Disgraced Lieutenant Jacob Grimm of the space navy (is that what you call it?) is picked as a “disposable” officer who can be assigned to the derelict USS Interceptor in a remote and volatile system, in the hopes that he screws up enough to trigger a diplomatic incident that leads to a military rearmament. Jacob, of course, turns out to be a strong and moral officer who is able to whip the Interceptor back into shape and uncover a deep conspiracy. If that all sounds a bit generic to you, that’s because it is.
This first book in the series feels like a very run-of-the-mill military space opera. The good guys are basically the USA; the bad guys are fairly unambiguously Islamic fundamentalists and slavers; Jacob is a generic white-guy military commander who always knows how to motivate his crew; the battles feel like the space battles in every other sci-fi series.
It’s not a bad book per se, and it’s even somewhat entertaining while you’re reading it, but there’s nothing unique or memorable here. In fact, I’m writing this review just a couple weeks after finishing the book, and I can barely remember a single plot detail. I may give the second book in this series a try, as the series gets unusually high reviews, but so far, it doesn’t hold a candle to other military space operas such as The Lost Fleet, Expeditionary Force, or The Expanse.
