And we’re onto book four in the series, Starship: Rebel. The scope of the ship’s mission keeps increasing. I expect them to be fighting for galactic domination if there was a book six. As always with this series, the writing is good, the plot is decent and the characters are flat. But, we march onward. Let’s see what happens.

Captain Cole is too good of a mercenary (as he changed his ship’s activities to last book). They have beaten almost every enemy within the Inner Frontier (that they’ve been paid to defeat at least). The only obstacle left is the pirate known as The Octopus. And since his fleet outnumbers Cole’s fleet by a significant margin, Cole’s happy to just let things be and that means some rest and recreation for his team. But, when the Republic crashes their party, Cole realizes that something must be done.

And by something, that means pushing the Republic out of the Inner Frontier (where they go to “recruit” and sometimes steal things they need). He starts his fleet off slowly at first. If they find single, smaller Republic ships in the Inner Frontier, they overwhelm them and destroy them. A fortuitous rescue ends up bringing The Octopus onto their side and they also meet up with some rebellious Republic citizens. But when the Republic realizes that something is up and sends a large fleet toward Singapore Station, Cole is left wondering if he bit off more than he could chew.

As I mentioned above, the book is well written with a decent plot and a whole bunch of flat characters. With knowledge of the plot, you can easily determine what each character will do and how they’ll act. There are no surprises and no changes in the characters. Cole realizes that after four years of avoiding the Republic, he can’t ignore them anymore. He doesn’t want to take over the Republic (yet), he just wants them out of the Inner Frontier. It’s an enjoyable enough book that I’ll finish the series, but it’s still only mildly recommended.

This post is part of the thread: Starship – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.