Another Day, Another Hopeless Battle to Win
Lorna Greenwood is back for a third book, a record for a character in one of Siers' novels. Well, there are some old folks still around on the edges, but Lorna is the first protagonist to make it past book two, which makes you a little worried about her odds in book 7.
Anyway, after losing her first ship and facing overwhelming odds in book 6, they've given her a new command with a very old ship. Werewolf has seen 70 years of service but is just coming out of Luna Free State(LFS)'s Yards with a full rework, and Lorna is off to join the guard force around Tatanna, the second human-inhabited planet the LFS has come across. Not for long though, as she's sent off to bolster the protectors of New Eden, the other human-inhabited planet, discovered in book 3, but when she arrives she discovers that half the ships she was sent to support have been destroyed by an unknown enemy and she's not the senior officer in the system.
Somewhere, somehow, bad guys have gotten hold of a formidable fleet, including a battleship, leaving Greenwood's aging light cruiser, along with a destroyer and a corvette, heavily outgunned. To make things interesting, the bad guys are hanging out blocking any attempt to send a message missle(hyperprobe) back to Luna.
Things look dire. Maybe Lorna should wait for more bad guys to even the odds.
No, really...it's a tough fight for the moonies.
Meanwhile, back on Tatanna, there's plenty of espionage and skullduggery medieval style as Earth's Confed tries to disrupt the moonie protection of the system.
A note about those human-inhabited planets. Science Fiction is often criticized for of simplifying things, especially the races and cultures, of other worlds. That's fair from a realistic standpoint but inevitable from a storytelling one. Still, Siers has settled on several human-populated worlds other than Earth, each with one genotype and one culture. New Eden = Native Americans(ish), Tatanna = Medieval Europeans(ish), and who knows what else we'll find ou there.
Unrealistic? Too handy? I'm not worried. Siers is a thoughtful writer that puts in the work to make things hold together, and I'm betting that sooner or later we'll find out that they're all Terran stock, dropped off at different times by some alien meddler. This would actually be pretty easy to verify by checking the mitochondrial DNA against our own, which shows human lineage back to the Rift Valley in Africa. Maybe in book 7.
I've been reading these nonstop, and while I still enjoy them, maybe I'll take a break and come back later so I don't burn out on the saga.