2026 SF, eighteenth of its series. Chimera is still occupied, and the
force that's hiding to conserve its strength for the day of liberation
is having to watch as the population is oppressed. Mage-Captain Roslyn
Chambers, who wasn't even supposed to be on-planet, is going to do
something about it.
But not lightly. Any old series can say "but the reprisals" while
the macho hero says "but I'm not gonna take it", but Glynn Stewart
always does that little bit more—which is a large part of why I'm
still reading these, 18 books in.
So there's a real tension: the official force has to retain its heavy
weapons so that it can clear the skies when the Martian fleet returns.
But conducting military operations against the Kazh invaders will lead
them to retaliate with their orbiting ships. Which means the defenders
would have to use or lose their weapons, and either way they wouldn't
be available for the relief force battle. But at the same time the
invaders are running under far more brutal laws of war than anyone
expected, and morale is suffering.
So Roslyn's solution is to separate herself from that force, and be a
one-woman terror campaign against the invaders. But the first mass
execution she prevents turns out to have some actual resistance
fighters in it, and she's soon organising some of the above-ground
troublemakers.
The previous book was a feast of logistics with some space battles.
This is much more focused on the action, and Roslyn is not an officer
to practice restraint in the use of her power.
All right, she spends a bit too much time thinking about her breasts,
which didn't strike me as this important to the narrative in earlier
books (we've never had a character in this series worry about getting
a supply of underwear when on a solo covert mission before). But apart
from that I very much enjoyed this, for all it has a cliffhanger
ending. Obviously don't start here; this is a series,, for all
Stewart's own web site breaks it into arcs, and is best read from the
beginning.