Review: “The Privilege of Peace,” Tanya Huff

Pros: Inventive, interesting, and engrossing
Cons: …
Rating: 5 out of 5

Tanya Huff’s The Privilege of Peace is the third novel in her Peacekeeper trilogy, which follows her Confederation/Valor series about space marine Torin Kerr and her adventures. The war was discovered to be based on one hell of a lie, and Torin has made the difficult transition to law enforcement as a Warden working for the Justice department. An Ancient Peace and A Peace Divided make up the first two parts of this new series, and of course I enjoyed them both.

In the latest installment of Torin’s crazy life the hive mind of “plastic” aliens has returned. The racist Humans First organization rushes to find a way to destroy or make nice with the aliens–either way, they want to be the ones to ‘save’ the Confederation from its greatest threat. They also want to take out Torin before she has a chance to interfere with any more of their plans. Craig gets the bright idea to infiltrate Humans First, but of course nothing ever goes to plan.

As always I love, love, love Tanya Huff’s characters and worldbuilding. We’re seeing more of the elder races and they’re gradually becoming part of the larger story. We finally get to poke at the mysterious cheese-loving H’san a little bit. We also get to explore Alamber’s personality a bit more, which is nice. We learn more about the plastic and its history, which helps to keep it from being too blankly all-powerful. We’re still watching the Justice department evolve as it incorporates the Younger Races; I’m not fond of politics-plots, which is why it’s wonderful that we get to see this all through Torin’s eyes (she isn’t fond of politics-plots either). It’s the perfect point-of-view to keep things interesting.

We encounter the Silsviss again, which helps to keep the action quotient up! The book also starts off with a nice action sequence in which Torin and her people go up against pirates who are working for Humans First. The last book in the series got a bit slow at some points; this one keeps things hopping. There’s plenty of space combat, a little on-the-ground excitement, station combat… everything you could ask for.

The ending seems to leave open the possibility for more books. I’m desperately holding onto this, because I want more Torin! She’s such a wonderful strong character surrounded by other wonderful strong characters. There’s humor, pathos, and action. This is one of my favorite fictional universes and I just love Tanya Huff’s writing style.