Where the first book in this series probably had some of the very obvious problems that this book has, they may not have been as noticeable as that book was shorter. Mr. Wehr, as I noted before has a problem with scale and timing in regards to the dynamics of Piper's Universe and continues those problems as well here.

What truly sabotages this book is the foregone conclusion of Space Warfare in his version of Piper's Universe. That is a disservice to what Piper gave us and the characters we learned to be enamored of. After you have read a little of this you will understand what the ratio of 1.3 to 1 means in Wehr Engineer Centric representation of what was Swashbuckling in Space.

Piper gave us Space Viking as the prequel to Empire in his Terro-Future histories. The time period following this novel was to be the birth of Empire and here Wehr begins to set that stage as well, but he gets lost in his constant calculations of how many ships which equals how many anti-ship missiles, which can be stopped by how many counter missiles, and should you not have enough ships at the outset all is lost.

It takes the suspense and fun out of telling the story and just leaves you reading a great many numbers when there is a battle scene. The story disappears and only ideas and concepts an engineer likes to throw around prevail. Character development goes out the door. The politics of empire become secondary. It is all cut and dried and because of the one dimension of the good guys and bad guys, without enough variability amongst other nations, you are either Axis or Allies and their are no Switzerlands any longer.

I think the writing is on the wall for this follow on to Piper and Wehr just did not cut it to create a piece that will be reread once, unlike the dozen times I have reread the original. ( )