Review: Cold Welcome

Cold Welcome by Elizabeth Moon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Felt like a good short story stretched over the frame of a novel. Definitely mostly setup for a continuing series, so we never even find out who the badguys are, much the less get any resolution. The survival bits didn't really even have much tension to them; the rescuers give up almost instantly, and our heroes paddle to shore, realize they're short on food, and just walk up the hill to power up the secret base that isn't supposed to exist, on the abandoned continent right next to the spot they happened to land. Also wasn't really sold on why, having found said base, they didn't just phone home and wait for rescue. The evil baddies' sole motivation for being evil appears to have been keeping the secret, so once the secret is out they literally have no motivation at all? If we'd established a threat of them blowing up the base to hide the evidence or something that might have worked, but there really wasn't any of that.

It's still Elizabeth Moon, so it's still well-written and engaging, but there's no real plot here.

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