Friday Memes: Alliance of Equals by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

He rushed her, a tall Terran male, overtopping and outmassing her. Padi dropped back one step, flat footed and centered, knees flexed—and he was on her, keeping himself tight, seeking to overturn her with his speed, and flatten her under his weight. She ducked inside his reach, snatching at belt and elbow, twisting her upper body, letting him lift himself over her shoulder. Momentum it was all his own momentum, and, in the last instant before she let him go, she straightened, adding her motion to his, throwing him with every ounce of strength she possessed before she released him—and continued the spin, completing the move and dissipating the unused energy.

Friday 56: 

"Theonna yos'Phelium," the Uncle said, looking away again toward the status lights, "was mad."

"By all reports, yes, she was. She was also brilliant. Those two aspects were so closely twined that to separate them was not possible, according to the Healers."

This week I am spotlighting Alliance of Equals by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. This book is somewhere around number 19 in this long-running series which has been divided into a number of story arcs. I have read all of the books numerous times and they hold pride of place on my keeper shelves. Here is the description from Amazon:

A new novel in the popular and exciting science fiction Liaden Universe® series.  Over a half million Liaden Universe® books sold with an audience that keeps growing!

Beset by the angry remnants of the Department of the Interior, challenged at every turn by opportunists on their new homeworld of Surebleak, and somewhat low on funds, Clan Korval desperately needs to reestablish its position as one of the top trading clans in known space. To this end, Master Trader Shan yos'Galan, aboard Korval's premier trade ship, Dutiful Passage, is on a mission to establish new business associations and to build a strong primary route that links well with existing Loops and secondary routes.

But reestablishing trade and preserving the lives of the few remaining members of the clan aren't all of Korval's problems. Matters come to a head as Dutiful Passage, accustomed to being welcomed and feted at those ports on its call-list, finds itself denied docking, and blacklisted, while agents of the DOI mount armed attacks on others of Korval's traders, under the very eyes of port security systems.

Traveling with Dutiful Passage on this unsettling journey is Padi yos'Galan, the master trader's heir and his apprentice. Padi is eager to make up for time lost due to Korval's unpleasantness with the Department of the Interior. She is also keeping a secret so intense that her coming of age, and perhaps her very life, is threatened by it.