For the most part I enjoyed the novel. I like the fact that most of TravisTaylor books take place in the course of 24 to 48 hours it makes the writing tight and tense. Taylor was to able make me care what happens to the characters. There are is a good balance between strong male and female characters. The fact that Taylor does this while writing a story about galaxy conquering space aliens speaks well about this novel. The novel is able to stand on its own despite being the fifth book in the TauCeti Agenda series. It would be helpful to have read the prior four books in the series none the less it is not necessary to have read them in order to enjoy this story. I was not happy with Taylor's tendency to assume the reader knows military jargon. A sentence such as "The CHENG spoke to the STO and the XO about AO while CDC gave input. " did not endear me to the book. To add insult to injury Taylor mixes Marine , Navy, Air Force and his unique to the story military jargon in the same sentence. Using Google to look up the terms at times was no help. The series needs a website to help the those who have no familiarity with his jargon to go to for explanations and definitions of terms. The lack of it made me lower my rating of the book. Looking beyond this weakness , this book and the series will give the reader many hours of reading pleasure. It is an action series and does not make any attempt at social or political commentary beyond usual pro military stance common to the military science fiction genre. While I would not purchase this book, I would encourage readers to get their libraries to purchase the series. It is good solid adventure military science fiction writing . ( )