Sometimes I can lose track of a series because I’m reading other series in between. Ah, that didn’t make much sense! Well, what I meant was that I read the last book in this series back in Dec 2019 and just found that a lot more books in this series are already published. By more, I mean the series is already up to book 8! Yikes, I’ve got to get busy!
This is a great series even thought it has a definite British slant. And this particular book is very interesting if you’re a lawyer! Yes, instead of a lot of space travel and fighting, we find Captain James Somerville facing court-martial charges for, of all things, treason. Now, we do get to go through the entire mission with him and the HMS Endeavour. You’ll find that it appears he did indeed exceed his orders, but maybe not.
The HMS Endeavour is enroute back to Haven, one of the first Earth colonies established by humans from Earth almost 200 years ago. In the previous book, the HMS Endeavour found Haven and two other alien races. One of those races were attacking Haven and the other race. Captain Somerville and his ship stepped in and quickly stopped that fighting. So he’s become something of a hero to the Havenites.
On Haven, their 1st Councilor is not a nice guy. He wants nothing to do with Earth since he fells that whomever comes from Earth will want to rule Haven one way or another. Yet, he’s going about stopping that the wrong way. He tries to disguise one of his small fleets as Brazilians who attack one of the peaceful alien convoys. He believes that will stop all trade with Earth and the aliens, therefore, Earth won’t have any reason to mess with Haven.
A few things go wrong with his plan. The first thing involved Councilwoman Suzanna Rodriguez. She found out about 1st Councilors plan and proceeded to get off Haven to alert the British who just happened to be on Captain James Somerville. And that person was the second problem with the 1st Councilors plan. He didn’t anticipate Captain Somerville and his ship to be so dang efficient.
But this is all preliminary to the story. What really gets things going is when Captain Somerville and the Endeavour are ordered back to Haven to find out what the Indians are doing to that peaceful planet! It’s not good, but does this give James the grounds to do what he does and will that result in his court-marshal for treason? Interesting stuff!
Eight books in total so far and i’m just finishing book 3. Gotta’ get to reading some more.