So, Arkarin Blackhawk used to be a really, really bad guy. He was an Imperial General no less, known then as Frigus Umbra. Now how did our author come up with a name like that? Well, it is Latin and if you look up the meaning of “Frigus” it will say it means “cold, cold weather or frost”. That pretty much fits what the General was, a cold-blooded killer without emotions. Then “Umbra” translates to “shadow or darkness” and that pretty much describes how the former General was usually seen, as the shadow of death! Now the question is, can Arkarin Blackhawk really bury his past and act as he has for the past twenty-five years or will he eventually revert to his murderous past self?
As the story to date shows, he’s pretty much been on the side of good for quite some time. Yeah, he and his crew of the Wolf’s Claw have done some questionable things, but only when it was absolutely necessary and usually against people that deserved what they got. His best friend, Marshal Augustin Lucerne, knows about his past and now his crew does too. Yet, they have all stood by him and will continue to do so even though some of his darker traits have been coming forth on specific occasions. They all can see the dark side of Arkarin, but they also know he is a strong fighter and will keep that self at bay as much as necessary.
Marshal Lucerne is now set to see his dream of a Far Star Confederation come into existence. Yet, he also sees trouble brewing and is not quite sure where it’s coming from. Unknown to him, the Imperial Governor on Galvanus Prime is much more active and ambitious than those in the past. Governor Vos has laid a number of deadly plans that are about to come to their success. Two of which will directly effect both Marshal Lucerne and Arkarin Blackhawk.
Marshal Lucerne doesn’t want his daughter, Astra, to succeed him if anything should happen to him. So he’s in the process of naming Arkarin Blackhawk as his successor and General Rafelus DeMark as the next in line if something were to happen to Blackhawk. Blackhawk doesn’t want the position because of his past. He believes getting into a position of that much power will drive him back to wanting more and more. He believes he would become a terrifying tyrant of the Far Stars and not the benevolent ruler that Marshal Lucerne has become.
But, due to Governor Vos’s actions, Blackhawk is kind of forced to become the new leader of the Confederation. And now, his old persona of General Frigus Umbra is screaming to get out. Governor Vos has no idea of the monster he has awakened and neither does anyone else. They are soon to find out that Arkarin Blackhawk is extremely capable at warfare and his enemies will suffer greatly. It’s up to his friends and Astra Lucerne to reign in General Frigus Umbra and get Arkarin Blackhawk back in charge. Until they do, nothing but death and destruction awaits the Far Stars Confederation.
In this book, I also read something that’s very puzzling to me in that science fiction authors seem to think conquering a planet is just a matter of landing a few thousand soldiers in the right spot and that’s about it. I don’t know how they can think that way. Imagine aliens landing in say Texas. There are about 164,000 US troops in this state alone. Our combined military strength in the United States is somewhere around 1.1 million! So how does an alien invasion force capture an entire planet by just landing a few troop ships? Of course their weapons would probably be much better than ours and they could bombard everything from space, but too many sci-fi authors seem to make it an easy task to conquer a planet by just landing at one spot and fighting whatever troops are there. Unless the target planet is grossly uninhabited, then it’s going to take quite a lot of aliens to capture most any planet. Ok, enough of my rambling.
This appears to be the end of this series, although I can see other stories involving Arkarin Blackhawk and the Wolf’s Claw. I would like to read more about the Wolf’s Claw and Arkarin Blackhawk.