That's not going to be to everyone's cup of tea. Anyone used to the "New Space Opera" of the British school -- as exemplified by Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds and others -- will hunger for more scenery, more background; more "eyeball kicks." Resnick avoids the need for explication and scene-setting by encapsulating everything in the reactions of his characters –- if they're used to it, so then is the reader expected to be. To put it another way, this is "show, don't tell" on steroids.

Another difference from the newer iteration of space opera is the calm dismissal of hard science. Ships zip about the Galaxy at multiples of light speed and, during the one major battle scene toward the end of the book, actions are taken to dissipate a lethal particle beam aimed at a planetary population centre that will stretch the credulity of anyone with the most basic grasp of physics. But Resnick hasn't tried to pen a hard SF novel; such concerns are more than secondary to his examinations of what happens when a fundamentally good man is placed in an intractable situation.

For Wilson Cole is a rare bird –- a military hero who thinks his way out of trouble whenever possible. It seems that this is a deliberate attempt by Resnick to subvert a genre that, while viscerally thrilling, rarely addresses the deeper implications and ethics of conflict in a universe that isn't painted black and white. There is much to be lauded in this approach -- a more mature and thoughtful way of presenting the classic hero figure.

The downside being that Cole thinks his way out of problems before they occur, and Resnick is at pains to make it explicit:

    "You know," said Forrice, "you're exactly the kind of hero I hate ... [W]hatever happened to heroes who didn't think everything through, but just walked in with weapons blazing?"
    "They're buried in graveyards all across the galaxy," said Cole.
[pp 23]

Nor are there any occasions where Cole lets passion rule him, even when the situation would make it not only excusable but inevitable –- he's that little bit too stoically perfect, despite his moments of self-doubt, and his lack of flaws makes it that much harder to believe in him fully as a character. Proceedings might have been livened by more emergent crises and spur of the moment thinking –- although it's interesting to see Socratic dialogue being used as a tool to drive plot, as Cole and his crew whittle down the pile of unpalatable options to find a niche for themselves where they can survive –- and maybe even thrive -- without compromising their ethics.

Also worthy of note alongside the philosophical underpinnings of the novel are the literary allusions Resnick deploys. Cole and his crew are forced by expediency into dealings with a big-league fence, an alien with a Charles Dickens fetish who has named himself David Copperfield. Cole's hobby of reading classic Old Earth literature serves him well at their first meeting; keeping to the underworld tradition of going by assumed names, he instantly endears himself to Copperfield by naming himself after another character from Dickens's novel: Steerforth, Copperfield's closest friend from school.

How much the reader is meant to infer from these chosen names is unclear. Copperfield, like the character he is named for, learns the value of choosing his allies more carefully as the story progresses. But Cole's choice of the appellation Steerforth seems to have been an ironic one –- Dickens's Steerforth has little discipline of the heart, and is almost a complete inversion of Cole's thoughtful and considered approach to life. Perhaps, as the name is chosen by Cole himself, the reference is meant to reflect his own self-doubt, which manifests occasionally as uncertainty and moral dilemma, only to be diffused by the almost unthinking hero-worship of his loyal crew.

So, Starship: Pirate is a curiosity; a surprisingly thoughtful novel dressed in the clothing of classic SF adventure. If Resnick's aim with the series is to bring a breath of fresh air to the military sub-genre, he can be said to have succeeded. But in doing so he has created books that sit uneasily in their categories; aficionados of all-action stories will be disappointed by the low body count and lack of battle scenes, while fans of more modern space opera will find the lack of hard science and descriptive detail leaves them unfulfilled. If there is an as yet unexploited market between those two poles, however, Resnick is set to capture it single-handedly, in a well-planned bloodless action of which Captain Wilson Cole would doubtless approve.