Carrera. Relentless. Machiavellian. Without compunction. Victorious. Pity his enemies. Be thankful he is on the side of freedom from totalitarian domination.

On the colony planet of Terra Nova, soldier turned political leader Carrera has achieved his revenge, destroying those who killed his wife and children in a terrorist strike, and helping to establish a free country. But Carrera’s fight is not over.

War with the Tauran Union is inevitable. Carrera has been preparing his new country for this all-out conflict for years, intending to drive out the last vestige of foreign imperialism in Balboa, the Tauran Union Security Force. He doesn’t care that he’s outnumbered one hundred to one. He doesn’t care that the Taurans are one thousand times wealthier. A true Machiavellian, Carrera is convinced that gold cannot always find good soldiers, but that good soldiers can always find gold. After all, his good soldiers have already found quite a bit. Moreover, he’s been preparing for the war he intends to start and fight on his own terms, while the TU has been preparing for a progressive fantasy.

But then his own government calls a halt even as the commander of the United Earth Peace Fleet, High Admiral Marguerite Wallenstein, injects a dose of realism and spine into the Tauran Union. Any other government, giving similar orders, Carrera would overthrow without hesitation. But this is his own creation; he must follow these orders.

But the Taurans are provoking Balboa mercilessly, and Carrera knows that sooner or later, he must fight—only now the task will be more difficult and more bloody. No matter. When that time comes, Carerra knows he will do whatever it takes to win. He is, after all, Carrera.


Listen to the author discuss the book on the Baen Free Radio Hour: Part 1 | Part 2.

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  1. Quality
    80%
    Carrera and Balboa battle the Tauran Union in book five of the Desert Called Peace series. A well done military romp.

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    Quality
    100%
    Great book with a serious focus on totalitarian approach to war. War and it's reality. No pandering to media or politically correct nonsense.

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    60%

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    60%
    Once the battle started I was hard pressed to keep track of which units were attacking/defending ect.

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  5. Product Review
    Quality
    100%
    I liked the book and series. I think that, coming from the perspective that it does, it's a fanciful contemplation of how things/people might be in a future world gone progressively crazy.

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  6. Product Review
    Quality
    40%
    The Carrerra series has been my guilty pleasure buy for a while now. Unfortunately, I didn't get much of the latter out of this one. The whole 'Carrerra is the greatest and most unbeatable military genius in the history of two planets' bit is getting a bit old, especially since all of his opponents are simultaneously depicted as incompetent and corrupt in one way or another. It would be much more interesting if his battles were really challenging instead of just time consuming; i.e. one of the Legion's breakthroughs/tactics turning out to be anticipated or completely ineffective would be a nice change. Instead its all: 'they never saw it coming,' or 'they were defeated by their overconfidence;' its realistic, until it happens every single time. Didn't care much for the subplot with Hamilcar and Ant either; I'm not interested in reading about hormone fueled adventures of pre-teens, even if the adventure didn't reach any real 'climax.' I guess since this series has gone so many other places in terms of sex, though, that this might have been inevitable.

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    Quality
    40%
    Bad, worst in series

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  8. Product Review
    Quality
    80%
    I liked the book. It ties into the other books in the story arc. It answers some questions from AmaZon Legion that I had. Looking forward to the next in the series.

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  9. Product Review
    Quality
    40%
    Underwhelming. Too many stories going in too many directions with insufficient resolutions to them. Works as part of a very tightly-tied series, but there is no story arc at all within this book. Things happen... More things happen.... Things are grim... Some other things happen....

    Also, the editing was terrible. There are spelling and grammatical errors every couple pages. Did someone slip the ARC in by mistake?

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