Wednesday, May 1, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Price of Ransom by Kate Elliott




The Price of Ransom is the final book in Kate Elliott's* Highroad Trilogy, which began with her "A Passage of Stars" (see my review here) and continued with "Revolution's Shore" (see my review here).  This trilogy is Elliott's earliest series, and it has certainly included more than a few ideas that would later pop up in her other works.  More importantly, it's easily the weirdest series Elliott has written (although I still haven't read the Crown of Stars series so that could surpass this I guess), with crazy ideas and far out characters up the wazoo.  The result has been an unpredictable series through 2 books, but one with some excellent characters in the main cast, and I was really looking forward to seeing how this book concluded the trilogy.

*As noted previously, this trilogy was initially published under Elliott's real name, Alis A. Rasmussen, but the re-released ebook editions I read on the Hoopla Library use the "Kate Elliott" pen name instead, so I'm going with that for this review.   

The Price of Ransom certainly does not lower the craziness of this series and expands its focus on the members of the main cast, to a conclusion that is somewhat satisfying, if not as much as I'd have hoped.  If you were hoping to see the antagonists of the last book get their comeuppance, or even to have loose ends from the first two books tied up, The Price of Ransom will not be what you were looking for.  But the book does resolve the main character arcs in interesting and unpredictable ways, and is certainly worth your time.


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
Lily Ransome and her allies, the crew of the Forlorn Hope, are not in the best of shapes.  After being betrayed by the leaders of the revolution they helped succeed, and barely escaping with Lily's life and the ship, the crew knows there is nowhere safe for them in what to them is "known space", the area of the Galaxy known as "The Reft."  Lily is one of the few who knows there is more out there - that somewhere out there is "League Space" from where humanity first came, and under her leadership, the crew decides to try and find it - journeying back along the legendary Highroad.

But Lily's connections to the rebels of League space - namely her mentor, Heredes, and her lover, the half-human Kyosti, - has her on the radar for powerful people in League space....some of whom may not be willing to let Lily find a new life of any sorts.  And to add to the danger posed by Bounty Hunters, as well as just general unfamiliarity with how life works in League space, a disaster results in Kyosti being separated from the Forlorn Hope....and in a dangerous state for those he might encounter.

Can Lily not only guide her friends and allies to a new path in League Space, but also find and save Kyosti? And in the end, is there any future for her along the highroad itself?
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In my review of the first book in this trilogy, I noted that the main heroine (Lily) is great, and the minor characters have potential, but we don't spend enough time with them for them to do more than tease.  In my review of Book 2, I noted how interesting at least two of the minor characters have become.  The Price of Ransom continues this trend by expanding to showcase even more of the cast and to develop them further - namely former revolutionary Yehoshua and child Gregori, who both get substantial sections written from their own points of view.  Which is not to say that other characters also don't get further development, such as the Ridanis Paisley and Pinto and new characters Deucalion and Windsor as well.

But despite much more of the book being told from other perspectives, this book is still Lily's story, and the completion of her journey that began this story back in A Passage of Stars.  Lily remains a tremendous heroine, having become a more than capable leader through her journeys, with her quick thinking making her fascinating to read as she deals with trickier and trickier situations as she enters once again a part of the galaxy she has little idea about.  And then there's Lily's relationship with her crew, and Kyosti in general - it's a relationship that is far from normal in terms of a central romance, and yet it's one Elliott has made the reader care immensely about as it guides Lily through most of this story.  Kyosti himself is largely off-page for this story, but his image in Lily's mind forms an immense present throughout, and when he finally re-appears, the result is heartwrenching.  Still, Elliott manages to guide Lily's journey to a satisfying end - though not the end of Lily's life (spoiler! well, not really).

Again though, this book does a great job making the rest of the cast feel like fully developed characters who I really cared about, which was not something I expected after the first book in this series (although I shouldn't be surprised from Elliott at this point).  Yehoshua for example is utterly unremarkable in his debut last book, but here he's fleshed out and has a journey you can't help rooting for him on.  Gregori manages to be the rare child point of view character who isn't annoyingly naive, which was a nice surprise.  And even those without POVs - Jenny and Paisley for example, have their storylines nicely advanced in this book to places that are very satisfying.  I should point out here before I forget that in doing so, that the book smartly avoids using cliche tropes such as having characters kept overly in the dark for no reason and thus getting into trouble, and the book is all the better for it.  And then there are two new characters, both of whom are interesting members of the cast and contrast with those we know of and about so far.

Still, this is definitely the least focused series of Elliott's I've read, and is probably my least favorite overall (it's close to Court of Fives) - which is not a big negative, given how much I've loved most of Elliott's works overall.  While this winds up very much being a character story and it works as a result, with its interesting and weird moralities and settings - the League space is oddly socialism-based and yet....not, for instance - The Price of Ransom absolutely doesn't tie up many, if any, of the plot threads seeded throughout the trilogy.  Hell, several plot threads/ideas are introduced in this very book and never really go anywhere, with some teases in the ending that obviously are never going to be followed up upon.

The overall ideas in this book and series remain interesting and I am absolutely not complaining about having taken the time to read this book - I started and finished this book within a single day - but it's not all positive either.  Still, it continues the winning trend for Elliott (or started it, I guess, since this was the beginning), and you can't go very wrong reading this trilogy.
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