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The Last Hunter #6

The Grand Conspiracy

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Keep your friends close.

After successfully striking back at the alien invaders, Commodore Jack Romanoff and his crew have liberated the cluster capital at Argent. For the first time, it seems like they might be getting their feet back underneath them.

Keep your enemies closer.

When the secretive Poseidon Group—the people behind the conspiracy that threatened the very security of the Confederation—attacks, Jack and his allies must stand back to back against the traitors. Can they unmask the traitors before a knife in the dark leaves them defenseless?

Trust no one.

331 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 18, 2022

571 people are currently reading
119 people want to read

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J.N. Chaney

465 books9,620 followers
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5 stars
1,085 (57%)
4 stars
609 (32%)
3 stars
169 (8%)
2 stars
23 (1%)
1 star
11 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
50 reviews2 followers
December 22, 2022
nothing really happened

This volume was basically separate from the rest. All political games and unrealistic things happening to the Commodore. Too many conversations and really very little movement in the overall story.

Editing was ok but a few missed words and incorrect tenses.

Disappointed bit willing to keep reading. Hope book 7 is better.
Profile Image for C.T. Phipps.
Author 93 books672 followers
December 22, 2022
THE GRAND CONSPIRACY is the sixth book of THE LAST HUNTER series. The premise is that Commodore Romanoff is in charge of a massive dreadnought called Orionis. It started as a fairly simple story of rebuilding the left-to-rot vessel and training a new crew but moved on to be a complicated story involving two alien races as well as a massive conspiracy.

This book reveals the secret of the Poiseidon Group and what their goals are. I have to admit, I kind of wish they'd been solely motivated by embezzlement. After all, the Russian miltary was crippled by the embezzlement of its funds but that was motivated solely by greed rather than any higher plans.

Still, I enjoy the characters and their attempts to untangle the massive web of corruption as well as diplomatic problems that have been assailing the human race since the start of the book. Chaney is always entertaining writer and Terry Mixon is equally good at adding to the world-building. I will continue reading these books until they stop making them.
Profile Image for Beau.
311 reviews7 followers
December 18, 2022
Settling in at Avalon ...

I really enjoyed Book 6: The Grand Conspiracy. Mostly I enjoy seeing the characters each episode. In this one, we don't fight ANY aliens for a change, but we finally uncover the conspiracy that has been chasing Jack Romanov since the beginning of the series.

If you haven't followed along, the Confederation has been allocating money to maintain the fleet of 12 battleships. For the past 150 years, some shadow conspiracy has been siphoning off this money. Jack has run afoul of this conspiracy since the beginning, and in Book 5 a member of this group kidnapped Lisa and Prof Prescott. In Book 6, we find that the conspiracy has been active in "The Cluster" and we learn that scope of their goals. As they said in the book, we are about to find out what you can buy with all that money.

In the meantime, we see Jack the spaceship captain, Sara the judge and lawyer, Tina and David the spies, Col Mack the Marine leader, Lisa the Hacker and Caroline the President of the Confederation Council in the Cluster as they peel back the layers of the conspiracy.

And Jack's conflict with Admiral Allen comes to a head.

It's a fun ride and I'm ready for the next one!
Profile Image for Hugo Cortes.
63 reviews1 follower
July 2, 2025
el libro que he leido no es este, pero no está en goodreads. se llama "la gran conspiracion" y es un libro divulgativo que trata sobre como se manipula la información en las redes sociales para tener a la gente dividida y ahogada en mentiras. le doy un 11 sobre diez. me ha encantado!
15 reviews
December 19, 2022
6 Books, looking forward to number 7!

Fighting on two fronts: robotic alien warships and a human conspiracy to seize power. The crew of the Orionis fights on. Good story, characters, and plot will keep you reading.
Profile Image for Darren F. Keith.
67 reviews
July 4, 2024
Less ship to ship fighting in this one but I found that about midway through I was thinking of it as my favorite. Excellent world building and setting up the future of the story.
Profile Image for Jim.
1,235 reviews50 followers
February 28, 2023
Things slow down in this book. By that I mean there isn't a lot of star-fighting, space combat to try and wrap your head around. Commodore Jack Romanoff has some problems he needs to get fixed in order to fix his ship, the Hunter, after it's last battle against the Novarites. As you remember, the Hunter when out to meet the Novarite fleet which was in direct disobedience to his orders from Rear Admiral Allen. The contention is that Commodore Romanoff isn't under the command of Admiral Allen and Admiral Allen isn't even in a combat command position. Romanoff is the commander of the Delta Orionis, a.k.a. Hunter, and he's not about to let the Rear Admiral tell him how to conduct his combat mission simply because the guy is of a higher rank. Jack is getting ready to meet with the President of the planet Argent and currently the Chairman of the Confederation Council in this sector.

President Caroline Ibarra was already getting very familiar with some of Romanoff's crew as two had just been rescued from a turn-coat intelligence operative Bronson Rowe. Lisa Gane and Professor Prescott were his two abductees whom he planed to eventually turn over to the conspiracy. While Rowe was now in custody, President Ibarra wanted to know what happened directly from Lisa, so Tina Chen was there to escort her to that meeting. Lisa was very apprehensive about the meeting considering in her former life she was something of a criminal hacking into secure networks and other systems. But with her resident and internal alien on-board, Regex, she had been doing some very significant and helpful work for Commodore Romanoff and the war effort. She hoped the President wouldn't press her too hard on her past and wouldn't "freak-out" about the alien she carried insider her.

Eventually, Commodore Romanoff was going to have to meet with President Ibarra and see if he could get her help with Rear Admiral Allen. While she wasn't in-charge of the Navy, she was the political lead of the government in this sector so she could provide over-site to Naval activities which would include Rear Admiral Allen. Admiral Allen was assigned as the Confederation Naval Liaison to the Confederation Council in this sector and since President chaired the Council she had been working with him for quite some time. Still, in Jack's favor, he had just saved the planet from serious harm by defeating the Novarites before they came close enough to do damage to the planet.

Now back to the conspiracy. The captured intel operative, Bronson Rowe, was beginning to see that it was to his advantage to start talking about what was going on with this conspiracy. While he wasn't in the upper echelons, he did know certain things. One of which was that the conspiracy group was known as the Poseidon Group. They were very active on the planet Argent and had other high-level operatives positions throughout President Ibarra's organization. Rowe also knew that he was a dead man now that he was caught and the Poseidon Group would attempt to kill him very soon. He also knew that attempts on other kill figures to include President Ibarra and Commodore Romanoff would be part of their plans for the near future. The purpose of the Poseidon Group was to over-throw the Confederation government.

So most of the actions in this book take place on the planet Argent. The Hunter sets up a command facility on Argent so they can begin tracking down some of the conspirators and also facilitate getting help from the manufactures and workers of the planet for the parts and labor they will need to fix the Hunter. Romanoff doesn't belief another attack by the Novarites or the Tardan military is imminent, so he's willing to spend the time to make sure he has the President's support and that will smooth the way for her people to support his mission.

There are going to be some very interesting reveals in this book. President Ibarra is a very interesting character and she has a lot of interesting ideas. After having written "interesting" twice in one sentence, you should find this book very interesting all the way through. I hope the next book 7, "Shield of Humanity", is just as interesting.
72 reviews
February 22, 2024
Well, I still feel the same

as I did the last time I read the sixth book of this series. Way too much filler, fluff, unnecessarily long-winded on material I "remember" reading about in the first six books. Ideas, refreshing ones memory, that in of itself is not bad and needed, especially if there has been much time passed waiting for the next book. Nothing wrong with a quick paragraph, or using clever snippets in with the new, as the story moves forward. However, that can become boring very quickly when drawn out to fill the word-count needed to make the publisher happy. But filling pages with dribbles of new details, while writing tiring details which drag on and on; much like chowing on an expensive but tough steak. You keep chewing with the hope firstly, that you will get to the expected flavor for this $100 fillet, but after 5 minutes of chewing, one now settles on just hoping it will go down the gullet without one choking on it and needing to be resuscitated. Ugh!

In my first read of book 6 I didn't finish the book and actually stopped reading the series altogether. This time I tried to chew through it, after all this was supposed to be a special treat. A $100 dollars steak is surely a treat saved for special occasions, and ones expectations are right up there next to the price on the menu. This time I quickly cut the chewing time by skipping a bunch of pages. I used my almost forgotten course on speed-reading, scanned for something new and tasty, and if not new and tasty, then I moved at a pretty good place past those pages. Unfortunately it wasn't just a lot of rehashing the story this far - (who picks up book 6 in a series they have not read each book anyway?) - no, there just wasn't much new in this book, and even there, too many words saying little, is simply not what I am used to with Chaney and Mixon.

But seriously, this should not happen in book 6 with several more books in this series awaiting it's readers. And from such great (good😕) writers (rem the $100 steak?) I expect them to know when a story has run it's course. Quit while you're ahead? Fluff does not for a good story make, it's actually rather insulting to the readers, underestimating your fans, your followers, any reader really, maybe thinking that fans don't appreciate or expect the story to keep getting better and better.

Well, I got through this book much quicker than usual, you know, "chew slowly" to get all the flavors the steak has to offer. But now I'm not sure if I actually want to continue reading this series. Would I go back to the same restaurant to try the $100 steak one more time?

This you will have to decide for yourself.
I personally have only so much time for reading pleasures. Rather than just quitting after spending time to write this, yeah, witty expose, and after having voiced my disappointment reading book 6, I'm going to download a sample of book 7 and read a few reviews on the rest of this series. After all, I already have much invested in this series. So I give finishing reading the whole series another chance.
Profile Image for Tom Steele.
97 reviews8 followers
May 24, 2024
Better than the last book anyway !

Book 5 was so bad I almost quit reading the series. This was a big step back in the right direction. There are still some big plot holes and character inconsistencies, especially with the Chens. Some weird stuff about their marriage and being spies that wasn’t really my idea of a fun space opera.

Speaking of which, that’s what this is. A big sweeping space opera. It isn’t hard sci-fi and there’s more SOAP opera than space opera much of the time. This isn’t a great sci-fi series, but it’s a mostly fun, mostly good, and a lot cheesy space opera. Keep in mind they are pumping these things out at an almost Chat GPT/AI pace (hmm) and there are lots of open plot holes and story lines that just don’t add up.

Probably one of the worst things to me is the terrible choices they make regarding protecting their people and how even a casual reader wouldn’t make some of the careless and downright stupid decisions they make when it comes to their spy vs spy and allowing their people to be exposed to kidnapping and subterfuge.

I’m not saying the book is terrible, but it started better and has gotten too complicated for the authors to keep all the plot lines running together while making logical sense anymore. Good characters, fun story but terrible attention to detail and poor descriptive writing in many scenarios.
Profile Image for Per Gunnar.
1,318 reviews75 followers
December 29, 2022
Unfortunately I suspected that this installment in The Last Hunter series would not be my cup of tea and I was right.

The entire book pretty much pauses the main story and instead introduces this grand conspiracy. There is not a single thread of actual military science fiction in terms of actual military action, space combat or even preparations to take on the real enemy apart from some dialogue about fitting some new weaponry on The Hunter who got shot up again (sigh) in the last book.

Instead it is all about subversive activities, political rubbish, back stabbing, conspiracies and so on and so forth. All of which I do not like in my books.

The only really good part in this book was that this asshat Admiral got dealt with.

I certainly hope that the next book lets Jack go back to kicking alien butt. If I would rate this book entirely based on how much I appreciated it then it would be below three stars. That however would be unfair. It is a well written book. It’s just not my cup of tea. So three stars it is. People not having my aversion to political bullshit and conspiracies will probably like this book better.
1,019 reviews4 followers
June 4, 2024
Der Tag is nearly ready to happen

As if Commodore Jack Romanoff doesn’t have enough problems, he has more. The shadowy group that they were becoming aware of turn out to be much bigger and more dangerous than they could have imagined. They have also become painfully aware of the dangers posed by the Novarite Empire in a desperate engagement that was far too close to their destruction for Jack to want to repeat anytime soon.
Thankfully Lisa & Regex are growing better meshed in their symbiosis that her hacking skills are beginning to amaze even her. But even though they aren’t aware of it, the Confederation will be deeply in need of her continued efforts.
351 reviews4 followers
December 23, 2022
This time the threat is of the human kind!

Following on from defeating the current invasion by the Novarites , The Last Hunter needs some repair work at Argent. Meanwhile, with the capture of Rowe,, an agent of the conspiracy, some more details about the conspiracy cone to light. the conspirators make an attempt on Jack and the president....
Intrigue, suspense, human doublecrosses, back stabbing (both literal and figurative!), romance, politics, fighting and unexpected Ted occurrences all result in an entertaining and enjoyable read.
Profile Image for Tony Hisgett.
3,012 reviews36 followers
December 23, 2022
It was good to take a break from staggering through one battle after another, but by halfway I was becoming a little bored. It’s not that some of the minor incidents were not interesting, but they just went on too long, the author was repetitive and never used one word when ten would do.
If possible I would have given 2.5 stars, but because I found the latter part of the book ‘messy’ and unconvincing, I have only given two.
Profile Image for James Anderson.
113 reviews
December 30, 2022
Just when you think you've got the slant on where things are going whoops there comes a curveball

We have strong characters and just as we see them developing one way things are changed. Young people step up way beyond their capability. Things aren't what they seem people we think are going to do one thing do something else or involved in a different way. Always keeps you guessing and on the edge of your seat.
Profile Image for Richard.
192 reviews
May 17, 2023
The twists continue

Jack finds out that the Tardans have take another system. He goes there with plan to liberate it only to find that the Tardans are not his only concern. Hunter gets into the fight of its life with both the Tardans and their oppressors the Novorites. Faced with an overwhelming enemy presence Hunter must ride to the occasion to save the system and the human race.
734 reviews2 followers
February 27, 2023
Political intrigue.

No big space battles, no ground based skirmishes, except for a minor one, yet this book had me as enthralled if not more so than the previous books
This time round, it's all about how the crew interact wit the government of the planet and how the government reciprocate
It's well thought out and cleverly delivered
Profile Image for fred jones.
1,795 reviews11 followers
April 11, 2023
This one is more involved than some of the previous ones in the series. It deals with the Poseidon Group conspiracy, the political intrigues and forcing the conspiracy into the open. Less action but a more in depth storyline with some shocks along the way. Jeffrey Kafer does an excellent job with the narration
Profile Image for One.
264 reviews1 follower
June 10, 2023
This reads as an continuation of book five. I think it was an executive decision at the publishing house to split the work in more books. I’m not sure if I like that much the word building/ preparation for new plots in these middle books. Definitely the conspiracy isn’t my favourite part. I would love more of the aliens, and definitely more battles.
120 reviews1 follower
January 16, 2025
I give this book series a high rating.because it has a lot of action and it's not as repetitive as some stories are.. I'm trying to figure out why the ships are not using the IFF (Identify friend/foe) Electronics that were used on the planet based.
Vehicles When they were setting free the prisoners on the first planet.
Profile Image for Hans Bleeker.
71 reviews
December 22, 2022
an outstanding piece of writing. enjoyed ever minute

Read along as we continue to follow the exploits of Captain Romanoff and the crew of the Hunter defend the Confederation from the alien invasion as well as the internal struggle to over throw the government.
133 reviews
December 24, 2022
Another great chapter in a great story.

This is a great next step in story with all the character development you would expect and some plot twists you won't. I can't wait for the next one.
16 reviews1 follower
December 26, 2022
Love the series. Characters are well developed, the plot well though out and intriguing. The only fault I would find, and it’s a minor one, is that every installment has at least one, and sometimes more, Deus Ex Machina twists that miraculously saves the day. Otherwise I love it.
249 reviews2 followers
January 3, 2023
Wild ride

What a great book! I thoroughly enjoyed the action sequences the suspense and the cliffhangers. I can't wait to see what happens next. This book was definitely worth the read and I am thoroughly enjoying it!
Profile Image for Mick Bird.
830 reviews12 followers
January 8, 2023
Yet another great read

Well once again we find Jack and his crew fighting off another attack by the enemy. But also find that they have a fight on the home front, but one that was not expected.
386 reviews3 followers
January 26, 2023
Conspiracy!

Seems to me that the conspiracy should just team up with the battleship and they might help each other take over lol. I wasn’t all that surprised that they will probably build their own alien ships and beam weapons. It’s entertaining how they adapt each time.
165 reviews1 follower
April 24, 2023
Good read

Still has the same plot developing and adding additional plot twists and new characters! I only gave this book 4 stars because I didn't particularly enjoy the seemingly large amount of computer technology related to the hacking of alien computers!
120 reviews
January 9, 2024
Very good book

Book 6 in the series was a good book. Problems and enemies multiplied, yet the intrepid crew of Hunter was up to the challenge. The intrigue was a nice addition to the storyline. More technology from the aliens became useful to the crew. I look forward to Book 7!
Profile Image for Leather.
570 reviews12 followers
March 1, 2024
First Space Opera ever without any space in it and an awful operetta instead of the opera.
Progression of the main plot : none
Meetings, conversations, dialogues : 17490
Number of POV : innumerable
Profile Image for Lorrie Nakashima.
3 reviews
March 29, 2024
Love every page of every book!

Characters and story are top notch. The plot continues to become more complex. All problems that pop up of seem impossible to overcome, and yet they martial on. Love it..
336 reviews
May 20, 2024
Friend to enemy.

That's a brutal trandition. But our heroes managed to prevent imminent disaster. Unfortunately it's still in the offering.

I appreciate how one story moves directly into the next. Characters continue to develop and the pressure is relentless.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews

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