I’ve read some of Evan Currie’s book before and they were good. It looks like he’s on to another very good series in Archangel One. While the story starts out kind of slow with a lot of background stuff, it eventually gets interesting when the Archangel One teams gets fully operational.
Now the setup to the actual deployment of Archangel One is the some what dull part. There’s an Admiral Gracen who seems to be in charge of ship development for the Earth. It also seems that the Earth has been in space for awhile and has even formed an alliance with a race called the Priminae. That race is slightly more advanced than Earth, but has willingly shared their technology with Earth so it can build better starships. And it seems that the Earth has already fought one major war with the Drasin and has recently fought an encounter with the Empire.
The Empire is a new civilization that just made contact with the Earth. Unfortunately, that contact was hostile since the Empire believes that they should command any subjects or systems within its reach. It is very large and very powerful. The Empire is currently ruled by a young Queen with some kind of connection to her dead father, the former King. The Empire is always looking to expand and Earth may be it’s next target.
But, Earth forces managed to scare off the Empires first foray into their space. Earth had developed a very powerful weapon that scared the heck out of the Empire and they retreated. There’s nothing really mentioned about this weapon and it seems to be secondary to what’s happening. It may be that Earth’s secret and powerful weapon can only be deployed around Earth. Either way, Earth has built a new ship called the Odysseus which is going to seek out any further attempts by the Empire to encroach on Earth’s space.
Meanwhile, Admiral Gracen has developed a squadron of very sleek and very modern starfighters that, while small, are much larger than a normal starfighter. Starfighters were thought to be impractical in normal space warfare, but the mission of these new Archangels is going to be different. They are going to be an independent squadron for long-range extended reconnaissance. Their new commander is Commander Stephen “Stephanos” Michaels, who has a reputation of being one wild and crazy pilot. And this is where the fun and excitement starts. Commader Michaels envisions this Arachangel One squadron as privateers or Pirates operating out just on the fringes of the Empire stirring up trouble to find out who is with the Empire and who is really not that much of a fan. He’s also going to gather as much intel on the Empire as possbile without actually engaging the Empire in combat.
This is going to be a fun book give Commander Michaels interpretations of his orders. His first mission encounter goes well with a few twist. It will be interesting to what happens next.