We have come a long, long way with this series! And that’s a pretty big understatement if I’ve ever made one. Starting off with a Commander James Somerville who’s career was border-line because of his involvement with Princess Christine, Daughter of the King of England to what we now read about, Emperor of Humanity/Admiral James Somerville has been one tremendous journey. It’s just about over with this book.
If you have been following along as I have, you have to have noticed the great number of characters the author has introduced and then killed off. There have been a lot of space battles and not every one was won by “the good guys”. People were lost, even good people that had become good friends for Admiral Somerville. But, the authors has kept a great contingent of other characters that have been introduced throughout this series and it’s great to see them come through to the end. I think the character development, even of the aliens in this story, is one of it’s strong points. You want each character to do their part to support Admiral Somerville because you know he would have done their tasking if they weren’t available.
So now we find the Earth humans just about to the end of their empire. It was thought that if they were to ever defeat the Karacknids, the Earth would have to join together under one banner. That was done with then Empress of China Christine coming to the aid of Great Britain and the world in its time of great need. She, as the former daughter of the King of England, managed to convince enough of humanity for the need of a world government. She was subsequently chosen as the Human Empire’s first Empress and eventually came to marry James Somerville. Together they have managed to rally all of humanity’s forces under one banner and then found a huge galactic community that they became part of together all fighting off the Karacknid invasion.
But, the Karacknids are too numerous and have too vast an empire to fall to the Human Empire. There have a stalemate with the Alliance but once they have dealt with these pesky humans, everyone knows it’s just a matter of time before the Karacknid Empire will destroy them too. Then the Karacknids will rein supreme and their Imperator, who his people believe is a God, will surely enslave all humans and aliens alike for all time.
After their latest defeat, Emperor Somerville has made a bold proposal to his alien allies. He plans to gather an extremely large fleet of every species in this conflict and go directly for the heart of the Karacknid Empire. He plans to invade the Karacknid homeworld, Gayla, and capture the Karacknid Imperator and force him to sign a peace treaty. This plan is so bold that most believe it is a suicide effort that could result in the total destruction and enslavement of all aliens and humans in the galaxy. But, they also realize there is not other plan that even comes close to the audacity as this one. No one has ever even remotely breached the Karacknid borders and certainly not their home system. Could such a plan even be contemplated and if so, would there be anything left to actually threaten the Imperator in his own palace?
This plan also means that Earth and all of humanity will be left with only meager defenses and if the Karacknids realize how undefended human space will be, then they could drive directly to Earth and conquer everything the humans are fighting for. So, get ready for a very long and exciting read. This book covers a lot of territory. We even get to see how the Karacknids see this bold plan taking place and their reactions to it. Can the humans really win?
I guess to me, one of the biggest surprises of this book is that the author mentions there will be a book 14, “Burden of Command” is available on Amazon. Even more surprising is that books 15 & 16 in this series are also shown as available. I cannot begin to figure out what they will be about.