Trinity

Bara (The Lightship Chronicles series) delivers another rousing if conventional far-future tale, taking hard-drinking former Rim Confederacy Navy Capt. Jared Clement of the gunship Beauregard into a whopper of a galactic confrontation. A colorful prologue presents Clement’s doomed attempt to oppose the 5 Suns Alliance’s full-scale invasion of his Rim home worlds, aided by his executive officer and former lover, Elara DeVore. After Clement is betrayed by a member of his own crew, the Beauregard is destroyed and the war lost. Clement escapes and spends the next 11 years taking Rim-based pilot jobs and seeking comfort in Argyle Scotch—until he’s recruited for a dangerous, experimental faster-than-light mission by DeVore, now a 5 Suns Fleet Admiral with her own agenda. The promise of hitherto unknown habitable worlds—which could offer salvation to the starving, overpopulated Rim worlds—and the possibility of alien technological discoveries drive Clement’s rebirth as an idealistic military commander, leading to breathless Horatio Hornblower–type ship-to-ship action updated into a Star Trek–like environment. It’s occasionally overloaded with technicalities, but plenty of fun, derring-do, and even some tension-relieving fraternization will keep readers invested in Clement and crew. This is an entertaining escape from the here and now. [em](Oct.) [/em]