Sporting Chance (The Serrano Legacy Book 2) [Paperback]

Elizbeth Moon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 1999

When a treacherous superior officer forced Heris Serrano to resign her commission in the Regular Space Service, she thought she would simply be marking time captaining a rich lady's interstellar yacht. But things seem to happen when Heris is around. During Lady Cecelia's most recent pleasure cruise, Heris exposed a sinister 'hunting club' which used humans as prey, and in the process rescued some former Fleet friends and colleagues betrayed by the same senior officer who engineered her own resignation from Fleet. All well and good, but one of the hunters had been none other than Cecelia's nephew Prince Gerel - first in line to the throne. In an attempt to avoid a royal scandal, Lady Cecelia volunteers herself and her yacht to take the Prince home. Cecelia remembers her nephew as a rather bright young man. So what possessed him to become involved with the 'hunting club'? As the voyage proceeds, and the Prince becomes less and less like himself, Cecelia begins to suspect foul play. Someone is poisoning the heir to the throne, and once again Heris's skills are called upon to solve the deadly mystery.

Editorial Reviews

Review

As "Book Two of the Serrano Legacy", this is an immediate sequel to Elizabeth Moon's enjoyable SF Hunting Party--best read first, since the plot tangles of Sporting Chance emerge directly from the earlier story. Ex-Navy space-captain Heris Serrano is still commanding her eccentric but sharp old patron Cecelia de Marktos's luxury interstellar yacht, the new mission being to ferry home a misplaced sprig of galactic royalty after the first book's action. Something's wrong with this feckless prince, though, and carrying the bad news of possible poisoning makes the messenger a target for Borgia-like scheming among the royals. Very soon, one heroine is in near-death coma while the other's on the run through deep space--harried by Crown warships, the galactic mafia, a traitor crewperson and a plague of mutant cockroaches. Moon counterpoints space-operatic excitement (including one small but tense battle) with slow, agonising therapy as the woman trapped speechlessly within her own body is slowly brought to the point of fumbling communication. Eventually there are massive repercussions for the galaxy's sickly, scheming royalty, and although Sporting Chance ends satisfactorily-- with the major villain getting a suitable comeuppance--it seems clear that something bigger and smellier is ready to hit the fan in book three, Winning Colours. Moon continues to entertain. David Langford, AMAZON.CO.UK A highly entertaining adventure ... thrilling LOCUS

About the Author

Elizabeth Moon joined the US Marine Corps in 1968, reaching the rank of 1st Lieutenant during active duty. She has also earned degrees in history and biology, run for public office and been a columnist on her local newspaper. She lives near Austin, Texas with her husband and their son.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Orbit; paperback / softback edition (August 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1857238826
• ISBN-13: 978-1857238822
• Product Dimensions: 4.3 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,485,282 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

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This story works well on all of its several levels, January 15, 2005

By 

Nina M. Osier (Randolph, ME USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sporting Chance (Mass Market Paperback)

Heris Serrano, who resigned her Regular Space Service commission after disobeying orders for good reason, chose not to go back when her chance came at the end of Hunting Party. In this trilogy's second volume, Heris is still captain of Lady Cecelia's yacht; but she now has several members of her former crew with her, including the man who couldn't be her lover in the old days.

After delivering Prince Gerel home following certain embarrassing events on Seralis, Lady Cecelia orders the Sweet Delight into a redecorating company's drydock. As Heris prepares to oversee the yacht's refitting, she feels great uneasiness about Lady Cecelia's safety. But trouble, when it comes, strikes the unconventional old lady down in one of the places where she should have been safest. The family rebel, who never needed anyone before, lies helpless in a blind, mute, paralyzed body; and the only people who know she's aware inside that body, Heris and two of her employer's young relatives, also know that what felled her wasn't a massive stroke. As her enemies move to lock Lady Cecelia away permanently and take control of her vast holdings, the disgraced ex-RSS officer and two young socialites form a desperate plan.

This story works well on all of its several levels. It's a seat-of-the-pants adventure, set in a well-conceived future universe, cast with characters who change in believable ways as a result of their experiences. It also manages to delve into such serious themes as how families behave toward their nonconforming members in time of crisis, how societies treat their disabled citizens, and how fear of aging can stunt - or even warp - not just individuals, but entire cultures. An excellent read!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Go, Moon, Go!, November 24, 2000

By 

Daniel C. Sobral (Brasilia, DF, Brazil) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sporting Chance (Mass Market Paperback)

This is probably one of the most satisfying books in the long series of the Familias. Though the plot unravels a little bit too fast and too easily at the end, the book is packed with action, full with non-related plots that intersect each other anyway.

There is also a comforting sense of completion at the book's end, something which is often missing from Elizabeth Moon's books (on her series).

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fun Read, December 18, 2005

By 

John A Lee III "jal3" (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sporting Chance (Mass Market Paperback)

In THE HUNTING CLUB, we were introduced to the character of Heris Serrano, unfairly cashiered fleet officer turned private yacht captain for a rich eccentric who likes riding to hounds. It was not the most stellar of books but it was interesting enough to hold the attention. It also prepares the way for this one and this one IS a very good read.

In the previous book, the captain helped to foil a plot in which rich nobility engaged in illicit hunting. It was not the hunting which made it illicit, it was the fact that humans were the quarry. An idiot of a prince had let himself get involved in the hunting and the captain, her employer and a group of unlikely spoiled brats saved the day. In this book, these people who know the prince, realize that there is something wrong with him. He may naturally be a spoiled product of privilege but he was not supposed to be stupid. He is. They have stumbled onto a plot which involved royal intrigue, smuggling, power politics and a fair amount of "whodunit".

What started out as a fair series with nothing really special about it is shaping up to become something more.