Readers of the series will be happy to see the return of its heroes, Rob Geary and Marine Mele Darcy, who will once again be in the thick of things. And, of course, even with a little Ninja underfoot and another little ninja on the way, Rob's wife Ninja will do whatever she can to hack systems to get Rob any advantage that she can. Meanwhile, Carmen works to mop up the last bit of resistance in Kosatka, but now that the city of Ani might actually get to become something other than a war zone, the red tape of bureaucracy begins to rear its ugly head and forces in a newly formed central intelligence agency which moves to bench Carmen and get her to conform to the party line, but Carmen fears that controlling the message will cause important intelligence to be swept under the carpet resulting in prolonging the war, rather than wrapping up quickly. She will have to go toe-to-toe and be quick-witted to come out on top, as the fighting goes from a firefight against the enemies to a political one within her own government.
Meanwhile, on the way to Earth to acquire some ships, our diplomats attempt to find allies in neighboring systems and to find some common grounds to overcome the inherent distrust borne of colonies who formed specifically to escape external oversight, control, and regulation. They'll need to not only communicate with each other, rather than remaining isolationists, but to look past their differences and actually put themselves on the line in order to form even a fledgling of a workable alliance that could hope to protect its members.
Jack Campbell's The Genesis Fleet series presents an interesting take on space travel and faster-than-light travel. They have a FTL type mode of travel, but it can only be used at certain points with strong gravity wells. The rest of the travel through ordinary space occurs at fast speeds compared to our current technology, but aside from some inertia dampening, has to conform to everyday physics from the real world, meaning that traveling from a jump point to a planet or a nearby jump point to jump elsewhere can take days or weeks, if the distance is long. Also, maneuverability in the cold, dark void of space is not like you see in Star Wars, with ships behaving as if they were fighter planes in an atmosphere, but are more akin to naval battles. The approach is interesting, feels genuine, and leads to some gripping, tense battles.
If you haven't read any of The Genesis Fleet yet, then definitely start at the beginning with Vanguard. If you've been reading the series, however, then you probably only need to know that Triumphant is available. Well, it is and I highly recommend it.
