I’m a big fan of Military SF, unfortunately, not all MilSF is actually good. This book felt like a retelling of the events of a rather uninspired Traveller RPG campaign.
The world the characters inhabit isn’t bad, with multiple competing political entities, but I suspect this series was something of a sequel, and most of the complexities seem to have been explained in whatever came before.
The plot of this book was a bit of a mess, with the protagonists being repeatedly captured and rescued, and the major MacGuffin being handed to them without any particular reason. In addition, the book features a severely overpowered group of “Synthmechs” acting as an unearned Deus ex Machina.
The characters are flat, and their dialogues and internal monologues are deeply unconvincing. At no point did I even begin to care about their success or even survival.
The conclusion is clearly intended to introduce the next book in the series, but I do not expect to continue this series even though I liked the first book much more than this one and I’ve liked other Dalzelle books. Not recommended.