Damned if I die today. Cursed if I live tomorrow
Nikaela Vreekande joins Kristdokar’s clandestine operation to identify those responsible for the tragedy on Novalis III, and the incident on Reisenar. Lieutenant Colonel Katrine Primatov meets with Thordahl and Brynjar on Norandyne to establish covert lines of communication between the Kelk Supremacy and the Commonwealth. John Mathius travels to … and the Commonwealth. John Mathius travels to Trafalgar to attend O-School.
All seems well, but there are those in the Commonwealth and the Supremacy who would prefer that John and Nikaela fail, or barring that, they would see them dead.
A gripping saga of war and redemption. Order it now.
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Strap in for another instalment of the Blacksword Regiment – John and Nikaela are at it again, trying to start their careers. Unfortunately, as a side hustle, they have to do their best to prevent interstellar war – whether by sleuthing, beating up baddies, or fighting improvised battles in deep space.
As usual, the combat and navigation parts of the books really shine – I absolutely love the vivid descriptions of the tactics used in faster than light manoeuvring, life on spacecraft with artificial gravity, all of that. They’re what bring me back to this author and this series every time something new comes out! Also as usual, the dialogues are often comically awkward and romantic stuff feels adolescently clumsy. None of that lessened my enjoyment of the book though and I’m looking forward to the next book in the series already.
The story picks up right where the first book ended, however where the first book read like a military boot camp story this reads like a political thriller. While John & Nikaela are still the main protagonists of the story, this book focuses a lot more on the higher ranking (and more powerful) characters that only appeared briefly in the first. We get to see a lot more from these characters point of view as well as seeing them try to advance their agendas for good and ill. One of my favorite aspects of the story is that while there are a lot of characters that are clearly in one camp or another there are also quite a few who are more of a question mark regarding where their actual loyalties lie.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed the first, it builds on everything from the first book (not always in ways you expect) and has this slow, but purposeful build-up of tension and pace that meant I couldn’t put it down until I read the whole story.
This was a great 2nd entry into what is turning out to be a very interesting series. There are a few areas where I roll my eyes, but overall it’s a solid 4 1/2 stars.
Pros ->
1. Interesting main characters. I always want to know what happens next, so I had a hard time putting this down.
2. Fun science fiction. I really liked the naval combat scenes, and description of hunter-killer tactics when on the hunt for other ships.
3. Although primarily a novel that is building up the series and characters, when the action starts it is intense and very well written.
Neutral/cons ->
1. John seems to forget the lessons from his childhood and is amazingly naive at times. He does overcome this, but I want to reach through the pages and strangle him more than once.
2. It may be my fault for reading so fast, but I sometimes had trouble telling some of the character names apart.
3. The description of hair as “more pepper than salt” occurred three times with that exact language, and at least one other time with a slight variation (something like “there was more pepper in his hair than salt”). I didn’t realize until the third time seeing the phrase that it wasn’t so much an author affectation, but was rather trying to describe how one of the cultures in the book viewed people. The fact that this is my biggest quibble with the book is a good thing! I do wonder about the hair coloration of this race of people though… they are a people with red eyes and pale/blue skin due to planetary conditions… it seems to me that this would result in light colored/red hair, so using pepper to describe that is odd. It’s possible that the actual hair color of this race is described and I missed it, but I just don’t recall.
I did receive an ARC in exchange for the promise of an unbiased review. I enjoyed the novel enough that I will purchase an e-book copy of it as soon as it is available.