Space Opera Fans discussion

The March 2025 Reader Pick is Agent of Change by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

Official description:
IT STARTS WITH A MAN WHO WAS NOT WHAT HE SEEMED

"The man who was not Terrence O'Grady had come quietly."

Introducing Val Con yos'Phelium - interstellar spy, starship pilot, musician, and incidentally, a brother to Clutch Turtles. Running from an assassination he comes upon Miri Robertson, a not-so-retired mercenary soldier born to trouble on a back world and facing disastrously uneven odds in a firefight with her former employer's enemies. Forced to intervene, Val Con becomes a target himself, and the pair are hunted, hounded across space, becoming unwilling partners of necessity. Facing terrible danger from within and without, their own skills and training argue that one of them must die if either is to survive. But Val Con has faced tricky situations before, and he's not about to let something like impossible odds get him down.

There are three different ebooks in print plus at least two dead tree versions.

The original edition ebook is FREE on Baen website as part of the Baen Free Library. Amazon seems to no longer carry it, but does have the 30th anniversary edition available (not free, story is the same, new stuff is the stuff at front or back that most people skip). It is also available as The Agent Gambit which also includes a second book. Both titles should be in print as dead tree books.

If you search for used dead tree books, it was included in the omnibus titled Partners In Necessity, which is long out of print.

I’ll be rereading this book in March and joining the discussion.

Oh yes, we have discussed this book before, back in 2016:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thanks! I was trying to find my copy and finally located it, as you correctly indicated, as one of the books in Partners in Necessity. Definitely time for a reread.

Happy to see the numbers pick this one! Looks like my copy is the 30th anniversary reprint from Baen. I started reading it yesterday and am enjoying it so far.

iBooks on Apple has it for free.

Going by memory because I haven’t started rereading it yet, this book is full of action.

Kobo has it for free too.

I’m starting my reread. That first line still hooks me.

It’s such a good hook.

Even more action than I had remembered. Chapter 5 introduces Edger. Anyone wanting the story of how Val Con first met Edger can find it as the first story of A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 1, and since it’s the first story it is entirely contained in the free preview. Title of that story is To Cut a Knife.

I adore culture clashes and misunderstandings. Any time that Edger or another of his clan is involved, the story gets a heaping serving of them.

I remember asking about this book months ago and have had it in my library for a while. Excited to take the plunge into the Liaden Universe!

I’m still reading this book, but keep getting distracted by shiny new books (not SF). One of my favorite cultural misunderstandings was Edger assuming that Miri and Val Con were married.

I just finished a couple days ago - very fun story, I thought both Val Con and Miri are well drawn, and there were surprising plot developments and reversals throughout.

The foreword to my edition notes that Lee and Miller subverted a lot of action hero tropes in Agent of Change, and you can definitely see that in how the story is told — both protagonists are skilled fighters, yet much of the time it’s their friends and allies who help them out of jams.

The bar scene with Jase and Suzuki was so much fun! And then the way Miri and Val Con managed to get to orbit.

I'm starting this book today. I had to finish a library book before the due date first. 😀

And finished. Very good book, but I’m going to need to wait a few years before my next reread if it. I’ve read it so many times already that I keep hitting points that remind me of what’s happening next.

For anyone interested, the immediate sequel to this book is Carpe Diem, which is included in The Agent Gambit if you have a copy of that, and also included in Partners In Necessity.

The book starts very strong and just keeps on going.

I’m tempted by the sequel, Theresa! W/out getting into spoilers, that ending makes me very curious what happens next…

Most of Carpe Diem has Miri and Val Con stranded on the planet. Early technology, no spacecraft. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that bad guys show up and there are fight scenes, but there are also scenes where they make music.

I just finished the bar scene. Great fun!

What did people think of the prose style?

Were there ways it could have been clearer (or prettier), or favorite turns of phrase people found?

I thought it was clear and direct, and not trying to be pretty for the most part. I thought the description of how the Clutch ship’s drive affected Val and Miri to be quite surreal and interesting. That was probably my favorite sensorium in the book.

I liked the fact that Miri and Val Con had recognizably different speech patterns. Miri grew up very poor, on a poor planet mostly populated by Terrans, then joined a mercenary company. She speaks very informally. Val Con was raise on Liad in a very rich family. When they are having a conversation you don’t even need “he said” or “she said” on the dialog to keep track of who said what.