Homecoming

The UFS Phoenix is finally homeward bound. On the way is Tuki Station, in barabo space, hit just now by a force of sard ships, working in concert with a larger invasion from alo space. An alo and deepynine fleet has attacked, and humanity's forces are in turmoil despite all of Phoenix's efforts over the past three years to prepare them.

Nia leads the assault, Styx's old AI queen nemesis from the Drysine/Deepynine War, the greatest armed conflict in Spiral history, twenty-five thousand years ago. But what does Nia seek? Is she after the drysine data-core, which Phoenix recovered nearly three years ago? Does she pursue members of the Debogande family visiting Hoffen Station, as a way to get at Phoenix's captain personally? And if she's making a full-scale attempt to remove humanity as a strategic threat, why do her battle plans look so odd?

Nia is the greatest synthetic military mind in history, save for Styx. Human Fleet desperately needs Styx's help, yet Supreme Commander Mazungu is terrified of ceding her, and Phoenix, too much power. And now Styx herself has competition, as Phoenix's shipboard AI Shali has just acquired a massive analysis program from reeh space, designed specifically to map Nia's mind, and beat her.

But can Nia be predicted, before it's all too late?

Reviews for Renegade: (Spiral Wars Book #1)

I thought this was going to be yet another cookie-cutter space opera, boy was I wrong! This was fantastic.

...it hits the sweet spot between hard-science and imaginary scifi science. The hard science is very hard, from the perils of centrifugal spin-gravity in combat spacecraft to the destructive potential of ultra-fast kinetic energy weapons. The scifi science is made-up, but it has the key properties which all-too-often are missing: Internal Self-Consistency and Attention To Unintended Consequences. This makes the scifi science semi-hard as well...

...The characters are memorable and engaging...

...I have read this series out to book #6. It just keeps getting better and better. Buy these books.

Winchell D Chung
Founder, Atomic Rockets Website
http://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
Amazon Review, September 25, 2019.

"Joel Shepherd is one of the most dynamic science fiction writers working in the field today. Each of his books blends pulse-pounding action with mind-blowng concepts and a deep understanding of the complications of the human heart. He is one of our very best." Lou Anders, author of Frostborn and Hugo-award winning editor.