2023 SF, thirteenth of its series. After the attempted kidnapping of
the Mage-Queen of Mars,the authorities are trying to find out who did
it and how people loyal for decades were compromised. Meanwhile,
Mage-Commander Roslyn Chambers is coming to the end of a teaching
stint at the Naval Academy when an old friend from her disreputable
days gets in touch…
Well, it's mostly person to person fighting rather than the ship
to ship that I generally find more interesting, but I'm glad to see
some real progress in the overall plot here. Yeah, still no aliens,
but some things that were not at all clear in Mage-Queen's Thief are
now resolved, and there's real tension in the race between an enemy
playing for time and with several very powerful but very specific
capabilities. versus a small investigating force that rapidly realises
that its ability to bring in other element of the authorities is
sharply limited.
Which is how we can have some of the most personally powerful people
in this high-powered setting still facing real challenges, (And while
our protagonists seem likely to live through it, given the genre,
there's a question of just much much of a victory they may be able to
pull out of this mess, not to mention how many friends they'll lose
along the way.)
There's been a bit of a gap in my reading of Glynn Stewart since I
added some of his very extensive back catalogue to my reading list
(and the more books are in a sequence, the less priority it gets).
That was a mistake. Stewart is doing plain action-adventure fiction
well.