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A MATTER OF PROFIT by Hilari Bell

A MATTER OF PROFIT

by Hilari Bell

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-029513-9
Publisher: HarperCollins

A weary young soldier in a future empire discovers that there’s more than one way to conquer in this thought-provoking tale from the author of Songs of Power (2000). Thirty-nine of the T’Chin Confederacy’s 40 planets have surrendered to the Vivitare without a fight, but helping to subdue the 40th has left Ahvren vowing to study war no more. Returning to his highborn family’s new estate on T’Chin’s bustling capitol planet, he hears rumors of a plot against the emperor, and puts off making a decision about his future by plunging into an investigation. As he discovers too late, the rumor is wrong; it’s actually the emperor’s callous son and heir Dravik who’s the target—and the assassin is Ahvren’s own beloved sister Sabri. Along the way, Ahvren makes connections with representatives of several alien species, and thanks to some gentle prodding from a 600-year-old, insectile librarian (a “Bibliogoth”), he slowly comes to realize that the Vivitare are only the latest in a long line of would-be conquerors, all of which were eventually assimilated into the prosperous, stable, commerce-oriented Confederacy. With help from his new nonhuman associates, he rescues Sabri from a slow, agonizing execution, and ultimately frees himself from some preconceptions too. The tone is earnest, with only Ahvren’s odd compulsion to blurt out whatever he’s thinking to serve as comic relief, but this suspense/adventure/coming-of-ager is absorbing, and features several simplified but interestingly distinct alien cultures. (Fiction. 11-13)