Elizabeth Moon is best known in Britain for her Paksennarion fantasies; Hunting Party (1993) is the first of her Serrano Legacy SF novels. Its heroine Heris Serrano has suffered a familiar military-SF predicament—forced to resign her command in the space navy thanks to the machinations of a wicked admiral. Her new life as captain of an eccentric lady aristocrat's private space-yacht is handled with originality, charm and a thoughtfulness about how things work that's reminiscent of Robert A. Heinlein's better SF.

Both captain and owner emerge as interesting personalities. Following a voyage enlivened by various accidents plus sabotage attempts by a spoiled brat on board, Hunting Party lives up to its title with episodes of horsemanship and fox-hunting on a lord's planet-wide estate. Here, secretly, darker entertainment is also going on—a sadistic armed hunt for human quarry. As a former US Marines lieutenant, Moon is grimly plausible about guns and their effects. Perhaps a little less plausible are the coincidences that bring together numerous unexpected characters, including Heris's personal nemesis and an old flame, for satisfying final confrontations.

The story reads well and is self-contained: Heris's adventures continue in further novels, Sporting Chance and Winning Colours. —David Langford

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

Winning Colours concludes Elizabeth Moon's "Serrano Legacy" adventure-SF trilogy, whose previous novels are Hunting Party and Sporting Chance. Captain Heris and her cranky but highly acute patron Lady Cecelia are in their tightest corner yet, visiting a planet that's due to be torched by a raiding fleet from the villainous Benignity of the Compassionate Hand. Only their lightly armed space-yacht Sweet Delight stands in the way: the official defence force is commanded by traitors. Of course resourceful Heris contrives a daring last-ditch scheme, but still seems doomed ... Another storyline features the various young, foolhardy offspring of merchant princes and clones of royal scions who repeatedly risked their necks in previous books, and here tangle with revolutionaries enraged by the concentration of galactic power in the hands of repeatedly rejuvenated oldies. En route there's a fair bit about horse-breeding, and a tongue-in-cheek justification for sound effects during space-battles in vacuum. After subjecting her characters to nail-biting peril (with one small mystery frustratingly unresolved), Moon dishes out happy endings with a touch of sentiment that goes down well—since we've come to like most of these people. And, just as in P.G. Wodehouse, the prime motive force in the galaxy turns out to be aunts. Enjoyable reading. —David Langford

"The Serrano Legacy", an entertaining SF sequence with strong female leads and a realistic space-military flavour, began with Hunting Party (1993). Young lieutenant Esmay Suiza came to stage centre in book four: Rules of Engagement is book five, 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 well down and—if they protest—surgically deprived of their voices. Moon remarks: ... it would be not only useless but dishonest to pretend that the New Texas God-fearing 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 storylines 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 an enjoyable interstellar adventure, more harrowing than previous episodes. The next and final volume is Change of Command. —David Langford