf for me, similar to the denouncement of the murderer in a classic detective story. What a good mil-sf story needs to do is give you a set of stock characters you can quickly bond with, follow them through the everyday routines of military life for a while with all its absurdities and annoyances, then give them a chance to win a victory against overwhelming odds, or at the very least a heroic death — craven betrayal by their civilian masters is optional though common.

What Tanya Huff gives us is staff sergeant Torin Kerr, a “battle-hardened professional”, who has just herded her mixed company of Human, Taykan — elf like aliens with an insatiable sex drive and few scrubles whom to share it with — and Kray — true omnivores who take a great pleasure in nausating their comrades in arms with what they eat, dead or alive, through a particularly nasty encounter when her and their well earned leave is cancelled for a sensitive, high profile engagement. They have been voluntered to serve as a honour guard for the Confederation diplomats visiting a newly discovered alien race, the lizardlike Silsviss, to get them to join the Confederation before the Others can do this. As the Silsviss are a typical warrior race, there needs to be an elite force of Confederation troops there to impress them and Torin and her people have been chosen for this role. Bad enough, but made worse for Torin when she discovers her new 2nd Lieutenant, the Taykan di’Ka Jarret, is the same Taykan she had just spent a very nice evening recuperating with…

The Confederation is a coalition of species that had amiably lived together in their corner of the Galaxy for a long time, long ago having become enlightened enough to realise space is big enough to share. That lasted until the Others came, who wanted it all for themselves. These elder species having long outgrown the need and ability to wage war, they needed more primitive species to fight for them, which is where first humans, then the other two warrior races came in, taken into the Confederation in return for their fighting skills. It’s a setting that’s been used both before and since, with the novelty here that for once these elder races do not seem to be corrupt and manipulative, at least so far.

So Torin, Jarret and the men and women of their company ship out to the Silsviss homeworld, to suffer through endless parades, visits and diplomatic gatherings, until one day, on their way to yet another city, their shuttle is shot down and they crashland into one of the nature reserves set out for the Silviss’ young adult males, who in the grip of their hormones, spent their years of puberty in huge gangs fighting each other, becoming the perfect warriors. Lost in the middle of the reserve, with no way out for the company and the civilians it has to protect and with several dead already and more wounded, Torin and co have to find shelther somewhere and wait for rescue from the Silsviss authorities, if they weren’t the ones that fired those missiles, that is. They find it in a small storage facility that’s normally used to feed the roaming hordes of hormone crazed, hyper aggressive teenage Silsviss males that has now surrounded the company, vastly outnumbered by the thousands of Silsviss coming for them…

And so the scene is set for a heroic defence, as this small band of marines is preparing to defend themselves against these vast hordes of Silsviss, their only consolation being their superiority in weaponry, if not numbers. Even so, if they can survive is anyone’s guess…

As I said, I’m a sucker for these sort of stories and Tanya Huff is as adept at tugging at the heartstrings, at bringing out the heroism of siege warfare as somebody like David Gemmell is. Valor’s Choice is a good entertainment, a story that in everything is slightly better, slightly smarter than it had needed to be to tell it’s story. As such it stands head and shoulders above the Weber Minimum, as well as the majority of mil-sf novels. I think I will read more of Huff.