ORIGINAL TRADE PAPERACK. Steve White, co-author with David Weber of the New York Times best-seller The Shiva Option, joins with Compton Crook Award Winner Charles E. Gannon to carve another notch in the Starfire adventure saga.
The war with the Arduans—profoundly alien invaders who originally arrived in STL ships—is over. Most of those attackers are now probationary (and very productive) citizens of the Rim Federation.
However, many among the Arduans' warrior caste have neither accepted defeat, nor the personhood of any of the other intelligence races. Their leader, the ruthless admiral of the second Arduan exodus—Amunsit—is in firm control of the Zarzuela system. Along with a fifth column among the peaceable Arduans, she hopes to find allies in subsequent refugee fleets that abandoned their race's now-dead home system long ago.
But as the victors' diplomats attempt to soothe tensions with these warlike neighbors, two heroes of the last war—veteran Admiral Ian Trevayne and young trouble-shooter Ossian Wethermere—suspect they have stumbled upon a deeper Arduan plot: one which could shatter the Pan-Sentient Union, and perhaps interstellar civilization itself.
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Good
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I think this is the best written of the series. BTW looking for the sequel soonest!!
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A great read, but there's something you should be aware of going in: the physics are total junk.
The reason TV shows and movies show space battles with the ships right next to each other is because long range combat (without FTL weapons, anyway) would be absurdly slow between missiles inching across interplanetary distances and ships dodging everything they can. By the same token, attacking from outside a star system with ballistic hyper velocity but still STL projectiles would allow ample time for detection and interception or evacuation, since relatavistic velocities basically negate stealth.
That aside, the action scenes are great, as is the story and overall plot.
The only real downside is that, like most Baen books since Jim died, its blatantly setting up for a sequel.Posted on
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nice but unrealistcWeak on physics.
Traveling to the next star with 0.6 c will take about 100 years. It's not possible to attack multible systems through normal space, it would take thousands of years.Posted on
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Product ReviewIt will take five hours for light to go from here to pluto. In real life space battles will be incredibly boring because of the distances and time involved even for light speed objects let alone sub-light objects. Overlooking that tiny detail makes this an incredibly fantastic gripping story. Of course at present I have only read half of it in the monthly bundle.
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