The Courage of the Commonwealth

Perseverance Andrews, Book 2

By: John Spearman

Narrated by: Alex Picard

2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards Science Fiction Finalist

For how long can you play from behind before hope fades away?

From the opening attack of the conflict, the Royal Navy of the Inter-Planetary Commonwealth has been outnumbered. Unlike their enemies, who had been preparing for this war for years, the Commonwealth was caught flat-footed. Given enough time, the economic strength of the Commonwealth should prevail, but their enemies attack relentlessly. The Royal Navy hopes not for victory but for survival. Hampered by the near-complete failure of their intelligence agencies, time and again they are pushed to the very brink. Innovative approaches and the heroic sacrifices of ships and crews prevent disaster. Every time it seems as though the Royal Navy might be able to reach parity, the aggression of their enemies pushes the goal out of reach. The daunting cost of men and material keeps climbing. Yet, in the midst of this savage conflict, the relationship between Perseverance and Saint John Powell deepens.

Just as the Royal Navy introduces a technological wrinkle that gives them a much-needed advantage, their enemies introduce a new type of warship. Bigger and more heavily armed than any vessels before, these battleships have the potential to blast through the Commonwealth's defenses. It will take every bit of the Royal Navy's (and Perseverance's) grit and ingenuity to stave off defeat. Just when the Royal Navy thinks it has weathered the storm, another tempest brews. Saint John Powell is standing in the way of an enemy force twice his strength. The best he and his people can do is slow the enemy and cause as much damage as possible before they themselves are destroyed. How many times can you cheat death before the odds catch up to you?

©2023 John Spearman (P)2023 Podium Audio

Still Flawed, Still Fun

3.5 stars

The second book in the series addresses some of the flaws in the first book while maintaining most of its strengths.

The characters are stronger and more sympathetic, though there are still only a very few who are more than background cutouts. And this time, there's no extended and unnecessary prolog to delay the start of the story.

The plot is again good, though I think the economy of the Commonwealth doesn't make a great deal of strength. If you start off below parity, have a higher build rate, and have a positive loss ratio in almost all the battles, things should start to get easier, not harder. Also, while I do like the focus on the main characters not getting a free pass through the dangers of battle, there comes a point where their survival seems really unlikely.

The technology has some interesting bits, and some of the innovations on both sides seem sensible, but again, the more detail the author provides, the less anything makes sense. As a salient example, the missile guidance hacks that much of the story depends are are the kinds of things that were mostly figured out more than 50 years ago. It's not reasonable that any navy in the far future would have missiles that are as stupid as these.

Also, after the first few dozen times people are lost to explosive decompression or blast effects, it seems like somebody might figure out that these can be substantially mitigated by reducing the air pressure in ships. Heck, even in the 18th century, on wooden warships, there was a concept of clearing for action.

All that said, if you take the technology presented by the author at face value, the resulting battles are solid and interesting. And the feel of military culture is very well handled. I actually might have enjoyed this book more than the first book in the series, but I was willing to give that book more grace, as it was establishing an environment and story. This book gets less grace, because the lessons of the first book weren't learned.

But it was still fun to read.

The War continues

l have enjoyed listening to this book, where once again the Commonwealth is fighting again a Russian and Chinese pack. against the odds they are still holding on, but can they start to turn it around.