2021 military SF, second of its trilogy. The crew/found family of the
not-Coast-Guard spaceship Zuma's Ghost are having to say goodbye to
old members and welcome new ones.
I found two major elements in this book: one is that covert
intelligence work is bad for military people and you really shouldn't
ask them to do it, or if you do you should at least give them
permission to tell their underlings/found family. Even if you don't
trust their skill at acting. Fair enough, that's a usual idea in
military SF, but it's rare to see it expanded in such depth as it is
here. As before, the one way to put things right is honest
conversations.
The other element for me was a Schrödinger's Conspiracy. Half the time
it seems as though they have eyes and ears everywhere, they can
threaten people's families, they can plant bombs in several places and
time them to go off at once, they're clearly a major threat. The other
half, it's basically just these three people (admittedly with
significant resources), and one of them goes out in person on a minor
intimidation job. Nobody ever seems to find these contradictory.
I enjoyed it, admittedly rather less than the first book, but I'll
certainly go on to the final volume.
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