Book: In the Stormy Red Sky

David Drake has, as expected, written another enjoyable far future action story with lots of military detail featuring Lt. Daniel Leary and Officer Adele Mundy along with a cast of varying characters.

As this book begins, Daniel is promoted to Captain and sent on what should be a fairly simple mission as a sort of shakedown cruise. But things are not as they appear, which is quite usual, and Daniel is not willing to leave them as they are, and thus begins an adventure. There’s an annoying Senator, who nonetheless ends up being quite helpful. Adele and Tovera get more personality development in this one as well.

Daniel’s scope is much greater as a Captain with a cruiser as his command, but as you might expect, this just means the enemies are bigger and nastier. He still must deal with situations that are proportionally as much greater as his resources have increased.

Many series deteriorate over time. I think David Drake has nicely avoided the problem of escalation. This is another Daniel Leary story, not something even more ridiculously difficult than the last one. One can generally predict what Daniel will do, at least in outline, but that’s the nature of this sort of series. If he ceased to be Daniel Leary, what good would the series be?

I continue to strongly recommend this entire series.