Battlecruiser Alamo: The Price of Admiralty
Richard Tongue
Quick View: A whirlwind of an adventure and the start of one of my favorite Space Opera series.
Publisher’s summary: Battlecruiser Alamo, under its new commander, Lieutenant-Captain Daniel Marshall, is launched with a half-trained but fully-resentful crew on a desperate mission that will determine the fate of the nascent Triplanetary Space Fleet, hunting down the unknown enemies that have been attacking shipping in the uncharted system, Lalande 21185. When he makes an unexpected discovery, the stakes just keep on rising; with enemies on space and ground, can Marshall save his ship – and a world?
The state of mankind at this time is one of post war peace, with the outposts of Mars, Titan, and Castillo having recently won freedom from the dictatorship that is the United Nations of Earth.
If you don’t know (I had to look it up myself,) Titan is a moon of Saturn, and Castillo is a moon of Jupiter.
Captain Marshall doesn’t get many breaks as the book starts, and he and his ship are quickly dispatched to investigate some missing freighters in another star system on a mission described as being make or break for the new fleet.
As the story unfolded I found myself coming to like many of the characters including Captain Danny and his old wing woman and best friend Deadeye, the rebel without a cause and civilian shuttle pilot Maggie, the Espatier (aka Maine Corps) Ensign Esposito, the cool headed Mulenga, and the engineering wizard Quinn.
And if you find you like them too, the good news is you can follow most of them through an additional fourteen adventures of action, exploration, space battles, and intrigue when you finish this first book in the series.
As far as the book as a whole, I did find the political situation between Earth and her former colonies quite interesting, along with some of the technologies.
For instance, in this universe faster than light travel results in a strange by product: Once a ship completes a jump through “hendecaspace,” it can’t jump again for a full week.
This limitation is apparently to avoid something called “dimensional instability,” although I don’t think what that is is ever explained.
That means once you get where you’re going, you’re pretty much stuck there for awhile. No jump in, take a look, and jump away like is possible in so many other books.
As far as the plot is concerned, to me it seemed like a wild ride of ups and downs with a very satisfying finish.
So if you’re looking for new Space Opera series, I can highly recommend the Battlecruiser Alamo with it’s like-able characters who over the course of the series seem to grow substantially more than characters in most other series.
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