BRETTA MARTYN

Henry Martyn's daughter, Bretta, is ejected from a spaceship by her father's nemesis and left for dead in space, but the resourceful Bretta finds safety on a strange planet inhabited by escaped slaves and vows to seek justice and exact revenge. Reprint.

For the swashbuckling space opera Bretta Martyn aspires to be, it is slow paced, dawdling with the interstellar politics of the "Deep," that region of space claimed eons ago by humankind. Smith, a libertarian, opines on all manner of Machiavellian schemes, often cleverly, so that reader interest is sustained. Nonetheless, the pirate Henry Martyn (of Henry Martyn [1989]), now a reluctant farmer, climbs aboard none too soon. He receives a message from his old mentor, Lia Wheeler, that the dread Oplyte slave trade has resumed, and embarks once again to fight for freedom. En route, his 15-year-old daughter, Bretta, is cast overboard, as it were, managing to land on an asteroid world of escaped slaves. A half-wild, fierce thing, Bretta soon rises to captaincy of her own ship and a fledgling career as a pirate. Smith's ornate manner almost obscures a plot very like those of the Star Wars movies, but he gets there, nonetheless, often with great good humor. John Mort