For Death or Freedom by Daniel Arenson

 

For Death or Freedom by Daniel Arenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Here we are with the fourth book in the series as we follow the continuing adventures of the Starship Freedom and her crew in the wake of humanities first contact with an alien race. The Rah invasion fleet had been chased from the solar system leaving incredible devastation in its wake. However the aliens continue to raid the planets, moon, settlements and ships thanks to the ability to use the "portals" their method of FTL propulsion. Thankfully reverse engineering Rah ships has allowed humanity to partially emulate the portal technology in a very crude fashion and with hints that there is a race out there who defeated the Rah's the Starship Freedom along with a few support vessels jumps a thousand light years to the Aeolia system in search of help but find that the Rah's have been busy and all the skill and luck will be required if any of them are to return home.
For Death of Freedom once again delivered some good quality space opera, new ships/crews were most welcome and the expansion of the "theatre" to include new star systems opens up the story to an almost limitless extent. Looking forward to the fifth book.

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Fallout by Craig Alanson

 

Fallout by Craig Alanson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Always a delight to get a new novel in the Expeditionary Force series, there is no such thing as too much Joe and Skippy although times have changed and as the narrative has grown and become more complex the "fun" of the earlier novels has been tempered with consequences and issues for the characters. That is not to say I didn't totally enjoy this addition to the series as the Earth and the Merry Band of Pirates realise far too late that the Senior Species have thousands of years of experience in manipulating "lesser" races and a deal that even allows humanity to survive may simply not be on the table. Things get even more complex for Joe and Skippy when pressure from all sides has resulted in counting the costs of what at the time seemed sensible risks to take but when faced with a force that seems to be wiping out Maxohlx and Rindhalu fleets all bets are off and no risk is too great not only to save humanity but perhaps the entire galactic population.
As always love Craig's take on AI weaponry and the Jeraptha are an inspired race so looking forward to the next novel in the series due later in the year.

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