Rules of Engagement
(The Serrano Legacy #5)

Elizabeth Moon

Riverdale: Baen, 1998. ISBN: 0-671-57841-3. Pp. 497

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

I had only lukewarm feelings after my first foray into the Serrano Legacy universe, which I initiated with a dive off the deep end, right into the middle of the series with Once a Hero (which is not as bad as it sounds because this is the novel that introduces Esmay Suiza as the central character). Anyway, I found the protagonist too mopey for my tastes, and the interminable self-doubt got so grating that when I read about her frolicking in the meadows of her home world of Altiplano, I almost threw up my hands in disgust. Fortunately, my patience was rewarded with a sufficiently interesting final action, so I decided to give this series another chance.

This one is basically what any space opera should be. It's as if the person who penned the confident and self-assured Rules of Engagement is not the one who wrote the rather shaky and tentative previous novel. I could not put this down and I even though I am somewhat of a compulsive reader who finds it difficult to fail to finish a book, this one I devoured like a favorite meal I have not had for months. It is fast-paced, it is intelligently written, the characters are a lot more believable, and the action is, well, there isn't all that much action to speak of, but there are enough events to move the plot and the author's ruminations on societal ills along at a brisk canter. (And there's very little about horses, thank god.)

The tactical genius, natural born leader, and love retard Esmay is now in command track and has been sent for officer training at Copper Mountain Base. She being who she is, Esmay takes on a gazillion of courses (which she aces) just to ensure a speedy catch-up with the rest of her peers. She is now famous, very famous, which turns out to be a double-edged sword. Among her admirers is the stunning Brun, a young rich adventuress whose father (the big honcho in the Familias Regnant government) has finally managed to convince to get some training in Fleet in the forlorn hope that this would reign in his genetically-engineered risk-taking daughter. But someone tries to assassinate Brun at the camp (we never really learn who, so it must be the subject of the sequels). When Fleet refuses to put Brun into other dangerous exercises where she would be exposed to pot shots, she storms off to Esmay... only to get a mouthful of rancorous chewing out from the Lieutenant who mistakenly believes that Brun has bedded Barin Serrano (the Ensign with whom they managed to smite each other with love). Brun takes off in a huff and short time after is kidnapped by religious extremists. The bulk of the book is about how she deals with captivity and how her friends organize a SAR party.

On one hand, the New Texas Godfearing Militia is somewhat hard to believe despite the solemn claims in the introduction that it is based on extant elements in the state of Texas. I do not understand why people dump on Texans with such glee, something I have already talked about. Even with the appropriate allowances for artistic license, the people Moon describes more closely resemble the renegade fundamentalist Mormon sects (some of which can still be found in Canada or Colorado City), at least in their abominable treatment of women. And if we also wish to account for the violence, then the Taliban are the most apt modern analogy. Why do sci-fi authors so often feel it incumbent upon themselves to trash religion by singling out the fringe elements and then extrapolating to entire worlds? This just isn't something that I worry about that much. It is especially hard to believe that in a world which has space travel women would sit docilely at home at their apes of husbands' convenience.

There is no doubt that New Texas is horrifying place, with women subjugated completely by a bunch of retards. They mute the ones they fear would "contaminate" others, they force women to remain subliterate, they use them for breeding, sewing, cooking, and home-keeping. And yes, "use" is the right verb here. Women declared as "sluts" are dumped into breeding houses where they can redeem themselves only after bearing at least three children to whoever fancies them and is willing to pay the tax. And it's not that redemption brings any freedom. No, they can only hope to make third wife to some brute or another. (Think Masadans from Weber's Honorverse but with goofy titles like Ranger Austin.) It is these guys who kidnap Brun when she stumbles across their ransacking a trader ship carrying contraband weapons which they intend to use for terrorism.

It is painful to read what follows. Brun is muted, raped, impregnated by at least two different men, and forced to give birth to twin sons. It is absolutely gut-wrenching to read even if Moon actually skids along the surface and chooses not dwell on the gory detail, presenting instead the scenes as if seen in a nightmare, clouded in fog, figures barely discernible doing terrible things to another human being. On the other hand, I still think that the religious angle as very weak for the reasons I enumerated above (not to mention that I personally find it ludicrous to believe that anyone would want women silent and never looking at you: this place sounds incredibly boring at the very least).

In a highly technologically sophisticated future, I would much rather believe in the dehumanizing impact of social engineering, materialism triumphant, and perhaps active rejection of an individual's worth in favor of the masses, with belief systems that privilege the knowledge of a select group of people who know what's "best" for everyone and force everyone into compliance. (It does not have to be brute force, by the way. Shaming would work too.) At any rate, I fear this sort of future much more because these fetters on individual liberty are much more difficult to identify, and people are much more likely to be enthralled by the promise of some idea. As we know from our own history, people can then do awful things. It is not hard to extrapolate from there. But religious bigotry will always be condemned to a lunatic fringe which will never ever command enough resources to be dangerous to the rest of us (occasional acts of terrorism notwithstanding). It is the seductive power of ideas that bind us invisibly that worries me.

Unlike the hard-to-swallow religious angle, what happens to Esmay is much closer to home. In fact, in my case it is uncomfortably so because I have had the occasion to witness in my own back just what knives forged in misunderstanding, malice, envy, and a superiority complex feel like. (Fleet in the future has nothing on Academia today. If you want to see a place with cutthroat politicking where pompous nothings fully convinced of their moral superiority can come close to wrecking one's career without any evidence of wrong-doing on one's part, a place where people would wilfully disregard some facts and manufacture others from thin air, a place where rumor and innuendo can percolate to the highest echelons of power and come crashing down the moment one least expects it and is defenseless because of ignorance, a place where grand-standing sometimes matters more than ideas which are supposedly the bread and butter of the institution, then Academia is where you should go. But I don't recommend it unless you have a skin that would make a hippo look like an origami.)

Anyway, when Esmay got besmirched for her outburst and then blamed unfairly for Brun's subsequent troubles, I felt for her. When rumors blew up and some people actively painted her as collaborating with the kidnapping, I could see how something like that could happen. When she was almost decommissioned despite her promise and despite all the evidence of her character, I could believe it. And I have to say I sighed with guilty relief when Moon did not take this to its logical conclusion which in most cases would be the utter ruin of the person involved. The somewhat miraculous exculpation of Esmay (and it did look like a deus ex machina, I mean there's a whole new character introduced with the sole purpose of believing Esmay, discounting the rumors, and then finding a way to bring her back into the good graces of the powers that be). This is what I often wished for myself but in the real world things are messier, rumors are impossible to scotch, they have to die their own natural death. Your only hope is that their half-life is shorter than yours.

So I liked the book. A lot. In fact, now I will be reading not only the sequels but will also go back to the first three books about Heris Serrano herself. I hope they are more like this one, which they probably will be because from the short glimpses of Heris I can see that she's not one to doubt herself a lot or mop around sniveling about her unruly hair. And it is with these words that I march to the bookstore...

July 16, 2006