A long, sprawling book with a half-dozen overlapping story lines and far too many characters (there’s a list at the end, and I recommend you bookmark it). Weber takes several hundred pages to get things started, but once the yarn finds its footing things get really interesting.
It helps to be familiar with the Harrington series before reading this story, but really it isn’t essential to do so; most of the characters are either new or had previously been minor players in the larger drama.
This short review was originally posted on a dabbler’s journal.