Andrea Cort is a cold, damaged human being. One would think this would make her wholly unsuitable for a career in the diplomatic corps that represents humans in a universe filled with sentient species. But the incident that damaged her as a child is also one that requires she be kept under close watch by the Dip Corps, and so her career as a counselor for that service is essentially preordained. Castro has written three novels and six short pieces about Cort, with a seventh short piece only recently completed and not yet published.

With Unclean Hands is the first tale about Cort chronologically, though not the first written.It is still early in her career, and Cort has been given an easy task: she must pass judgment on a deal to trade a human criminal to the Zinn in exchange for some of the valuable technology this much more advanced race has developed. The Zinn are millennia ahead of humans, but are inexplicably dying; the whole species has retreated from what was once an enormous interstellar empire. No one knows why they want a human criminal, but they are prepared to keep him in a good deal more comfort than humans would afford him, even if he is kept isolated from both Zinns and humans. Cort is under pressure to approve the trade when she meets a Zinn child named First Given. And that chance brief meeting leads Cort down a treacherous path to understanding.

Castro sets his puzzle up and then unravels it with care. The story packs a potent emotional punch. Cort is a character unlike just about any I’ve encountered over a lifetime as a Constant Reader. It’s no surprise that it was nominated for the Nebula Award in 2011. I’m looking forward to working my way through the rest of her adventures.

Originally published at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/sfm-castro-greenblatt/. ( )

This is a prequel to the Andrea Cort series. Perhaps if you've read other books in this series, you'll appreciate this story of one of her early missions. As someone new to the series, I found the "surprise" not even vaguely surprising and the solution to the moral dilemma repugnant. ( )