Val Con yos'Phelium is future Delm and member of Clan Korval of Liad, lately deadly agent of change for the Department of the Interior. The only thing that saved his sanity was the loving song of his lifemate, Miri Robertson, half-Terran, half-Liaden former mercenary. When last we left Val Con and Miri (in Carpe Diem), they had just commandeered a spaceship and escaped a backwards world. While they were stranded, Nova yos'Galan, First Speaker of Korval, invoked Plan B - retreat strategically, trust no one, prepare for all-out war.
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Val Con and Miri know that the Department of the Interior will still be hunting them so they flee to Lytaxin and Miri's kin. Val Con knows that Miri fears meeting her newly discovered family, but he needs a safe meeting place where his brother and sisters can find him. Unfortunately, the planet Lytaxin, home of Clan Erob, Korval's longtime allies, is not what one would exactly call a safe place for the bloodthirsty Yxtrang are attacking.
Within a day of their landing, Val Con and Miri are stranded planetside once again with no ship, no radio comm, but a slightly better chance of survival. Luckily, some mercenaries from Miri's old unit were stranded on Lytaxin as well, so she takes up her old Captain's duties and trains volunteers and recruits to meet the enemy. Meanwhile, Shan yos'Galan, Val Con's brother and his lifemate, Priscilla (met in Conflict of Honors), are searching the galaxy for Val Con, as are Nova yos'Galan, his sister, and his Clutch brothers, Edger and Sheather. But finding Val Con quickly becomes one of a number of problems as they deal with espionage onboard the Dutiful Passage, Shan's ship, attempts to murder Nova, and the seemingly impenetrable Yxtrang ring around the planet Lytaxin. However, Clan Korval is nothing if not resourceful and, as all the family pits their formidable intelligence and skills against their various foes, one almost feels pity for the enemy...
Plan B is the 6th book in the Liaden series if you read the series chronologically. As with the other books, I simply loved Lee & Miller's characters and world building. They spend time on the details and it shows that they have carefully thought out and executed another masterpiece. I really feel as if I know the Korval family and am taking a remedial course on Liaden etiquette, these books are that well written! If you enjoy any kind of science fiction or space opera then this book has something for you - great characters, lots of action, enemies on all sides, high tech battle sequences, romance, family relations, honor, and much, much more! You can read this book as a stand-alone novel, but I would not recommend it as you will miss a lot of background and spend the first part of the book just trying to keep track of who everyone is. Also, you definitely should not miss out on any book in the wonderful Liaden universe - all of them are very highly recommended!
The review of this Book prepared by Debbie
