Desperate Fire (Angel in The Whirlwind, #4) by Christopher Nuttall
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Very good
As the Commonwealth produces more starships and increases recruits, victory begins to slip from Theocratic control. This can only make the Theocracy more desperate to win…and more dangerous to fight.
After a mission to liberate an occupied planet ends in nuclear devastation, Kat Falcone—now a commodore in command of HMS Queen Elizabeth—sees firsthand just how far the enemy will go. Suddenly dealing with the war effort and a humanitarian crisis, many in the Commonwealth want a truce. Kat wants something else: to crush the Theocracy outright—and quickly.
Kat devises Operation Hammer, an all-out assault on the enemy home planet, Ahura Mazda. It is a bold and risky plan, but the enemy has revealed there can be no middle ground. Can Kat break the galactic stalemate and deal a death blow to the Theocracy? As two empires prepare to fight the largest space battle in history, Kat must trust her instincts to save her people and avoid oblivion.
This is the fourth and final book in the Angel in The Whirlwind series. Every good thing has to come to an end. Well it is the final book in the current story arc at least and given how much Kat has advanced in ranks the last two books I think it would be difficult for the author to write any more books where it is all about Kat.
As can be deduced from the book blurb the religious fanatics (hmm, these guys remind me about someone…) are about to get their arses kicked so they of course do what religious fanatics always does. Throws more things that go boom around themselves and kill more people and it really matters very little whether the people killed are the enemy or their own. Luckily Kat & Co is not a “lead from behind” person so the response is not exactly what the religious dickwads was expecting.
Actually I was a bit worried from the blurb that there would be a lot of political bullshit about whether to accept peace etc. etc. blabla and so on but luckily this was not the case.
Kat is back, of course, and so are most of her friends. However, due to the responsibilities heaped onto her, she is not really the main character she was in most of the previous book. I kind of miss the old Kat that was the Captain of a single ship and had a hands on role in most operations.
The books is as excellently written as the previous ones. Great characters, good action and just the right amount of “glue” tying the various bits and pieces together. From a technical point of view this book is just as good as the other ones in the series.
So I guess you are wondering why I gave this book one star less? Well, this is really due to reasons of personal taste. I missed a bit that Kat was no longer the centerpiece in the same way as before. There was also quite some time spent on the humanitarian crisis after the religious fuckfaces (trust me, they deserve that epitet) screwed everything upp. Yes, this was quite realistic, well written and I am sure that a lot of people liked those parts. Me personally…not so much. Finally I felt that I, or rather Kat I guess, was being robbed from the joy of giving the religious fanatics the ass whopping they deserved by some tragic events in the final chapters of the book.
So the final verdict is that this is a book that is at least as good as the rest of the books in the series but one that I, due to personal taste, was a little less thrilled about than the other books in the series. I did still find it a very good book though.
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