I think this was ‘a book too far’, it really felt like the author was just desperate to keep the story going. After the slaughter at Copernicus another ‘slugfest’ was the last thing this series needed. I felt like I was reading about the last desperate hope of mankind battling insurmountable odds, but this isn’t the case, there is the whole Triplanetary fleet waiting for the information they have gathered on their ‘reconnaissance’ mission.
Basically the whole book was just one big battle, interestingly it was the first book in the series where I missed not having anything from the enemy’s point of view. It just seemed to go and on and the misery was just relentless.
I also got really annoyed with the author’s constant harping on about destroying a civilisation, they weren’t, they were simply attacking the equivalent of a Nazi SS army.
I considered giving just one star, but that probably wouldn’t have been fair.