I have to admit I didn’t really want to read this book since I kind of knew it wasn’t going to end well. I mean the title is kind of foreboding, right? Well, if you’ve read the previous nineteen books, you’ll know that we have a lot of characters that we have met and I don’t really want to see any come to an end. Christine and James Somerville have built quit the empire during the years while also raising an ever growing family. Their kids have now all grown up and now are serving like their father in the Imperial Fleet. Jonathan, the eldest, is a proven military leader having raised to the rank of Rear Admiral. Georgia has also proven herself as a fierce and capable starfighter pilot and even better yet as a diplomat to the Eaglaton Protectorate. And youngest of the children is Rachel, now a Marine Medic, which should see her station away from the front lines treating patients.
Then there’s Edward who is serving as a fleet intelligence agent doing some very secret work. The entire first part of this book is about just exactly what he is doing. He’s on the trail of the Silizzarus. These are tiny worm/snake-like aliens that have been causing untold trouble for thousands of years intruding in the very culture and development of growing civilizations. They have managed to infiltrate themselves into civilizations that are near their home system leading them to become very pacific to the point most of these civilizations can’t even defend themselves. Edwards’ mission is to find the homeworld of the Silizzarus to see what they are up to and determine if the Human Empire can defeat this threat before it becomes worse.
Edward has some lead from a previously captured Silizzarus starship. But, we know that the Silizzarus have received information that humans might just know where their homeworld is located so they are beginning to build shipbuilding docks to build a fleet capable of destroying any civilization that threatens them. We know from previous engagements with even one Silizzarus starship that they are much more advanced that anything humans have built so even small Silizzarus fleet could destroy Earth! Edwards must find their homeworld and then get that information back to the Empire so they can strike first!
Yet the Empire is in another huge war with the Karacknids. This is the same enemy that Emperor/Admiral James Somerville once defeated some thirty-five years ago. Yet, now they are back again after having fought a deadly internal civil war to name a new Imperator. The Human Empire had watched this civil war hoping that this would result in the Karacknids never having the strength to unite behind one individual who would threaten them again. Yet, that didn’t happen. Now Imperator Tanaka-Ian has gathered a tremendous fleet of something like eighty-thousand warships and is coming for the Human Empire. He wants to specifically kill James Somerville and destroy Earth. After that he plans to conquer and destroy every civilization that has ever supported the humans, especially those that had aided the humans when they won the First Karacknid War!
I am at a loss as to why the Human Empire along with it Varanni Alliance have not built enough warships in the last thirty-five years that would far exceed anything the Karacknids could field after their civil war almost destroyed their ship building capabilities. Yet, here we are with Admiral James Somerville only able to put together a fleet of about twelve thousand warships to stand against the eighty thousand the Karacknids have delayed. Yet, the humans did have other battles to fight, but those didn’t seem to last long and certainly didn’t take all of the Human Empires resources. Even then, with a few exceptions, the humans don’t seem to have developed anything kind of advanced weaponry, super weapons and even much, much improved engineering skills. With a few exceptions, these ships of the Human Empire seem to be the same ships James Somerville fought with thirty five years ago.
So, you have to storylines, Edward has to find the Silizzarus homeworld and then has to find something to attack it with while his Father, James Somerville will try to defend Earth with only a fraction of the ships compared to what the Karacknids will be fighting with. James suffers an early defeat at Zeta Fort so now having fallen back to New Shanghai he awaits Imperator Tanaka-Ian and the possibility that after this next battle, Earth will be completely undefended and his Empire will have fallen.
This book, as the other nineteen have been, was well written. While there is some confusion during every battle, the author manages to keep things pretty straight. The author also doesn’t kill the read with numbers every time something happens, but there are a lot of counting of missiles and ships that any bean-counter would love. And this isn’t the end of the series. Oh no, we’ve got a least two more books. Book 21, “Inheritance of War” and book 22, “Empire Divided” seem to be the last two books in the series. I plan on reading both.
==[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.]==