This is the 11th book in the foreigner series. The writing continues to be superb, the story engaging, and the plot involved. This volume finds Bren at his home on the coast with the dowager and her grandson in residence. Things quickly head south as the neighboring estate had been infiltrated by agents from the Marid and now Bren needs to track down who is actually plotting against who to avoid an all out war. I don’t like to give too many story points away in these short summaries, so I’ll avoid the exact ending but the story doesn’t conclude as much as it just ends. It’s rare to read an 11th book and find it as engaging and as hard to put down as the 1st. I can’t wait for number 12 and hopefully 13,14, and 15.

Although enjoyable, this volume wasn’t as enthralling as the previous editions. The pacing was very slow and few if any story revelations occurred. The one semi-twist was telegraphed early and often, but wasn’t revealed until the last paragraphs. I’m sure the series will continue and my hope is that it can return to its roots. This book didn’t even have a medical mystery.

Things I noticed about this book:

#1 - It now says NY Times Best Selling Author at the top of the cover. Apparently his last book Relentless sold enough copies to make the list so congrats! It’s very well deserved as these books are thoroughly enjoyable.

#2 - They dropped the whole book 6 of 6, with this volume. in further research and directly from the authors website, we have the following news:

“I have contracts for two follow-on series. One will be called The Lost Fleet - Beyond the frontier. These will continue to follow Black Jack and his companions as they deal with events following VICTORIOUS. The other series (The Phoenix Stars) is set in a formerly Syndic star system as the people there cope with the ongoing collapse of the Syndicate worlds.”

Unfortunately, however there is no release date information on either series.

#3 - This book wraps up the story lines form the previous 5 books pretty well. Alliance beats the Syndics and Alliance meets the aliens.