This reads very much like a low budget sci-fi tv show with a one season run. Our characters, though thought out, fail to chime in a memorable way. Our gritty marine with a revenge kick is never more than a gritty marine with a revenge kick and at the end of the book he has had no arc whatsoever. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it’s what you’re getting into. Lovers of hard sci-fi stay well clear as the technology is kindergarten level and full of magical pixie dust with very little thought put in. ‘Ships’ which freely traverse the vacuum of space that are equally at home at crushing oceanic depths, sonic weaponry which functions worse in water than in air while still working in the vacuum of space because it is integrated with a… particle beam. Stellar combat fought at the scale of a terrestrial naval engagement. Like I said, if you like hard sci-fi or respect physics, stay away. At times it feels like our antagonists, who are VASTLY better equipped, are extremely obliging in failing to thwart our protagonists to an extent that you can almost hear them invisibly shouting their frustration at the exhaustive plot armor of the protagonists. A fine listen for a background story but don’t get your hopes up that this will be taken as a masterpiece of sci-fi.