DNFing at 38%.

I haven't listened to this in at least a couple weeks now and have zero interest in getting back to it. The characters just aren't that compelling, not even the AI ships that were part of the reason I started reading this series in the first place. I'm not a fan of Ona Sudak, so her getting a bigger part isn't really doing anything for me, and now, in addition to Nod, there's a whole bunch of those little annoying "hands with eyes" aliens. The story has been moving forward at a snail's pace, and I just want to move on to something else.

A worthy sequel to the first novel in this series, Embers of War (which I reviewed here). In that book, the spaceship Trouble Dog stumbled across a vast armada of sleeping warships and gave them a mission: to prevent further wars on the scale of the Apocalypse War that had just ended. Here, the ramifications of that suggestion are seen: that armada (now known as the Fleet of Knives) decides that the only sure way to do this is to destroy all warships (including the Trouble Dog which had awakened it) and eliminate interstellar travel.

All the strengths of the first book remain strong here: the characterisation is excellent, with Nod the Druff (the Trouble Dog's engineer) getting some particularly awesome, wryly humorous POV chapters. Konstanz, Clay and Preston are back, picking up the pieces after the traumatic events of the first book. Ona Sudak returns, her past experience in the Apocalypse War making her uniquely qualified for service with the Fleet of Knives. And this time, we're introduced to the crew of Lucy's Ghost, “Lucky” Johnny Schultz & co., who attempt a salvage mission on a long-abandoned vessel originating from the alien Nymtoq civilisation… before an attack by interdimensional monsters, breaking through the fabric of reality, puts them into mortal strife.

Once again, if you're the kind of person who craves stories about deep space but is sick of the macho, characterisation-light approach that plagues much of the genre, this series is a must-read. There are so many wonderful character moments between the action and plot developments, and everyone feels believable and richly complicated in their inner lives. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in the next book. (Jun 2019) ( )

If you've read "Embers of War" (and if you haven't why are you reading this), while the climax of the book was a rousing moment you knew it had to be too good a development to be an unalloyed outcome. In this book one gets the blowback, as the Marble Fleet takes its mission of keeping the peace very seriously and very literally; to the point of seeing Humanity as incompetent charges who need to be repressed at all costs for its own good. Particularly since the enemy the fleet was created to fight seems to be making it's emergence. Besides the survivors from the first book there is another collection of characters in this installment, represented by Captain "Lucky" Johnny Schultz who takes his ship and crew on a freelance tomb-raiding expedition that's a major catalyst to plot developments. If you liked the first book you will also like this one, and this installment is certainly better than the first. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3366809.html

Fleet of Knives is the sequel to last year's winner, Embers of War, which I really enjoyed. There is a nice theme of the double identity of one of the protagonists, whose two roles are war criminal and dissident poet. In the end, though, MilSF isn't quite my thing ( )

A lot of not especially logical decisions, but (mostly) made by sentient technology left behind by an ancient alien race, so maybe forgivable.

This is clearly a setup for the next novel, which I will eagerly anticipate. ( )