Rules of Engagement [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Moon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1998

Esmay Suiza and Brun Meager should be friends -- they're both bright, brave, likeable and adventurous. But true friendship doesn't run any smoother than true love. Brun thinks Esmay's a stuck-up prig, and Esmay thinks Brun's a spoiled rich brat who's making a play for Barin Serrano, Esmay's first love.

So when Brun fails into the hands of a repressive religious militia movement, Esmay finds herself in disgrace, suspected of conniving at the capture. Even Barin has turned against her, and Brun's powerful family doesn't want Esmay anywhere near the rescue attempt.

Meanwhile, Brun has to figure out how to survive on a planet where female captives are surgically muted to keep them from contaminating others. Her luck may have run out, but her courage hasn't -- she's determined to free not only herself, but other, younger captives. This burst of initiative imperils her own rescue, and it will take double her own luck to save her.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"The Serrano Legacy," an entertaining SF sequence with strong female leads and a realistic space-military flavor, began with Hunting Party. Young lieutenant Esmay Suiza came to center stage in book 4: Rules of Engagement is book 5, continuing her story.

Suiza may be a fine leader and tactician, but she doesn't know how to handle falling for Ensign Barin Serrano, a man she outranks. Frictions in command training school worsen when well-born beauty Brun makes a play for Serrano: Suiza's explosion of temper blights her career. Then Brun falls into the hands of the series' most plausibly nasty villains to date, a murderous, Bible-thumping militia that controls several planets where women are kept down and--if they protest--are surgically deprived of their voices. Moon remarks:

... it would be not only useless but dishonest to pretend that the New Texas Godfearing Militia did not derive its nature from elements all too close to home, in Waco, Fort Davis, and even Oklahoma City.

The "Nutex" have also grabbed a nuclear arms cache for Oklahoma-style terrorist bombing in Familias space, home of the Fleet in which Suiza and Serrano are officers. Multiple story lines cover Suiza's wrestle with her public and private life, Brun's sufferings and determination, Serrano's ups and downs with unwritten rules of command, and eventually a risky rescue mission into a Nutex solar system. Things work out excitingly and as they should. This is enjoyable interstellar adventure that is more harrowing than previous episodes. The next and final volume is Change of Command. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Headstrong Brun Meager, daughter of the immensely powerful Speaker of the Table of Ministries, idolizes the slightly older Lieutenant Esmay Suiza, who is taking command track classes with her at the Fleet training facility. Esmay is too busy with her double load of courses to have much time for the younger woman, so Brun turns to handsome Barin Serrano to spice up her hours. The trouble is, Barin and Esmay had just been falling in love with one another. Brun's interference causes a distraught and overburdened Esmay to utter several ill-considered comments?including that Brun "has the morality of a mare in heat," a statement that gets passed to the newswires, which are ever eager for gossip about the rich and famous Brun. So when Brun is kidnapped, surgically muted, raped and impregnated by member of the New Texas Godfearing Militia, Esmay is considered the catalyst of Brun's headlong flight into torment. Esmay must clear her name, help save Brun and decide what to do about Barin?or risk a life filled with disgrace and loneliness. This sequel to Moon's popular Once A Hero (1997) is military space opera awash in suds. Moon's manipulative tricks, moreover, especially regarding Brun's prideful stupidity and hideous comeuppance as a sex slave, will at times be obvious to savvy readers. Even so, intensely lively characters, inspired details (including a bar comprised of salvaged parts from destroyed ships) and smart pacing ensure that the novel will win, if not prizes, at least readers' interest.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Baen (December 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671577778
• ISBN-13: 978-0671577773
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #686,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elizabeth Moon grew up on the Texas-Mexico border, a voracious reader and early writer. She spent much of her early years in a hardware store where nothing was in shrink-wrap or little plastic containers, and mule collars still hung on the back wall. She has a history degree from Rice University and a biology degree from the University of Texas at Austin, plus some graduate work in biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio; between the first two, she spent three years on active duty in the USMC. Her bibliography includes 20+ novels and 30+ short fiction works, nearly all in science fiction or fantasy. REMNANT POPULATION was a Hugo finalist in 1997; THE SPEED OF DARK won the Nebula Award in 2003.

When not writing, she likes to wander around taking pictures of wildlife and native plants, bake bread, eat chocolate, sing with a choir, and laugh.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A downswing for the wildly erratic Elizabeth Moon, December 23, 1999

By 

Mitch Hagmaier (State College, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rules Of Engagement (Mass Market Paperback)

There almost seems to be two Elizabeth Moons - the subtle author of _Remnant Population_ and the inept hack of the Serrano novels. _Once a Hero_ was a pleasant surprise - whenever the Altiplano elements appeared in the novel, it shone, and the Fleet bits were innocuous enough to not weigh down the rest. _Rules of Engagement_ reverts to form, unfortunately. The few good bits (the Landsbride sequence) failed to redeem an otherwise awful story. Can we please retire the evil-patriarchal-religious-fanatic trope now? It's the worst kind of bigotry, and makes for a very tired sort of conflict. Also, a certain tendency in recent space opera usually labelled David Weber Syndrome or "We-Love-Honor!" runs rampant in this book. Secondary characters should have lives, agendas, and concerns that do not all revolve around the protagonist. Moon is capable of much more.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Regression and de-evolution mar this sequel!, July 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Rules of Engagement (Hardcover)

After Moon's stunning Once A Hero, I was willing to pay hardcover prices to find out what happens to Esmay Suiza. Unfortunately, Suiza and the other characters seem to have regressed somewhat since the previous novel. This might be bearable if the plot could carry the novel alone (without the help of interesting characters), but even the storyline is rather lame. I'll give Suiza another chance if Moon writes another book, but this one was quite a disappointment.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Page turning fun, marred by cartoonish villains, June 6, 2001

By 

Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rules Of Engagement (Mass Market Paperback)

On seeing Rules of Engagement I bought it and gobbled it down in no time. Elizabeth Moon's stories are great reading: they read fast, they compel page-turning. She's as good as any author of these days at the task of making you care about her heroes and heroines, and at making you insistently turn the pages.

So I enjoyed reading _Rules of Engagement_ a lot. But nonetheless, I wasn't wholly happy with it. Esmay Suiza, heroine of _Once a Hero_, is switching her career path to "command track", and at the same time she has tentatively started a romance with Barin Serrano, the young cousin of Heris Serrano, heroine of the first three Familias Regnant books. At the same time, Brun Meager, daughter of the Speaker of the Familias Council (i.e., nominal ruler now that the King has abdicated), is trying to take a more serious approach to life, and she enrols in some of the same Naval classes Esmay is taking as a civilian auditor. Brun, somewhat innocently, pursues Barin, but Barin is having none of it. Shy Esmay, however, worried also by the difference in rank between she and Barin, puts the worst possible spin on Brun's actions, and chews her out. This gets Esmay in trouble (can't be making the Navy look bad to the Speaker's daughter!), and also annoys Brun, who runs off and manages to get kidnapped by some cartoonish villains from a place called New Texas. The New Texas villains believe in subjugating their women, which involves rape and mutilation when foreign women come their way. The book then follows Brun's struggle for survival as a prisoner of the New Texas folks, and Esmay's struggle to get her career back on track and to be allowed to help rescue Brun.

It's good fun, and there's tons of cool action, but it's severely marred by the awfully cartoonish nature of the villains. I simply didn't believe them, and I hated reading about them. And, again, it seems a divergence from what I think should be Moon's main concern in these books: examining the strains at the foundation of her odd Familias Regnant culture. Worth reading, but not a great book.