Well, here we are chugging along with book #27 in the series that will never end! I don’t mean that in a bad way, but after spending so much time with Peacemaker Van Tudor and then Auxiliary Torina Milon (now his wife of a few years), we now seem to be focusing on their kids. Not only their kids but those of Funboy and Gabby, and Icky and Paxomar, with Alex Mandeville’s son thrown in for good measure. I kind of believe that once your main character has done all that he can do, maybe it’s time to wrap up that series and possibly start a new one, with the kids, even. Just my opinion of course, and one the author doesn’t share.
So, we start off with all the kids, Abel and Kisni, Melly and Budge, Clip & Tiki, and finally Zeke under the watchful eye of Funboy. They are somewhere in front of a grapefruit bottling plant in Orlando, Florida. They were there to shoot a commercial with Funboy as a means to promote off-world relations with the people of Earth.
Everything was going just fine even though most of the “kids” didn’t even like grapefruit juice and were very reluctant to drink it even for this commercial. But, Funboy was getting their cooperation, finally, when a glass of the stuff was shattered while still in the hand of Abel. Not only that happened, but when Abel looked towards his sister, Kisni, he noticed that sealing foam was hissing and bubbling from her b-suit which only did that if something had penetrated it to the body inside. Yeah, Kisni had been shot!
All heck broke loose after that with all of the young adults being armed and going after the apparent sniper. Yet they had no idea where the shot came from and after a frantic quick search it was decided to get Kisni back to the Nexus as quick as possible. Fortunately, B was there doing some other business, so she quickly stepped in and took care of Kisni. It turned out that the wound wasn’t that serious.
But Van Tudor and Tornia considered it terribly serious. Someone was shooting at their kids. They had no idea who that someone might be, but their thoughts kept circling around to a possible Stillness assassin. But after this incident, nothing else happened anywhere around the Nexus or in the proximity of any of the main characters in this story.
But, Van and company decided that it might be best to get the kids away from Earth for a while if they were, in fact, the target of the assassin. It so happens that Pont Alus Kyr, the medical research facility now orbiting Earth had a new project that they needed help from the Fist of Orion. This just so happened to provide the very mission to send all the young people on away from Earth for a while.
So, Van ask Rab to command the *AnaDarko* with his crew comprised of all the Fist of Orion and Peacemaker Adept young people. This, Van and others thought, would get them out of harms way for a potential six-month mission. This is where they made a serious mistake. Hopefully the young people now excited about going on a mission together don’t wind up getting themselves killed. But, this was just a scientific mission to place some satellites around some distant planets. There didn’t seem to be anyway that anyone could come to harm although space can be dangerous just by being in it!
Van and the rest of the adults really need to consider what they are doing, but they don’t, at least right now. While the *AnaDarko* with Rab in command will be a very capable ship, they also send the Prowler, the stealth spy ship, along with two other ships manned by the Conoku. That should be plenty of protection, or so everyone thought!
There is a lot intrigue in this story, but nothing really gets resolved. It does appear that the Stillness is back causing some havoc within known space and it’s becoming a problem that Van Tudor and his crew need to address. But how is the big question.
This story, even after 27 books, doesn’t end. No, book 8, “A Rumor of War”, is out on Amazon now. I guess I’ll be adding that one to my reading list as always.
==[Note: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be published on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. Once the ban is lifted, assuming it does get lifted, I’ll go back and post this to Amazon.]==