Falcone Strike is Christopher Nuttall’s sequel to The Oncoming Storm (see my review here),
so we know that Kat Falcone survived the hair-raising climactic scenes in the
first book. A hero of the Commonwealth, her reward is to be given an impossible
mission: She must lead a flotilla of decrepit ships that are old enough to be
called antiques behind enemy lines, raiding as much of the enemy supply lines
as she can.
It takes so long to install modern parts on the ships, half
the crew get assigned to other missions. They get mismatched crew members—including
shore patrolmen, who used to get in fistfights with crew on leave. But Kat
still has Williams, her executive officer, whose long experience and steady
hand were so vital in their original adventure.
So, leading a flotilla that could be vaporized by one
broadside of an enemy dreadnought, Kat goes to do as much damage to the enemy
as possible, to make up for the shellacking they gave her Commonwealth.
Once again, Christopher Nuttall has delivered a fresh and
believable military science fiction novel. We are right there with Kat Falcone
as she has to grope her way through uncertain space. Her dilemmas are laid out
by realistic dialog, and although each decision has its pluses and minuses, we
can see her reasoning.
This is a hardened Kat compared to what she was like in the
first novel. If a civilian enemy ship is given the chance to surrender and it
powers up its engines, she destroys it.
William, her executive officer, uses his experience and
contacts to get in with raiders, which anyone else would find impossible to do,
to extract needed information from that disgusting group. And we get more
insight into the nature of the enemy, who are striking out from their home
planet of Ahura-Mazda—religious fanatics with whom there can be no compromise.
As with the first novel, Nuttall set us up for conflicts that
did not occur—no fistfights among the crew, no equipment failure at critical
moments. And he still italicizes words to show stress in the wrong part of a sentence, if you know what I mean.
But get The Oncoming
Storm, then Falcone Strike. If
you like science fiction and are not familiar with the military side, or vice
versa, these will be good reads.
