2012 military SF, ninth of this ongoing series. After the events of
the previous book, Daniel Leary and the Princess Cecile are sent to
get a privincial admiral moving in the right direction to head off a
war-starting coup. Of course it's always more complicated than that.
This one is inspired by a side note in Livy. After the Second
Punic War, a "Hamilcar" claiming to be a Carthaginian raised a
rebellion against Rome in northern Italy. The Roman Senate sent an
embassy to Carthage, requiring that the Carthaginians retrieve their
citizen. Here Carthage is the Republic of Cinnabar, and the rebellion
is on an Alliance world, but it's not clear whether the charismatic
leader "Freedom" even exists. Being sent off to retrieve him will be a
good way to keep Leary out of everyone's hair, then…
There's some effort to depart from business as usual. Leary leaves his
ship in the hands of his first lieutenant to get aboard a blockade
runner and get to the rebelling world, while Mundy starts dismantling
plots from the more civilised end. So overall it's less military, more
straightforward adventure, though the characters are familiar (and
explanations of the slightly unusual ways they think, while perhaps
necessary for a new reader, get a little repetitive even within this
book).
It's fine, but there's nothing special here to set it apart from the
rest of the series, and I'd have preferred occasional surprises and
even some long-term plot development, as there has sometimes been in
other volumes.
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