The Forgotten Empire Books 7 & 8.
By Julie Thomas.
My rating ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of 5 stars.
Blurb from book seven:
Can the Humans defeat the evil races of the Confederation? The once seven great races of the Confederation have now fell to three. Will it continue to fracture?
Far from Earth and the Human Empire, the Human fleets continue to fight against an enemy that vows to destroy them. The Confederation continues to fracture, and the Humans add more alien races to their growing list of allies. Will the Morag discover the plot to destroy their home planet of Morag Prime?
Earth Admiral Collison and his fleets continue to destroy targets in the Confederation. The Morag has many surprises awaiting the Human fleet. Will the Humans prevail?
Can the Morag come up with a plan to defeat the Humans? Morag Councilor Addonis ventures to Falton Two to meet the emperor to seek his help.
The Earth fleet leaves the Solar System to head to the Human Empire. Is it enough ships to destroy the enemy?
Sadly this series did not end well. I say end because book eight concludes the story arc that we have been following in these eight books. It is unclear to me if there will be further books starting a new story arc hinted at in book eight. The first book in this series was indeed a five star book for me and the series has continued strong with mostly four star books. However, these last two books was somewhat disappointing. Unfortunately the reason for this is even more sad.
The series was started by Raymond Weil. I have read a great many books from this author and generally liked them a lot. When I read these two books I started to wonder if the author had gotten tired of the series but when I read the afterword I realized that Raymond Weil has, sadly, passed away and it is now his daughter Julie Thomas Weil that have continued the series.
I am of course sure that she is doing her best to continue her fathers legacy but, unfortunately, she is clearly not as experienced as her father in story creation.
Book number seven is really one long dragged out prelude to book eight. It is just one engagement after another without any real story telling in between. I do want lots of fleet action in my books but in this book it became repetitive to say the least.
Book eight continues this trend although there is a bit more variety to the story and some real build up to the final showdown with the Morags which, unfortunately, became just “okayish” really.
Then in the last chapter the author pulls a “plot twist” a’la Hollywood TV-show script writer (and that is not a good thing) and basically just throws in a new surprise enemy to replace the Morags and simply resets some things. Rinse and repeat.
I do not know if there are any real plans to continue this series (the author claims so) but I think she should work on story creation with some other story of her own first. I’m not saying that I will not pick up another book in the series, I would really like Julie to become as good as her father and will thus support her efforts, but these two books were a wee bit disappointing.
PG's Ramblings 