This is an excellent book! One of many in this series by Ralph Kern. If you’ve read any of the previous books, you know that Mr. Kern has a knack for recreating 20th Century history in the far, far future. He’s able to take our historical battles and put them in space and in many cases proves that we don’t learn from our history; we just repeat it over and over.
In this book, we’re introduced to some interesting changes from the battles conducted in the 1940s. Once striking difference is that women play a much larger role in these future battles and that might be true of the far, far future. Women are just as capable of men and in some cases show faster reflexes than men which would do them well in future space fighters. Lieutenant Shannon Reeve is one character you’ll get to know very well in this book and she has shown up in previous books if you remember the name. She obviously had a career change and she’s going to play a major role in this book.
On the Imperial side of the war, we actually find a female by the rank and name of Admiral Eyaki. She will definitely play a major role in the history to come in this book. There are other females within the Imperial Naval organization and that would be shocking were it still built like the Rising Sun empire of the 1940s. But, as with the Federation Navy, these women all serve with distinction and fulfill their roles just as capably as men. I am a known male chauvinist that doesn’t particularly like female leading characters, but this book shows them doing their jobs just as good as men or maybe the writing was just very good!
There is a lot of character details in this book which makes it so good. You’ll meet Admiral Joseph Strand and his second in command, Admiral Gabriel Lester. These two can talk war strategy all day long with the on only ones understanding a lot of what they are saying, would be those two. They have a lot of history which serves the Federation well. Unfortunately, Admiral Strand has a health problem. Admiral Lester finally makes Admiral Stand acknowledge that he would be too preoccupied with this nagging health problem and not giving his all to managing a critical naval engagement. Lester’s concern for his boss only gets him designated as the Task Force Commander and all the responsibilities that come with the job. But, these two aren’t that much different, just in style of command. They are very capable at what they do and it’s fortunate for the Federation to have these two people and a lot of others in the right place and at the right time.
I don’t know how authors keep track of space battles. I find it amazing just trying to read what they write and follow along. There are a lot of battles in this book which again makes it so good, but dang if I could follow along with everything that was happening. One thing that does bother me is this idea that starships including starship fighters have to worry about refueling? I would have thought that the future would have some time of antimatter drives, warp-drives or flux capacitors or something that would be filled once and then run for centuries. Even today’s aircraft carriers are all nuclear powered and don’t require refueling. And I noticed that most of the ordnance used by the heavy bombers seems to be single torpedoes, but what happened to missiles and missile racks? Some things in these books are very modern and others seemed to not have advanced much at all.
The warfare that is the basis of this book took place over many, many months and years and it’s kind of hard to show that in a single book. This one covers several key battles that shaped the war and actually determined its eventual outcome. While it sounds like these battles took place one right after another, that’s not what happened and thank goodness it didn’t. Most fighter pilots would go crazy if they had to go back into battle months and months on end. Even going from one battle to the next is darn near impossible. I do not know how some of these starship/fighters could fly right through all the ordinance thrown at them without getting blown to dust right at the start! It takes an amazing amount of courage to do something like that, but our people had it in WWII and so do the pilots in these books.
Ok, so I’ll end this review by saying that I really, really like the story. My friend, Ralph Kern, also made it a much more amazing book by including my name for one of his characters! He’s done that before and I’m extremely pleased for him to do that. I was also shocked when I read it this time, but now I know my name will live much longer than I will and that’s a good feeling.
I hope we see more books in this series, but I think this is the end. If you haven’t read the other five books, I highly recommend you do so now.
==[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. ]==