Azula Carver – Good but far from the best in the series.

Azula Carver (A Galaxy unknown #10) by Thomas DePrima
My rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Throughout her career, Admiral Jenetta Carver had continually set aside her own interests for the good of the service as she worked tirelessly to bring peace to the Galactic Alliance. But the more she sacrificed, the more the people in power expected, and required, of her— without any apparent consideration for her personal happiness or work gratification. But when the Admiralty Board nominated her to be the next Admiral of the Fleet, and the Galactic Senate approved the appointment, all without first asking her if it was a role she was willing to take on, she decided she’d had enough.

I have been looking forward to the, the next instalment of the A Galaxy Unknown series, for quite a while and finally It came out. It is a good book without a doubt but I have to confess that I feel it is far from the best book in the series. Most of my gripes with this book is probably due to personal taste so please bear with me.

As the book blurb states Jenetta is thoroughly pissed off by the fact that the admiralty, in their usual ignorance, appointed her the admiral of the navy. This causes her to, unsurprisingly, react badly to say the least. Unfortunately this means that a lot of the story is spent on Jenetta’s personal life, in particular her life with the big “cats” that became part of her life quite a few instalments ago. This is a good piece of story and I did enjoy reading it but … it as just not what I expected or hoped for.

As I wrote, it is still a good story but it I whish that the story would have spent more time on the military aspects of the situation. I would say that a good half of the book, if not even more, is spent on Jenetta’s personal live and the “cats” which was not exactly my favourite type of story. Having said that it might not be a bad thing even though is was not too thrilled about those parts (which still might be due to the fact that I did not expect it). Given the interesting developments concerning said “cats” there might be some nice story elements coming in future books.

Another good chunk of the book is spent on the political and undercover machinations of Jenetta’s (as well as the alliance) enemies, as well as some people that should not have been her enemies, and unfortunately when politics and under the table deals comes into play stupidity and disastrous repercussions comes with it. Luckily disaster seems to have been averted…for now.

The book is not entirely devoid of action though and what is there is not bad. The chief bad guy comes back in a somewhat different shape to say the least and there are a bit of ship action as well. [Spoiler alert] Jenetta, unsurprisingly, also do decide to make the best of the situation in the end which means that she gets to project a bit of authority and power to people who are about to behave in a less than intelligent manner. I did quite like that part of the book.

To me this book is more of an interlude or a “stage setter” for things to come. In retrospect I should maybe not be so surprised of how the story played itself out in this book. After all it would probably be difficult for the author to just continue the existing story and keep it interesting without trying to introduce some new elements and I think this book is meant to do just that, prepare the path for the next book or (hopefully) books in plural.