Has your loss ever been so strong you thought you would die from the pain? I imagine a lot of people of my venerable age of 48 could say yes. How do you deal with something like that? Well, you either learn to live with the pain or you kill yourself I imagine.

Reza Gard has experienced this kind of loss. The kind that rips you apart and leaves you feeling like a raw wound. Life sometimes does that to you.

I think this is part of what makes Michael R. Hicks’ writing flow for me. He leaves me with a sense of someone who understands the feelings he writes about. I highly doubt he has fallen in love with an alien and had to leave her Empire cutting off all contact with the race, but loss is loss.

Just as his disappearance from the Empire was sudden, so too was his appearence in the Confedration. Like an angel from heaven Reza seems to come as the answer to Father Hernandez’ prayers for redemption from the Kreelans. The Marines who are left after meeting the Kreelan warriors are happy about the result of Reza’s return.

For me the Redemption trilogy has partly been about prejudice. What Reza meets upon his return to the Conferation are mixed feelings. Some see him as a threat to humanity while others (those who come to know him) understand that his sense of honor goes beyond what most of us expect. Fraternising with the enemy/the others, becoming like them and then returning to one’s roots is bound to antagonise some people. Being an “Other” myself I have experienced how difficult it is for some to accept my “Otherness” as just as good as their way. Reza’s story has in a very small way been my story.

Confederation shows humanity as it is.

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