Breach of Duty
By Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens
The Breach novels are a side series set in the wider science fiction universe of the Echoes of War universe by Daniel Gibbs. I've discussed both authors at length, Mr. Gibbs in our review of Fight the Good Fight and Mr. Stevens in our Breach of Peace review. That said I will repeat our disclaimer. I know Mr. Stevens, I read his work when he was “just” a fan fiction writer toiling for recognition of his peers in various science fiction forums (Full disclosure: I’ve co-authored some of that fanfiction.). He's actually one of our ever-wise patrons and even sent me a copy of this book for free. I tell you, my readers, all of this because I always want to be upfront and honest about anything that might be related to the reviews. That said, I’ve told Mr. Stevens when I don't like his work, I've told when I thought it was awful, directly. So I have no problems writing down that he wrote a bad book if it comes down to it and I promise you that everything in this review is my honest opinion. That said let me start by going over the premise of the universe.
A long long time ago on a faraway planet named Earth, a bunch of people decided that the only solution to our problems was a single party, one-world government with a command economy that declared itself socialist (With you so far…). This group of people really felt that all legitimacy (Um…{Yeah… You’re gonna need a drink or two for this bro}) needed to be channeled to the Party which would run the State on behalf of the Workers (That’s not how…). Without the need for pesky elections or other overt ways for the Workers to make their opinions known of course (Oh God Damn It! Strawman communism.) To do that everyone would have to submerge their identities into a single set of approved human socialist identities(Yeah, this is revisionist garbage. This is like, Communism As Portrayed By The John Birch Society.). Which logically meant that other forms of self-identities would have to go. To translate that, they banned religion, nationalism (Clarification here. Communism and Nationalism do not mix. They are antithetical. However, that doesn’t mean that a sense of yourselves as a people is antithetical to communism, but a sense of national Chauvinism. Sublimating national and cultural identities is reactionary revisionism.). that and I assume many other ways of creating a group identity, although not languages for some reason which seems like a no-brainer to me. You want everyone on the same team? Make them all speak the same language, the languages we speak are a basic building block in how we see ourselves. Trust me as an Anthropologist and Adult Child of Deaf Parents, language is a powerful glue to hold a group together and transmit customs, the deaf community did it for over a century despite overwhelming pressure not to for example but I'm getting off-topic. As you might imagine large groups of people on Earth didn't want to give up their beliefs about themselves or their place in the world and they fought back. When that failed, thanks to the work of some geniuses, they fled. They somehow built a massive fleet (With what logistics, I do not understand…) and ran across the galaxy clear into another galactic arm and founded their own worlds with churches, monarchies, and in some cases blackjack and hookers.
Now, most of these people build the Terran Coalition, a federated republic of worlds that are democratic, capitalists, and very religious in certain ways (Ah, Space NATO. Of course. {The Coalition is a nation-state, not an alliance}). Other groups decided they would rather not be a part of that and started their own colonies becoming what are collectively called the neutral worlds (Good for them!). For centuries the Coalition built and expanded and sometimes fought aliens while the neutral worlds did the same but everything changed when the League of Sol attacked. Because those people who believed in a single-party state? They won and built something that basically looks like a USSR on evil steroids, scrubbed clean of any nuance, and ready to conquer you and your nation and herd you into a camp for reeducation (<Screams in actual communist>). Especially those of you who are the wrong type of socialist of course
Now in the last two books, our main characters provoked the ever-lasting ire of the League of Sol by busting an attempt to conquer neutral worlds on the sly using stolen ships and some rather over-complicated but compelling political maneuvers. Our main characters are the crew of the Shadow Wolf, working for Captain James Henry, a former officer of the Coalition Navy who was wrongly convicted of a crime he didn't commit and dishonorably discharged to protect the reputations of powerful and corrupt men and officers (Well that’s on point…). Now Captain Henry is returning home but not for revenge or justice. Captain Henry is returning home to say goodbye. Because his uncle Charlie, the part-owner of the Shadow Wolf who gave him a new lease on life, is dying and even in the far future some things simply cannot be cured or endured. So the good Captain returns to his homeland, where members of his own family hold him in disgust, to say goodbye before it's too late. However, those powerful men won't consider such a human motive to Captain Henry's actions. Part of that is because with his recent actions Captain Henry has made powerful new friends within and outside the Coalition. There's also the fact that with the collapse of the League of Sol's ability to wage war in local space, political parties who would prefer a negotiated peace instead of invading another galactic arm after nearly thirty years of fighting within spitting distance of their homes may win power. The cherry on top is that several of Captain Henry's old officers never believed the cover up and have never stopped digging. With one of them about to become a general, the cover-up days may be numbered and there is much buried under that cover-up. Not that Captain Henry cares about any of this, he's just desperate to say goodbye to a man who was a second father to him and helped him survive the darkest part of his life.
However, the men who stole his entire life aren't even going to leave him this much, because they can't afford to. Driven by their own loss and grief from the war, these men, who have committed many sins in the name of final victory, will commit one more and in doing so drive Captain Henry and his crew into a final confrontation with his past for all the marbles. Ironically, their very refusal to practice some degree of mercy and humanity is what forges their opposition (Massive assholes like that usually create their own enemies, yes.). An opposition that is needed, because what's at stake here isn't just some people’s wealth and power or even Captain Henry's freedom or life, but possibly the very existence of both the Terran Coalition and the League of Sol. Because underneath all of this, is hiding something very dark and very ugly that could lead to the death of hundreds of billions, if not trillions. Captain Henry and his crew, who already have to spend way too much time dodging League assets and League paid bounty hunters, now have to dodge the Coalition law enforcement and navy while trying to find a way to link up with their allies, find Captain Henry's old officers - who are also now hunted fugitives or prisoners - and expose the secrets that are driving these actions that could destroy them all. Desperate action will be taken, old secrets revealed and everything put on the line to prevent madness and butchery from running wild.
While there's plenty of action and skulduggery in this book, the core of this book is about loss and grief. Captain Henry has returned to his home not to fight but to mourn and grieve. Our antagonists are primarily motivated by their own loss and grief and their inability to properly mourn their loss driving them over the edge. That motivation is hovering in the background of most of the minor characters as well. We see it in Captain Henry's old officers who are motivated not just by a need for justice but a sense of loss in that while Captain Henry is still alive, they have lost the man they served with. We also see it echoed in Captain Henry's crew as many of them can't go home again. The Saurian Yanik provides a great reinforcement to this when he shares his story of refusing military service because he believed that his government wasn't just wrong but actively perverting the very beliefs it was built on and he could not be a part of that. While Yanik remains a stoic and somewhat hard-to-read character, it's clear that he mourns the loss of his home and life every day. The newest crew member, and young Muslim Samina, also helps along this theme by talking about how her family lost their homes, how she lost her parents, and her fears of losing her own second-father someday. Captain Henry's best friend and crew member Felix reinforces it as his standing with Captain Henry causes a divide between him and his Father that will likely never be healed. There's also Tia, the socialist rebel (Yas Comrade!) who lost her homeworld when her revolution was betrayed by the League of Sol to the Megacorporations who run her world of Hestia (Marx’s Beard. They’re Dengists. That’s right, come at me, revisionist garbage! {I find it more comparable to how the Soviets promised tanks for gold, took the Republican Spanish gold reserve, and immediately started laughing about how easy it was} I am unfamiliar with that incident, to be honest.). It's here that the theme falls down though and it's mainly because of Tia's actions and how she treats the people around her. My biggest problem is that Tia spends a good chunk of the book putting herself in a position of judgment over the people around her and I end up wanting to smack her in the mouth. For example, yes it's dangerous that the CDF is hero-worshiped by the population of the Terran Coalition, at the same time this is a military that has fought a 30-year war, pretty much the whole time on its home soil, and maintained its role as subordinate to civilian rule. On top of that, the military has managed to mostly stay out of politics and prevent any danger of the Coalition turning fascist. Additionally, they are the one group of people keeping billions from being herded into “re-education” camps where most of them will never leave. Frankly, some hero-worship is perfectly reasonable here, and for her to sneer about how militaries are more tools of oppression comes across as an inability to read the damn situation for what it is and an inability to empathize with anyone who isn't a socialist. (Having not read the book yet, I cannot really offer a comment because my reaction is gonna depend on the nuance of what exactly she said and under what context. Keep in mind though, that at this point, she is being hunted by agents of that same military. {Actually, she starts with this before Captain Henry is even arrested. This makes her sound incredibly insensitive to the situation that the billions of regular people in the Coalition are living with} So yes, they do good things, but she might feel a bit… put off by the hero-worship of people who are trying to kill her. {The military only started chasing her because she led her crew in an armed intervention to break Captain Henry out of custody, which was very much the right decision and I applaud it actually but at that point, it’s kind like… What do you expect their reaction to be? Hugs and kisses?} Fair.) Her treatment of Felix in the book doesn't help and her high-handedness given that if she was in the same situation she'd likely do the same thing Felix did, was galling, to say the least. I really enjoyed her character in the last two books but in this one? I kept asking where the fuck she thought she had the right?
Tia's behavior isn't gonna bother everyone though but it's a major glaring problem for me. On top of that there is still the problem of there just not being enough space to explore Captain Henry's crew in full, so a number of characters who are constantly hinted at being really interesting end up shoved into the background (This is an issue with the Huge Ensemble Casts Mr. Stevens likes to do, generally.). Which I find aggravating, that said I did find the villains of this book more interesting and compelling than the last one but I won't really get into them because that would be a massive spoiler. Instead, I'll encourage y'all to read the book and tell me what you think. As for myself, I could not put this book down, I mean it literally as I went through it all in a single sitting. If you're looking for a series that has interesting, colorful characters in strange places, risking things for high stakes, then this is for you. This is also a book that is willing to embrace the idea that even if you win, you will still suffer loss and pain and need to grieve and mourn those losses, and some things once broken cannot be rebuilt and some ties once severed cannot be reforged. Breach of Duty by Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens gets an A-.
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Read Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
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