 |
Force of Arms | Rating | |
| A | |||
| Jack McKinney | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Robotech: First Generation | Genesis, Battle Cry, Homecoming, Battlehymn, Force of Arms, Doomsday, Southern Cross, Metal Fire, The Final Nightmare, Invid Invasion, Metamorphosis, Symphony of Light, The Devil's Hand, Dark Powers, Death Dance, World Killers, Rubicon, The End of the Circle | ||
Breetai's command has been badly undermined by artifacts and tales of human culture that smuggled in by spies and since then passed around in a kind of cult. And those same spies, among others, have actually defected over to humanity! Captain Gloval sees this as the opening for peace talks, and Breetai isn't at all sure it's such a bad idea. But the Zentraedi Commander in Chief Dolza wants humanity obliterated, and the Earth Council plans to fire off their Grand Cannon to show the aliens that they are bargaining from a position of strength.
The conflict is interesting. It is not alien versus humanity here so much as peace versus war. Will the Council listen to reason, or will they fire off their megaweapon and royally piss off the Zentraedi? Will Dolza be subverted by humanity as much of Breetai's fleet was, or will Earth be razed to keep the contamination from spreading? How can the SDF-1 possibly hold out against five million alien starships? Thanks to these questions it is one of the better, less predictable books in the series.
The details of war in space are, as usual, vaguely described. David Weber this is not. But the battles are still interesting, and there are plenty of interesting events on the political side to keep the pace going. The monumental climactic battle with Dolza is just plain fun to read.
If there was a downside to this book, it's that it has a section after that battle that would have been better served as part of the next book. Still, this is a lot of fun, and definitely a high point in the series.
| By Title | By Author | By Rank |