This book was better! The main character, Wayson Harris, is a 3-star General now in the Enlisted Man’s Empire but he doesn’t believe they can fight both the Earth Unified Authority (UA) and the alien attackers know as the Avatari. The Avatari have a terrible new weapon that you’ll have to read about.
Harris has finally gotten rid of Ava Gardner, thank goodness, and now starts acting more like a Marine General. He sees a need to save all the people of the colony worlds and does his best to rescue them. His final solution to a huge problem is to attack Earth. Here he starts sounding like a true commander and warrior who worries about sending his men into battle. It’s a terrible thing to have to send men into battle and even worse to see them die. Even Generals need to walk a fresh killing field to see how their men fought and died. War is such a wasteful thing. Some times authors gloss over soldiers and Marines deaths way too easily. Still, Harris, as a General, gets out in front way too often. A Commanding Officer doesn’t do his men very much good if he’s dead.
Harris and the author spent too much time trying to decide who would lead the Enlisted Man’s Navy! When the existing senior commanders of the EM Navy get blown up, Harris is the only real senior officer left. But, instead of just taking charge and ordering things to get done, he “appoints” a series of inept Admirals to bbe the Supreme Commander. Then he gets each one of them killed after they prove their stupidity. Harris knew they were incompetent befor he appointed them so why bother? He should have just taken charged and got things done. He eventually did that anyway when he ran out of Admirals!
This was a good read. The ending was a little weak because the author left it open for more books which I would read. Hopefully we’ll get to see them sometime soon.