2026 has been my year for reading Elizabeth Moon’s Space Opera series, and I’ve had a great time with them. I read the seven books of Vatta’s War and Vatta’s Peace between the end of March and the end of May. I was hungry for more, so I went back to her earlier series ‘The Serrano Legacy’. I consumed the first six books in June and finished off with the seventh book in July. I’ve already reviewed ‘Hunting Party’, ‘Sporting Chance’, ‘Winning Colors’ and ‘Once A Hero’. I’m reviewing the last two books, ‘Change of Command’ and ‘Against the Odds’, together because they read like a single book to me. I thought they brought the series to a satisfying close, but I’m glad I didn’t have to wait twelve months between books. 

THEIR UNIVERSE IS FALLING APART!

Rejuvenants fear the backlash caused by bad drugs; they want to ensure that nothing interferes with their pursuit of long life — or the profit that comes from promising it to others. Neighbor states fear the aggressive expansion of the Familias Regnant, fuelled by population growth and extended lifespan. Within the Regular Space Service, those who have received experimental rejuvenations fear they may have been given bad drugs on purpose. Esmay Suiza’s family fears that her marriage to an offworlder will damage their position. Barin Serrano’s family fears that his marriage to a Landbride of Altiplano will damage his career and their reputation.

Fear begets violent reactions — from foreign governments, from great Families determined to maintain or increase their power, from internal rivalries in the Fleet — and nothing escapes the resultant bloodbath unscathed. As Esmay and Barin struggle to reconcile their families, others have more cosmic struggles to win.

When Elizabeth Moon decides to change things up, she goes big. This book starts with the assassination of a powerful character who has been part of the ensemble cast from the first book. This act starts to crack open the Familias Regnant multi-planet regime. More destabilising events follow, including a rapid slide toward divisive authoritarianism, a threat of mutiny within the Regular Space Force, and covert attacks by the Benignity and the remnants of the disgruntled men of New Texas.

The result is a fast-moving, complex adventure story, told from multiple points of view and dealing with issues of culture clash, the politics of exclusion, the societal impact of repeated longevity treatments for the privileged few and the gaps between the worldviews of the planetbound and the spacefaring. 

I liked that, despite the huge scope of action and content, the book stayed on a human scale by focusing on how these things affected the lives of the core ensemble cast.

There were some very strong scenes in this book, and the plot moved smoothly between multiple points of view. There was a startlingly relevant (for a book first published in 1999) description of how one power-hungry but fundamentally incompetent man can implement a plan to appoint cronies to turn a democracy into a dictatorship.

Despite some memorable moments, the book as a whole felt like a transitional thing aimed at setting up the next and final book in the series.

The worst has happened: Fleet is tearing itself apart. Some of the mutineers see injustice in the unequal spread of the rejuvenation drugs that offer virtual immortality to the rich; others are simply thirsty for power, or for blood. The Loyalists, meanwhile, fight desperately to preserve the rule of law in Familias Regnant space. But when Esmay Suiza-Serrano is unceremoniously booted out of Fleet, the apparent victim of family politics, she has no idea of the whirlwind of conflict into which she is about to be drawn. As the noose tightens on galactic civilization, great battles will be fought and greater loves affirmed…and old friends will meet their destinies.

‘Against the Odds’ delivered a great ending to an engaging series. This was a page-turner of a book that kept me guessing about how things would turn out. The action scenes were exciting and vivid, but what made the book compelling for me was how engaged I’d become with the core ensemble cast. 

I admired Elizabeth Moon’s ability not just to keep a fairly large ensemble cast in play across the books, but to have the characters and their relationships develop, and to add new characters who gave fresh insights into how the members of the main cast are viewed.

I liked that, in the midst of galaxy-spanning chaos, the exploration of different expectations of family and different cultural values remained central to the story. I particularly liked that none of the various ways of seeing the world won total supremacy. They each had their strengths.

The ending involved a little bit of wish fulfilment, but I enjoyed that. After all their struggles, the characters deserved some luck. The neatness of the ending was offset by the reflections at the end on the cost of victory. The moments in the bar when the military gathered to toast victory and remember their dead were some of the most moving in the book. 

I’m sad to leave a universe and people I had become so engaged with, but I’m very glad Elizabeth Moon spent a chunk of the 1990s bringing their world to life.