“I haven’t got a blade. I haven’t got a ship. I washed out of the Musketeers. If this is your idea of honour, put down the swords and I’ll take you on with my bare hands.”
Dana D'Artagnan longs for a life of adventure as a Musketeer pilot in the Royal Fleet on Paris Satellite. When her dream crashes and burns, she gains a friendship she never expected, with three of the city's most infamous sword-fighting scoundrels: the Musketeers known as Athos, Porthos and Aramis.
Even as a mecha grunt, Dana has a knack for getting into trouble. She pushes her way into a dangerous political conspiracy involving royal scandals, disguised spaceships, a tailor who keeps getting himself kidnapped, and a seductive spy with far too many secrets.
With the Solar System on the brink of war, Dana is given a chance to prove herself once and for all. But is it worth becoming a Musketeer if she has to sacrifice her friends along the way?
Musketeer Space is a gender-swapped, thoroughly bisexual space opera retelling of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel by Australian author Tansy Rayner Roberts, which was originally published as a weekly serial on the author's website.
Provides Examples Of:
- Ace Pilot: All three main Musketeers are bright, hotshot pilots at the top of the Fleet, though Athos is quite obviously a Broken Ace and it's eventually revealed he uses pilot drugs to function. Rosnay Cho also turns out to be one, as Dana discovers after getting into a Duel with her.
- The Alcoholic: All the Musketeers drink regularly, but depressed Athos leans heavily on this.
- Bed Trick: A variation. The infamous 'All Cats Are Grey In The Dark' chapter of the original becomes 'All Cats Are Grey (In Cyberspace)', where Dana seduces Milord via sexting, using the Marquise de Wardes's discarded clamshell communicator.
- Big Brother Mentor: All three of the Musketeers develop this towards Dana, but especially Athos. He teaches her swordplay, delivers advice (mostly of the "love is for idiots and pretty people aren't to be trusted" variety), petitions for her to be made a full Musketeer and passes on his wealth of knowledge about where to get into the best bar fights.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Pilot drugs, which increase a pilot's connection to their ship and copilot, with the tradeoff that their nervous systems are so wired into the ship that any damage rebounds directly into the pilot's brain. They're illegal for everything except very early training with an experienced copilot, and outside the law are mostly used in dangerous virtual-reality Duels. It's revealed Athos habitually uses nexus, one of the strongest drugs, while flying to mitigate the effects of his alcoholism, which nearly kills him when he and Dana get into a pursuit battle.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Athos, left on his home planet with only Grimaud for company, almost drinks himself to death. Only Grimaud's and later Dana's efforts keep him from simply killing himself.
- Ethical Slut: Aramis bounces from affair to affair, and has a friendly competition going with Porthos as to who can sleep their way through more of Paris Satellite. She tries to ensure that her partners have a fun time and no-one's heart gets broken except her own, and only sleeps with married women so that when her plans to leave Paris and become a priest come to fruition, no-one will miss her. Later deconstructed when she encounters her ex Felton, whose life and marriage were ruined by her affair with Aramis, and who has become bitter, depressed and antagonistic.
- Everyone Is Bi: Bisexuality is generally considered the default. The only characters who explicitly aren't bi are Porthos (straight), and Aramis (lesbian).
- Expert in Underwater Basket Weaving: Porthos, born on the ocean planet Truth, tells her friends to just wait until the fate of the galaxy depends on her dolphin-taming skills.
- First Contact Team: When the Sun-kissed agree to negotiate, the hastily-put-together team includes a mob of linguists, a group of Mendaki (another species of alien — what they bring to the table is never made clear, and lampshaded by the other characters), an agent who has worked with a Sun-kissed spy in the past, and two Musketeers who have previously had sex with said Sun-kissed spy. Somehow, it works.
- Food as Bribe: Dana and the Musketeers bring an enormous amount of cake (Porthos's engineer is a stress baker) when the try to talk Amiral Treville into letting them rush off and track down Milord de Winter. Unfortunately, it doesn't help.
- Foreshadowing: Dana assumes the Musketeers have challenged her to a bout of Duel rather than a literal duel with swords, and Athos rebuffs the idea, telling her, "We couldn't fly straight if we were doing that to ourselves every day. Well, these two couldn't. They're lightweights." Much later in the book, it's revealed that Athos is regularly using piloting drugs to mitigate the effects his excessive drinking has on his flying.
- Gender Flip: Of The Three Musketeers, although Athos remains male, mostly for Author Appeal. D'Artagnan becomes Dana, mysterious assassin Milady de Winter becomes alien spy Milord de Winter, the Queen's seamstress Constance Bonacieux becomes the Prince's tailor Conrad Su, etc. And Aramis continues to sleep with every woman around.
- Mini-Mecha: Dana pilots one of these as a member of the Pigeons, the Royal Guard. She notes that it's nowhere near as good as flying a spaceship, but there are compensations - like being able to shoot lasers from her "hands".
- Mr. Vice Guy: Aramis and Porthos are both hard-drinking, bar-brawling, shenanigan-prone Ethical Sluts. Porthos is a problem gambler, and Aramis devotes herself to having affairs with married women. They're also hotshot pilots, devoted patriots, and deeply loyal to their friends, just like their originals in The Three Musketeers.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Dana is short, barely twenty years old, and a hotshot pilot who challenges an entire bar to a fight and makes it out.
- Pull Yourself Down the Spear: Milord de Winter considers doing this when confronted with a rapier at his throat, but is cuffed to a chair before he can manage it. He's a shapeshifting alien and a blade through the neck would be a minor inconvenience at worst.
- Recycled In Space: A nearly beat-for-beat adaptation of The Three Musketeers.
- Really Gets Around: Both Aramis and Porthos have a long string of girlfriends and boyfriends, respectively (consecutively for Aramis, simultaneously for Porthos). Dana's affairs get a little more narrative attention: she crushes on both Aramis and the Regence, falls for Conrad Su, seduces Milord both as herself and the Marquise de Wardes, sleeps with his PA Kitty for fun and information, and eventually ends up with Rosnay Cho after Conrad's death.
- The Rest Shall Pass: Aramis and Porthos stay behind to fight the Red Guards on the solarcrawler and give Dana and Athos time to make it to the getaway ship stored in the hold.
- Screw the War, We're Partying: Dana and the Musketeers end up in the nightclub Dovecote Red the night before they're due to go into battle against the Sun-kissed. Subverted in that the nightclub trip is actually a cover for them to meet and discuss sensitive information with their superior, and for Athos to sneak off and confront his ex-husband, the alien spy, though it's noted that many of the Fleet are playing the trope straight.
- Sexist Used Car Salesman: Played With when Porthos whirls through a spaceship saleyard as the reason for these, chattering nonstop, inquiring about colours and styles, and smearing lipstick on every possible surface, while the salesman attempts to stop her. (It's all a ruse, as she's playing distraction while her friends hack into the yard's system to discover where Aramis may have gone.)
- Terms of Endangerment: Milord de Winter calls Dana "sweetness" during their fight, and Dana lampshades this:He had never used pet names in bed, but he was willing to pull them out when he was trying to kill her? Oh, that wasn't creepy at all.
- Milord and Athos are ex-lovers, and slip back into their familiar endearments when they confront each other as enemies. It's terrifying.
- That Man Is Dead: "The Comte de la Fere is a ghost story."
- True Companions: Aramis, Athos and Porthos are known as "the inseparables" (or occasionally "Inseparable in Idiocy"), and have been ever since Porthos and Aramis rescued Athos from terrorists and talked him into signing up as a Musketeer. Dana eventually joins them.
- Warrior Poet: Aramis, the deeply religious Ace Pilot and Ethical Slut who composes free-verse love poetry to her string of girlfriends. Each act of the book opens with a fragment of Aramis's poetry - These Valiant Stars and A Song Of Spaceships.
- World of Action Girls: The Royal Musketeer Fleet is around 75% women, down from a high of 90% a generation or so ago, due to a previous Regence's belief that women make the best pilots. The four protagonists are three women (Aramis, Porthos and d'Artagnan) to one man (Athos), all equally fond of drinking, bar-brawling and duelling with swords.
