Well, I have finally done it. I entirely missed a book in a series and didn’t even know it. Yes, I missed book 6, “Old Enemies” and didn’t realize it until I couldn’t find that title among my list of books reviewed. I don’t think I’ve ever consciously done that until now. Oh, well, what’s done is done and I’m not going back and reading book 6. I’m just losing my interest in these books.
Apparently, after book 6, everything has now been settled. All the known enemies have been defeated and the conglomerate of civilizations discovered via the stone portals are now gathering to form an Alliance. Dean Parker is on Haven with his Wife, Mary and new daughter, Jules, about ready to introduce a whole bunch of new “Gatekeepers”, to include Suma. She is a young Somali whose father was one of the original Gatekeepers. Samoa has studied and grown over the years and is now ready to take her place alongside Dean and the many other Gatekeepers.
Then several strange vessels are seen approaching Haven. It appears they are after another vessel that is just staying out of their reach. it doesn’t appear that this part of the story connects much to the rest of the book, other than it does give Dean access to some pretty valuable property. All the action going on over Haven is due to a lone criminal who has stolen something very valuable from Inlorians and they are after him to get it back. Dean manages to calm that situation down and invites the Inlorians to join the Alliance.
In the meantime, after he, Mary and Jules, had secreted away to their country home on Earth, Dean received a strange communication from his best friend, Magnus. It was very cryptic, but definitely indicated that Magnus and his crew were in serious trouble. Since Magnus and his wife, Natalia and two children, had helped rescue Mary from the Iskios, there was no way Dean was going to ignore a distress message from Magnus. He new Magnus had been given a ship and crew to do some exploring for the Keppe. This ship and crew were going to explore the very edge of known space. They must have run into something unexpected. Whatever it was, Dean was going to find his friend and get him back home.
So that’s what this book is all about. A rescue of sorts that turns out pretty simple when you finish reading the story. It does have some interesting side bits, like the part about “The Collector”, but even that story doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the main story. It seems like there were parts added to this book to keep it from becoming just a short story. Still, it was pretty good, but not really my kind of book. I also thing these characters are about done and everything that can be done has been. We’re a long way from the original story about humans being kidnapped from Earth. Nothing in several past books has had anything to do with that. So, for me this is probably the end. I mean, if I can skip a whole book and not even know it, I guess I didn’t miss much in any of these books.