The Iron Dice (Breach of Faith book 7) by Gary Stevens and Daniel Gibbs

 The Iron Dice (Breach of Faith book 7)

by Gary Stevens and Daniel Gibbs

I've already gone into depth on Mr. Stevens and Mr. Gibbs in this review series at length, so I'm honestly gonna point you to the double hand full of reviews on other works in this universe. That said I will go ahead and repeat the disclaimer, I know Mr. Stevens. He's been a good friend and supporter of this review series for years. I'm also proud to consider him a personal friend. That said, all my remarks are my honest personal opinion, take that as you will (Same goes for me of course.).

The Iron Dice is the last book in the Breach of Faith series(For which the author is grateful.), set in the universe created by Daniel Gibbs. I won't spend too much time discussing the universe at large because I've already done so repeatedly, I'll just tell you to go ahead and check out other reviews that I've done on those books and there will be links at the end of this review. This book picks up the plot directly from the last book in the series Fortune's Favor and I'll go from there.

The Jalm'tar, an alien race that worships the concept of fickle fortune running the universe, had their plot to conquer the Independent Systems Federation through addiction to the powerful pain killer known as Curall fail. So they've decided they'll simply resort to brute military force (That tracks for Imperialist Scum.). After all the ISF doesn't have much of a fleet being a newly created weak confederation of worlds. Meanwhile, the Terran Coalition is still reeling from its decades-long war with the League of Sol, as are the alien races such as the Saurians. Because of that, their fleet is bigger and their worlds are untouched by war. The biggest issue is that the Jalm'tar didn't want to embark on a plan with so much risk, as the humans and their allies have shown themselves willing to go to in their eyes psychotic lengths to avoid being conquered.

Admiral James Henry of the ISF navy knows that his still small and frankly ramshackle fleet made up of a half dozen shiny new cruisers, former pirate flotillas, and planetary defense forces aren't gonna be able to win such a war. So he embraces a new plan, where he will attempt to prevent the war from happening at all by backing a rival to the current emperor of the Jalm'tar when he attempts to seize the throne and thus avert hostilities (Or so he hopes, the way these things go.). That rival is a prince of the blood and the actual son of the last emperor who lost the throne to his power-hungry uncle (This is why the Ottomans…. Ottomaned.). The prince was banished to a comfortable if boring exile on a frontier planet far from the centers of power in the empire but remains under heavy guard. On top of that anyone who wants to get to him has to go through the empire, as the frontier planet in question is on an edge of the empire that doesn't border human space.

So Admiral Henry needs a group of skilled, determined people capable of taking a spacecraft on a long journey through enemy space, landing on an enemy planet, and extracting someone likely under fire and keeping them alive. This group will then have to smuggle this person to the enemy's capital planet and into the palace of the Emperor! This is something that entire nations would devote millions of dollars worth of resources for training and equipment to pull off. Admiral Henry has the crew of the Venture Star, a group of independent civilian spacers with a single civilian ship.

However, the crew has already survived missions that would kill experienced special forces units or spies. Plus they're led by Captain Miriam Gaon, one of the best spies that the Terran Coalition ever trained. In addition, they have a pair of Jalm'tar defectors who have enough information to give them a shot of not only pulling this off but living to brag about it later. On top of that, the Prince still has supporters in the nobility so if he can get close enough to the palace before being discovered and then announce his challenge, the Emperor will have no choice but to accept. How will this contest for the throne of an incredibly powerful empire be decided? Literal rolls of the iron dice, as in dice made from actual iron. That's right the Jalm'tar will decide who rules billions of sapient beings through a series of dice rolls (What the actual fuck?  No way in hell.  I call bullshit on that society functioning. {It doesn’t seem any more insane than doing it through hereditary means.  That said only people with the right ancestry get to even try to roll, you can’t just walk in off the street}}). Whoever has the highest cumulative score after about 3 rolls... Wins everything. There's a lot to unpack here so I'm going to discuss it in the companion video.

Mr. Stevens does a good job of letting us explore the alien mindset of the Jalm'tar by letting us interact with them as individuals, who in many cases have common beliefs and a worldview but express them all in different ways. This is usually done in discussion with other characters in the story, letting us not just explore the Jalm'tar but the human and allied aliens in the setting as well. The book does a good job of expanding on characters like Piper, the 1st mate who has to make her peace with her active role in events and the weight of command. Janet, a survivor of League occupation and the student/mentor relationship she develops with Stephan the withdrawn Russian navigator who shows a truly inspiring level of patience and understanding with her. While also teaching her how to pilot and navigate the ship.

While the book does suffer the usual problem of Mr. Stevens's work of having so many characters that it's difficult at best to give each one the time and page count to really grow. Mr. Stevens does make a valiant attempt and at the very least keeps any of the characters from turning into cardboard cutouts with only 1 or 2 vague character traits. He also continues giving us a widely varied cast to work with of different faiths (or lack of), races, backgrounds, and species, among other things. He also manages to avoid turning the varied cast into feeling like something assembled from a list to give an appearance of diversity. Instead, you get a cast of people from different cultures, planets, and backgrounds who live and work together and sometimes engage in thrilling heroics for a common cause and it works well and feels real.

Mr. Stevens also puts an effort in to keep our heroes from winning too easily and ensuring that the victories they do win, while meaningful, come at a price. He also avoids wandering into misery porn but makes it clear what the full weight of that price is as well. We see this not just in the main storyline but in the character arc of Mei Ling Lou, who was serving as a Captain in the Federation Navy but during this and the last book finds herself weighing the cost of her service. Not just the risk to herself but how it affects her children.

I'm not a parent, but even I know how difficult it can be to serve miles and miles away from your spouse and children. It's a strain that many families break under and never recover from. There are also plenty of families who can make it work but even then that comes at a cost to the person serving and to their loved ones. A cost in missed moments, doubts, and fears that can never really be completely exorcized for good, and the knowledge that you could lose the loved one serving at any moment and there's nothing you can do about it. It's a hard row to hoe and even wealth and privilege don't make it any easier. Mei Ling is forced to confront that and make a final decision on where her priorities and loyalties lie and the thing is there is no real right answer here.

For some people being there for their children and spouse is going to be more important and they're not wrong to choose that. For others, service for something they believe to be important and greater than themselves and overrides individual concerns and I'm not going to say that's wrong either (Though I will say, if you have that mindset, maaaaybe don’t inflict that on someone else unless that person goes into it eyes wide open.  And even then, maybe try not to have kids.  Just my two cents.). After all, our society couldn't function without people making that choice. Not just in the context of military service but consider the demands we put on medical professionals, firefighters, teachers, and the legion of other professions and services that keep society grinding forward through the efforts of good men and women doing hard and often personally painful work. (Yes.  But our society also expects too much of such people. They shouldn’t have to make that choice in the first place because their pay and working hours should be sane.)

This is the last book in the series as far as I am aware and Mr. Stevens does a good job of bringing the character arcs to a close or at least to a satisfactory stopping point. As far as conclusions go, I feel this is a pretty good one. We have seen these characters grow, change and become stronger and better people, even if they've collected injuries and wounds along the way. This is one of Mr. Steven's greatest strengths, his ability to move characters through a believable path of growth and advancement while keeping a plot moving with a good amount of action and intrigue going. That said I wouldn't call the book perfect as I mentioned before the cast still feels a bit too large and because of that some arcs do suffer. Not everyone feels like they're at a good stopping point for their character arc honestly. 

Additionally, there was a political plot where the Federation, the Coalition, and other powers came together to discuss alliances. I honestly feel that the antagonists were not handled as adroitly as they could have been... It's not as heavy-handed as the League was for example but could have been done better. For that matter, the Jalm'tar Emperor was a bit of a miss as a villain for me but he was more than made up for by the other Jalm'tar characters. Because of that, I'm giving The Iron Dice by Gary Stevens and Daniel Gibbs a B+. The action is good as is the intrigue and most of the faults are easy to breeze by. Keep in mind though if you start at this book you'll be hopelessly lost so you'll need to start at the beginning of the series.

I hope you enjoyed this review.  If you did consider joining the patron at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads for as little as a dollar a month.  Where through polls and discussion you have a voice in what future content gets made.  Next month we’ll be examining Minority Report as part of Dick Month, a tradition that has been supported by a majority patron vote. Patrons also receive bonus content!  Either way, thank you for reading and I hope you join us next week, until then take care of yourselves, each other, and of course, Keep Reading! 

Red text is your editor, Dr. Allen Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders Companion Video: https://youtu.be/iJJ3I73Fvs0 Prior Reviews in this universe: http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2020/05/echoes-of-war-fight-good-fight-by.html http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2021/12/echoes-of-war-strong-and-courageous-by.html http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2022/01/so-fight-i-echoes-of-war-book-iii-by.html http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2021/03/breach-of-duty-by-daniel-gibbs-and-gary.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2020/09/breach-of-faith-book-ii-by-daniel-gibbs.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2020/08/breach-of-peace-by-daniel-gibbs-and.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2022/03/breach-of-trust-by-gary-t-stevens-and.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2022/10/spacers-luck-breach-of-faith-book-5-by_21.html

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2022/12/fortunes-favor-breach-of-faith-book-6.html