I have enjoyed this series up until this point, however this book was highly disappointing to me.

McGowan, who was stripped of his command during the last trilogy for some, inexplicable reason, is given his command back just in time to hotheadly start another war with a new species. His normally over cautious tactics thrown out the window as he tries to lay siege to a system against an enemy of unknown strength and capabilities with only seven warships merely off of the assumption that they were hostile. His small character growth that he seemed to experience last book had regressed.

Capp, frankly should have been promoted by now. More so if there is need for experienced captains enough to placed a degraced one back in command.

I also didn't understand why Vargas was so openly hostile towards Drake for no real reason.


Now the good parts? The portrayal of the insectoid race was fantastic, as each alien race has been. It would have been easy to start a war based off of the two sides misunderstanding one another rather than an incompetent captain given a command he was already stripped of. ( )