The Vor Game
A pleasant, predictable, and largely unobjectionable space opera in the Hornblower tradition. Ensign Miles graduates from the Academy, receives an unpopular assignment that proves even more unpleasant than he expected, is assigned to Intelligence, and then ends up at the very center of an unexpected space battle. A good time is had by his friends, his enemies enjoy themselves rather less. The neocon militarism that sometimes leaks into recent American space opera (and to which current British space opera reacts) is not much in evidence here, beyond the familiar longing for feudalism that generically suffuses space opera.