Review:: Light Raid by Connie Willis & Cynthia Felice

Light Raid by Connie Willis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Light Raid by Connie Willis Cynthia Felice

I really liked this book and would have given it a 5 star except that I was disappointed that the e-book taken from the Ace original has some major glitches in the punctuation and a couple of obvious spelling errors. I try to be lenient toward self published and perhaps its being a bit mean spirited to pick on the traditionally published authors but I do expect more from them.

The story is excellent with really good world building and some great characters. There were a lot of surprises in the plot and I really did get into the character of Ariadne. I was a bit disappointed in the supporting character Joss but his role is much like the role Carey Grant played in the movie Charade so it's a bit of play acting which might contribute to his character coming off rather weak.

At the age of 16 Ariadne thinks that her world will open up to her and she'll be treated as an adult, instead she gets shipped off with some orphans to make her safe from the Laser wars that are beginning.

The world she lives in is a bit strange. There seems to be a section known as Quebec and one called the Western States and then the Commonwealth. I admit to having gotten confused about how the all are sectioned out. The Commonwealth and the Western States have allied to combat incursions of the Quebec who seem to have laser satellites in the sky and are conducting laser raids on select communities trying to influence the mobility of air flight and ground transportation to disrupt trade alliances. Food seems scarce and Ariadne and her parents have been working at their corporation Hydra Corp in Denver Springs trying to keep the land usable.

Hydra Corp is also being used by the Commonwealth to devise a strain of Hydra Virus that can be used in combat against Quebec.

Victoria is a neutral province and is where Ariadne has been sent; where instead of working on Hydra virus's she's changing diapers and taking care of orphans for the benevolent Mrs. Ponsonby, a retired former employee of Hydra Corp.

When correspondences from her father stop and her mother's correspondences seem strangely different Ariadne begins to worry. She now is 17 and is of age to take responsibility for herself and when a friend of her mother's shows up to visit she becomes more suspicious and runs off to get back home. It turns out that there is a lot more than just her safety that accounts for why she was sent away.

Finding her mother imprisoned and her father reduced to a worthless drunk she's left to her own device trying to unravel the mystery around her. Not knowing if she can trust The Commonwealth's representative His Royal Highness, Miles Essex or Essex's equerry Joss Liddell who keep insisting that her mother is only being questioned and not yet charged with treason.

When they release her mother things get even stranger as she has to decide if blood really is thicker than water. Not only is Ariadne in danger but soon the orphans she helped take care of will be in danger because of her own carelessness.

This again is quite a good story but I have the usual caveat that I put in, which is that there are a handful of grammar problems. Something weird either went wrong with formatting the kindle edition or there are serious problems. several time there are commas that are followed by a period and then more text and a comma and it makes no sense. A couple of time there are words that are obviously spelled wrong although one time it might just be that the wrong word was used because its just a matter of including or excluding an extra consonant.

This is a great novel for SFF fans unless you are overly picky about grammar problems then maybe the hard edition would be better if it's available. You can't tell from the samples because they are all samples of the kindle edition and the error is right there in the sample on the first page of chapter one.

I will definitely read more from Cynthia Felice and I'm already a fan of Connie Willis.

J.L. Dobias



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