2019 SF, seventh of its series. Roslyn Chambers ends up as a flag
lieutenant in the big fleet trying to win the war; Damien Montgomery
follows the clues to uncover something the enemy's keeping secret even
from their own people.
Well, I was right about the enemy's FTL drive (I think everyone
who was paying attention had that pinned down a book or two ago). Not
so right about their FTL communicator. And an epilogue answers some
questions, and raises others – but while I often have a poor reaction
to this style of storytelling, by this point I trust Stewart to
provide answers eventually.
The interwoven stories have, on the one hand, some good solid space
opera (though it downplays the effect of magic useful at space combat
ranges to the point that it started in plcaes to feel like generic
space battle, the first time the series has had that effect on me),
with decent consideration of what a flag lieutenant's actual job is
like. Good stuff, though not great.
In the other thread, we have a covert expedition into Republic space,
and much more of the interleaving of magic with mundane supertech that
I've always enjoyed about these books: yes we have battlesuits, yes we
have magicians, and neither of those becomes the one important thing
that the narrative is about.
"Our terminal velocity is fifty-five meters per second," Romanov
replied. "We pop the chutes at roughly twelve seconds' altitude, so
around seven hundred meters.
"At that point, it should take us about forty-five seconds to land.
It's going to be rough."
Damien considered.
"Are we talking stopping a nuke with magic rough or teleporting a
space station with magic rough?" he asked. He'd done both of those.
One had knocked him unconscious for days. The other had done that
and wrecked his hands.
Romanov took a second to stop laughing before he replied.
"Not that bad. Crashing a shuttle rough. Pretty sure you've done
that."
Damien sighed.
"That's still not a recommendation," he noted. "I've done a lot of
things I wouldn't care to repeat."
As always, and I know I'm banging the same drum here, Stewart keeps it
human even when there's a swarm of 50,000 missiles coming in at a
fleet of a few dozen warships. Perhaps there's too much emphasis on
the One Clever Tactic rather than the slog of a real battle.
Still enjoying the series, though, and I may dive into some of the
spin-offs too.
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