Another good book in this series which started out kind of weird. Now that we know more of what’s going on, it’s starting to make more sense. If you’ll remember, Major Noah Gantz of United Earth, had taken the second warp bubble star ship for a test flight and it didn’t turn out so well. He wound up being saved by a living starship, Kayan, who patched him up and basically saved his life. It did so by using part of the ships material which has caused a permanent linkage between Noah and Kayan. Now the ship and Noah have move on quite a bit collecting various crew-persons along the way. Noah finds himself in a far distant galaxy called the Reach and it’s full of life, unlike the Solar System.
Noah soon found out that he was the “alien” in this galaxy, but he wasn’t the only human. The first warp-bubble test pilot United Earth had sent was a Major Tate Collins. He, somehow, managed to gain power in the Gavant ranks which is the species that rules this part of the galaxy. Tate Collins wants to return to United Earth not as a returning hero, but as its conqueror! Noah and his living starship, Kayan, have already made one effort to stop this madman from doing what he wants, but he’s came into possession of another living starship, a Azok, which is completely opposite of Kayan. While Kayan is peace and cannot conduct any kind of violence, Azok is a battleship, with weapons of war that it will use on anything or anyone.
Earth is and the Solar System is far, far from Reach. It’s also in a part of the galaxy that isn’t very densely populated with stars therefore it’s not an interesting place for anyone to really visit. And that has been Earth’s only saving grace. While Earth is just now reaching to the stars, the civilizations of the Reach galaxy have been armed and fought vast wars of conquest for millions of years. Just one ship of the Gavant or even Tate Collin’s Azok could conquer all of Earth and it would be relatively easy.
Noah knows of Collins’ plan and is bound to stop him. Still, there are things going on with his crew that he must attend to. Wozim is a warrior of the Tyton, in fact, he’s probably going to be their new Emperor if he’ll just accept the fact that he’s got to do that job. Right now he doesn’t want the job, but is getting challenged by a young nephew for the thrown. So, Noah and his crew need to take care of business while they can especially if it also takes care of a crew-person.
They have also stumbled up on ancient artifacts called the Seer’s. Noah has one such artifact embedded in his chest which he doesn’t want there but he can’t remove it. Wozim has another Seer artifact but it’s a helmet that somehow allows him to master all communications that exist around him. And lastly, Solen Far, an Altion scientist, has a pair of gauntlets of unknown power. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to properly use any of these devices. It seems that the powers these artifacts bring only comes out when they are threatened. They are slowly learning to use the artifacts, but there are a lot of other entities that want to possess them. Now, they must find a Master Key that they hope will also continue instructions on how to properly use their ancient artifacts.
The only problem is that Tate Collins knows where the Master Key is located so they must follow him to get it before he does. What Noah has also learned is that the Master Key might have a way of getting him back to the Solar System and home. He just needs to do so before Tate Collins can bring a Gavant fleet there and conquer the entire system. How Noah, his crew and his ship do all of that is the bulk of the story.
Even though this is not the end of the series, Earth is no longer “lost” to Noah Gantz. It is in a way, since he has changed greatly during his journey, but he also knows that Earth must be protected so that might form the background for book 4, “Paragon’s Fall” and other books now available on Amazon.