One Decisive Victory

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.

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WHAT'S ONE DECISIVE VICTORY ABOUT?

After the calamitous events at the end of With Grimm Resolve, the Alliance Navy is raring to strike back, but the government has another plan. The last thing they want is another war—they're still torn over the last one, and they'll snatch any excuse to avoid the next.

Naval Intelligence's Admiral DeBeck can't believe this and can't stand it. He knows he can't do anything. But he has a plan that centers on Lt. Commander Jacob Grimm, but Grimm's going to have to be sacrificed for it to work.

The Caliphate has struck a massive blow to the Alliance and they need to respond or DeBeck (and most of the Navy) is convinced that they'll be emboldened to attack again and again—until it's too late for the Alliance to effectively defend itself.

So they're going to follow through on the plan to dismiss Grimm from the Navy when the Interceptor is taken out of service. Then Grimm is supposed to steal his former ship, head to Caliphate space, free a bunch of their slaves and wreak havoc on the planet that serves as the center of their slave trade. Then he'll come home and spend the rest of his life in military prison.

It's a plan so crazy that it just might work. Or it'll go down in history as one of the dumbest things humans have tried. If it's the latter, it's good that only a handful of people will know about it.

ITS PLACE IN THE SERIES

I talked about this with the last book, too, but I think I need to touch on it again.

So this is definitely the end of a trilogy—Haskell might have had an idea for a fourth book by this time, but it's clearly the end of something. Yes, there's a way for more stories to be told featuring at least some of these characters—I knew that had to be the case going in. But Haskell writes this in a way that you can't take for granted that anyone is going to survive this book. You can't guess how successful this mission is going to be until the closing pages.

This is a hallmark and a strength of the series so far—even coming to it when I did, with multiple books released/scheduled to be released, not knowing just how safe any character would be (arguably with the exception of the title character, but I don't know that you can count on that).

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT ONE DECISIVE VICTORY?

Ooh boy, this is about as action-packed as you can ask for. Not that the previous volumes were think-pieces. But One Decisive Victory is able to build on the work already done in establishing the world and doesn't need a whole lot of new work to set up this novel. Once that little work is done, the brakes come off and it's all action.

There's a lot of good character work in the middle of it all—I'd argue it's the best character work he's done in the series—but this is about things happening. Grimm and the Interceptor have their work cut out for them and we don't need to waste time with much else.

The novel was fast, the action was furious, and the story did exactly what you want. I was on the edge of my seat for almost the entire novel and I loved it. I did think the closing pages came close to being cheesy—but Haskell avoided it, and at this point, he's earned a bit of cheese anyway.

This was a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, and the fact it's become a longer-running series is nothing but a positive. Jump on board.