Fleet Lieutenant Esmay Suiza never wanted to become a hero. After a traumatic, war torn childhood and years of being plagued by nightmares, she is content to spend her years with the Fleet following orders and staying under the radar. Even after she finds herself the leader in a fierce battle against a treasonous captain, and the center of a subsequent military trial, Suiza wants nothing more than to return to the ranks.

Then she’s promoted and sent to the deep space repair ship Koskiusko. Suiza once again finds herself in the heart of danger. The Bloodhorde, a violent group of barbarian warriors, has made plans to sabotage her ship and clear the path for a full invasion. Suiza is thrust into command, leading the revolt against the invaders before a second wave of brutality threatens the lives of her fellow soldiers.

So what do you do in the fourth novel of a science fiction series to keep everything fresh? Well, if you’re Elizabeth Moon, you push aside the main characters from the first three books and write an exciting and thoughtful novel, focusing on a minor character who came to the rescue of Captain Serrano in the third book. 

The result was unexpected and splendid. Military SF that went well beyond an obsession with weapons, warships and space battles. It had all those things, but they took second place to the development of the main character, Esmay Suiza.

Esmay Suiza sees herself as an accidental hero; someone who was in the right place at the right time to do the right thing. Her peers and superiors are puzzled about why she hid her command abilities and chose to be in the technical track of the fleet. Esmay, the daughter of a senior military commander on her home planet, doesn’t think she is Command material. I enjoyed the slow reveal of both the trauma in Esmay’s past that has made her doubt herself, and her gradual personal reassessment. 

Esmay is an inversion of Captain Serrano. Serrano, who came from a Fleet family with multiple Admirals currently on active duty, found herself thrust into civilian life but unable to leave her Fleet instincts and expectations behind. Esmay abandoned the political, military and economic power of her prominent planet-bound family to be the first person from her planet to join the Fleet. 

I enjoyed watching her trying to fit in to an organisation that was oblivious to her background and which was struggling to understand her reluctance to be labelled as a leader. I liked that Elizabeth Moon took the time to make the contrasting cultures of Fleet and Esmay’s home planet real enough that I feel the pressure of their competing and conflicting demands on Esmay.

I was impressed by how fully Esmay’s ship, a huge mobile engineering facility that researches, builds and repairs fleet ships, was imagined. 

It took a while, but eventually bad things started to happen, and Esmay was once again thrust into the action. The violence of this section of the book surprised me. The Bloodhoarde lived up to their name and did terrible things. The body count was huge, and the action was intense. The conflict felt real and dispassionate at the same time, as Esmay and her colleagues focused on fighting rather than on the destruction both sides were dispensing. 

For me, this book revitalised the series and left me keen to find out what would happen next.