I just finished reading The Path of Duty by Eric Thompson, book two of his Sibohan Dunmoore series.
This book did not go how I expected it would. Which was great, I like being surprised, but it did sort of seem that long stretches of it were taken up with nothing much happening that was relevant to the plot. There was a lot of “Well, that’s sinister and mysterious” and not a huge amount of payoff.
That said, I do still like this series. I just think I’m going to like the rest of the series more than I liked this book, because while this one was a little underwhelming it did set up a lot of things that are clearly going to be more important later on. I’m eager to get into them.
In the meantime, Thompson continues his habit of having amazingly well-crafted villains with understandable motivations, and very few characters who are out-and-out sleazeballs meant only to be hated. Everyone in this novel is morally gray to some extent, and I’m still really enjoying all the flawed, naturalistic characters. For a military sci-fi series the space combat seems to be almost secondary to the interplay of military and political personalities, and I’m finding that to be a very refreshing model.