Sword of Mars (Starship’s Mage, #7).
By Glynn Stewart.
My rating ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of 5 stars.
A defector with a dangerous lead
A chance to speak for the silent
A perilous quest into enemy starsWhen the star system of Legatus was preparing to secede from the Protectorate of the Mage-King of Mars, it was the secret agents of the Legatan Military Intelligence Directorate that laid the groundwork and fought the covert war to make it happen.
Now, as the open conflict draws to a bloody stalemate, LMID has been broken. Their leader is dead, murdered by agents of the Republic they helped birth. Their surviving agents have scattered, following a final protocol that orders them to defect to the Protectorate.
An old friend brings all of this to Damien Montgomery, First Hand of the Mage-King, and begs for his help in unravelling the mystery. The only answers lie where the Hands of Mars should never go: on the worlds of the Republic.
Another good book in the Starship’s Mage series.
This book has two threads going at the same time. Not my favorite way of writing but it works pretty well in this book.
One is the Mars fleet under Mage-Admiral Jane Alexander and her assistant Mage-Lieutenant Roslyn Chambers striking back at the Republic and trying to blockade the Republic ship building infrastructure. This is of course my favorite thread since it involves a lot of fleet action. I really liked this part.
Apart from the cool space battles this part also contains a lot of character development for Roslyn CHambers and it is of course no surprise that she will most likely play a rather central part as the story continues in future books.
The second thread is Damien sneaking around in Republic space with this defector and his dangerous lead. This is not my favorite kind of story but it is pretty good anyway. It also brings about a twist, which for once I did not see coming, and which plays an important role once the two threads converge towards the end of the book.
All in all a very good book that has a lot of things to like, at least as far as I am concerned, in it.
The one thing I did not like with this book, as well as with the previous books, is this rubbish twist that the author introduced some time ago where Damien gets wounded and now does not have his full powers. I especially do not like that the author keeps harping about it all the time and then constantly claims that the healing will take a long time.
Just get it over with and get Damien back into full power. Damien being a bad-ass was one of the things that I really liked with earlier books. This unnecessary dragged out crippling of Damien is the major contributor to me not giving this book a five star rating.
PG's Ramblings 