I’ve not been a real fan of this series although as you can see I do continue to read the books. Over time the main character, Owen Shaw, now a Commodore, has improved. He used to make some pretty dumb mistakes as a new Captain of a starship stuck in a sector of space with no way home. Shaw has a history that has brought some criticism of his character. After all, most Executive Officers rarely, if ever relieve their Commanding Officer of duty. But Shaw now has done this twice!
Now he’s commanding a small flotilla of Space Guard starships who have become stranded in the Obsidian Sector. The warp gate that they were supposed to use to get home and get resupplied, broke and can’t be repaired by those remaining in the sector. You all should already know this and the fact that Shaw did have to take command of the *Resolute* when its Captain was found to be completely incompetent to deal with a sudden attack. She died in that encounter which helped matters a great deal.
While there were other Captains commanding smaller ships in the flotilla, Shaw, now as the Captain of the largest ship became the de facto leader of the flotilla. Of course this didn’t go over peacefully since one of the Captains felt very strongly that he should become the leader. That led to some dangerous internal actions that almost saw the end of Shaw and some of his crew. This is where he made a lot of mistakes that cost people’s lives.
Things have now calmed down some. Shaw was self-promoted to Commodore since all the other Captains felt that what he should be if he’s going to be telling them what to do. He’s also found out that the Obsidian Sector has some serious problems that threaten his existence as well as that of a lot of civilians in the sector. There is a pirate problem and also a possible confrontation wth the Pendragon Empire. The pirates have been kidnapping colony citizens and selling them into slavery to the Pendragon Empire. That Empire and the Confederation had recently signed a peace treaty which resulted in an uncomfortable relationship between the two civilizations. Word was now getting around that a new young Emperor was sitting on the Pendragon throne and he was a very young and ruthless boy. He is the one that has restarted the slave trading after the Pendragon Empire had renounced this terrible practice.
So, Commodore Owen Shaw sees it as his duty to stop this slave trading by using any means possible. He has had some of his own people captured by the pirates, but they managed to free themselves with some extraordinary efforts. They brought back the knowledge of just where the slave operations are being conducted and that has become Commodore Shaw’s next official target.
But, Shaw doesn’t have enough personnel to successfully get this job done. He needs more ground troops and possibly more ships. Could the Army base on the planet Obsidian provide additional troops? As for ships, Shaw now considered something he would never, ever consider as a reasonable thing, but he had noticed that a Pendragon ship that the *Resolute* had met in the deeps of the Neutral Zone had not engaged his ships even though they knew he had already engaged other Pendragon ships while fighting against the pirates. Could these Pendragon ships be part of a possible rebellion against their young Emperor?
That last idea was worked on when it almost solved itself. The *Resolute* was contacted by the Pendragon ship, *Majestic*, and they were actually asking for his help. They needed to capture another Pendragon ship carrying some very important cargo and asked if Commodore Shaw would support this mission. So, can Shaw actually help his once-deadly enemies and will they reciprocate the support? Lots of questions to be answered. Things get very interesting very quickly.
This is definitely not the end of this series. No book 6, “Operation Daedalus”, is now available on Amazon. It does appear to be the last book though.
[Note 1 (12/23/2025): I’m no longer associated with Amazon and will no longer provide any links to books from that website. You can usually find books that you like at your usual source.]
[Note 2: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be posted on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. ]