Into the Breach – Another great book in this series.

Into the Breach (Empire Rising, #15).
By D.J. Holmes.
My rating ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of 5 stars.

Once again, the Flex-aor have rained down nuclear holocaust on Humanity. Led by their escaped High Queen Ala’ron, their fleet poses a deadly threat to every Human colony. Lacking the ships to defend all their borders, the Imperial Fleet has no choice but to hunt down Ala’ron as quickly as possible. Tasked with this mission, Emilie and Georgia will find Ala’ron to be far more cunning than they realise.

Yet the High Queen is but the beginning of the problems coming Humanity’s way. Sent on what is supposed to be a safe exploration mission, Jonathan and Achilles will soon discover there are greater forces than even the Flex-aor arrayed against Humanity. Mysterious new adversaries with a wealth of intelligence on the Imperial Navy threaten the Empire right at the moment the Karacknid Civil War appears to be coming to an end.

Surrounded by enemies on three fronts, the Imperial Fleet and its commanders will be stretched to their breaking point and beyond. Only by charging into the breach and facing their enemy’s most powerful forces can there be any hope of winning out. Yet attempting such a decisive move will incur a cost in ships and blood the Empire cannot afford.

This is the 15^th book in the Empire Rising series and it is the third straight five star book in that series. At least for me but then maybe I am a bit biased since this series is my favorite type of reading.

Large empires slugging it out with massive fleets. Some twists and surprises, some preparations and build up, some sneaking around behind enemy lines and just the right amount of dialogue and “other stuff” to tie everything together into a nice story.

This book really has two story lines. The first one continues from the previous book and in this one the Empire tries to bring the Flex-aor problem to a conclusion. Given the nature of the Flex-aor and their High Queen this of course involves a lot of ships and things that go boom.

The other story line is more of a surprise one when the exploration mission makes some surprising discoveries. I cannot really write much about what really transpires without it being huge spoilers but I rather liked this twist. It helped of course that it involved more ships and more things that go boom.

Then there is kind of a third story line as well in that the Karachnids are still around but that one is just kept alive for now in this book so I do not really count it.

There is not really much I can say about the quality of the writing that I have not already said in my review of Empire’s Gambit and The Burden of Command, which are the two previous books in the series, so I will just say that it is more of the same on that front. Good military sci-fi with good action, good space mechanics (no fantasium, blastorium or other bullshit) and really likable characters.