This war and this story might have been going on way too long. I found it somewhat hard to slog through all the space battles depicted in this book. It seems like we were just finished with Emperor/Admiral Somerville fighting the Karacknids and now we’re back doing the same thing. Only this time, James and Christine’s children are in the fighting. It has been 25 years since the last Karacknid war and the Karacknids have been fighting a civil war most all of that time. Yet here they are back, just months from finishing that civil war with an armada of a hundred-thousand ships.
On the other hand, the Human Empire doesn’t seem to have done much of anything. They’ve developed a few new weapons and done some static fort building along the border, but they haven’t apparently come close to building the kind of war assets that the Karacknids suddenly have. I find the amount of starships the Karacknids can field now and the lack of starships the Human Empire can field totally out of kilter with what’s previously been happening. James Somerville knew the Karacknids were coming for his Empire as soon as they settled their civil war. He and his staff watched the civil war in fairly great detail, but didn’t seem to raise the necessary alarms throughout his empire. Now they are caught in perilous conditions that could very well see the end of the Human Empire!
He has sent Admiral Becket to the opposite side of the Karacknid Empire to see if she could possibly draw some of his advancing forces away. And to top it off, Admiral Becket, under James and Christine’s orders, actually starts this war with the Karacknids! I don’t know if that was a smart more or not. You’ll have to read the book to find out.
At least James and Christine have gotten Jonathan, their eldest son and heir to the thrown back with James’ fleet. He had wondered around far inside Karacknid space ambushing supply convoys until his small fleet was almost wiped out. If it wasn’t for a timely meet-up with another Human Empire fleet, he would have lost all of his ships and probably gotten killed himself.
Back to the forts that have been built. There’s apparently two layers. The outer layer is where James plans to meet Tanaka-Ian if he can’t defeat him in the Wilds. Due to James’ apparent lack of intelligence about Tanaka-Ian huge build up of ships, which is strange in itself, he really has no chance of defeating the Karacknids in the Wilds or anywhere else. James has called in every ship his Empire and all of his Allies can muster, but it’s not going to be enough. Tanaka-Ian has done some interesting improvements in his war-fighting abilities fielding siege cannons and a new starfighter equal to or better than the humans have fielded. In 25 years, James’ scientists haven’t come up with anything that extends the range of his missiles or makes his ships any more deadly than they were in the previous war.
So, again, slogging through a lot, and I mean a lot of space battles requires a lot of mental imagery that really tires a reader out. It’s not like we can see what’s happening via a huge display on the command bridge of the flag ship. But, it does give you the understanding that, in this book, the Human Empire and Emperor/Admiral James Somerville are going to be thoroughly defeated. Does James lose his life? That’s the big question. What about him losing his son, Jonathan, his heir. You’d think there would be some consideration to getting him out of the combat area, but that probably isn’t going to happen.
We’re left with a lot of question unanswered in this book. I guess that guarantees another book in the series, but I don’t think I like the title. “Empire’s End” (book 20) is not even announced on Amazon and won’t be available until 15 August 2024 so we have awhile to wonder what the hell is going to happen?