Third of a six-book series. In the distant future, a long-frozen
space-navy captain tries to lead his fleet home.
More of the same with a downbeat trend.
There's fleet politics, lote more fighting in space, and (right at the
end) another driblet of information about the hypothetical aliens who
may have set Alliance and Syndics at war with each other. But the book
doesn't in any way stand on its own; if you've got this far in the
series, you might as well keep going, but without the support of the
preceding volumes and the hope of an impressive conclusion it's
nothing.
I would be happier with the fleet politics if we ever saw someone
disagree with Our Hero without immediately being painted as Wrong. The
ongoing romance is adolescent at best. The space fighting isn't bad,
but since Campbell/Hemry has written the rules we know he can make it
come out any way he likes. (Though it's never even quite clear whether
the space drives are meant to be Newtonian or just some sort of "apply
power and it goes, stop applying power and it stops" analogue of a wet
navy. The idea that slower ships can turn more quickly, introduced
here, certainly makes it look like the latter.)
Meh, really. The battle at the end's not bad, but getting there feels
like hard work.
Followed by Valiant.
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