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

Empire of the Black Sea: The Rise and Fall of the Mithridatic World by Dr. Duane W. Roller

 Empire of the Black Sea: The Rise and Fall of the Mithridatic World

By Dr. Duane W. Roller

There's not much about Dr. Duane W. Roller, the author of this book. He was born in the United States on October 7th, 1946, and graduated with a BA of Letters from the University of Oklahoma in 1966. He also got an MA in Latin from the same University in 1968. He then went to Harvard University where he obtained his Ph.D. in classical archaeology. Before I go forward, a quick note on what a BA of Letters is, because it's not a degree offered by most colleges or universities anymore. It's an interdisciplinary degree, meaning you have to pursue studies in multiple subjects, mostly History, Literature, and a variety of other courses depending on the student's interest (It’s basically a generalized degree in the Humanities).

After graduating he would take on a number of teaching positions, including work in India, Poland, Malta, and Austria where he received four Fulbright Awards. He also led or took part in archaeological digs in Turkey, Israel, Jordan, North Africa, and other locations. He later took a teaching position at Ohio State University, retiring and becoming Professor Emeritus of Classics in 2007. In 2008 he was granted the Karl-Franzens Distinguished Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Graz in Graz, Austria. On top of that, he's written over 200 articles and 14 books, the most well-known being a biography of Cleopatra released in 2010 and a look at ancient geography in 2015. Our current topic is his latest book.

Pontus was a kingdom founded during the fall of Alexander's empire, when his generals, surviving family members, and all manner of men and women fought over his empire, dividing it up between themselves (Because Alexander was an idiot manchild and basically told everyone that his empire would go to the strongest of them.  And left no clear lines of succession {I’m going to point out that the witnesses to that were the generals all of whom were trying to justify their claims to chunks of the empire. There are just as many claims that Alexander was delirious with a high fever and raving or that he couldn’t even speak in his last days.  So I would take that bit of lore with some salt.}) It was an incredibly dangerous time when alliances and fortunes shifted by the minute and a man could see himself a king one moment and a crippled beggar, if not a corpse, the next. Pontus was the name for the southern coast of the black sea, the northwestern part of modern day Turkey for the most part and like the entirety of the Greek and Persian world it was up for grabs. Because Alexander had utterly destroyed the old order but died before he could forge a new one.

It was a place with a long-standing connection to the Greek world. The Argonauts were said to have adventured there. Allies of Troy were said to have marshaled armies that marched into the Epics to battle Achilles, Ajax, Odysseus, and the legion of other Greek Heroes that besieged the doomed city. At one point the Greeks believed it to be the homeland of the Amazons. In the Iron Age, the Greeks colonized the coasts of the Pontic region, founding cities and engaging in trade, intermixing, and fighting with the native peoples. Then the Persians conquered the region, settling their own cities and fortresses there creating a diverse array of peoples that called the place home.

Dr. Roller makes it a point to discuss these people in the book, giving you a view of what the region was like before the establishment of the kingdom. He also gives us a good look at the economy, and geography of the region, painting a picture of a prosperous and intermixed region that was divided into feuding city-states, independent temple states, tribes, clans, and federations. Onto this scene came an adventurer fleeing the collapse of the Persian Empire, Mithridates I. He claimed descent from Persian kings like Darius the Great, suggesting that originally the dynasty was made up of Persians. He would, with the aid of an uncle who would be slain in the riotous violence of the time, build a fortress and later declare himself a king, founding a city called Amaseia.

From there Dr. Roller takes through an at times spotty historical record, as Pontus was a minor power at the northern edge of what was considered civilization by the emerging empires of the time. In fact, there are entire Kings and their lifetimes who simply don't show up in recorded history because no one considered them important enough to write about. Remember this is a time when everything has to be handwritten, including all copies and most of the population can't read. So there is much that simply wasn't written down and worse much that was lost because no one was available to copy it.

Despite this handicap, Dr. Roller does a truly great job of leading us through the early history of the kingdom of Pontus and the region of the eastern black sea. We are taken through what records are available and shown how each monarch used a combination of warfare, marriage, and diplomacy to play great powers off each other and dominate smaller ones. As well as battle it out with other emerging rivals. We also see the dynasty increasingly claim a Greek heritage, taking on the trappings of Alexander and working to establish connections between the monarchs and figures of note in Greek history while not letting go of their Persian roots. Which creates an enthralling Hellene-Persian identity.

This takes up half the book and is fascinating to me because it's a whole world that was never covered in any of my history courses and involves things and customs both familiar and strange. This includes the incredibly repulsive things like the sibling marriages that Pontus and Ptolemaic Egypt both engaged in and the strangely interesting scholarly bent of the kings and queens of these eastern Mediterranean states where many of the monarchs were known to have written widely acclaimed books on topics ranging from economics, warfare, botany, and medicine.

But from the west arises a new power, a juggernaut that will end this world order as surely as Alexander ended the last. I speak of course of Rome and the 2nd half of the book is very much tied to Rome's advances into the Hellenic world. The 2nd half of the book is also very closely focused on the most famous of the Pontic kings, Mithridates the VI. Also known as Mithridates the Great, the Poison King, father of empirical toxicology, Eupater Dionysos, and the man who was determined to succeed where Hannibal failed and not just stop Roman expansion but to destroy Rome and conquer it.

Dr. Rollins leads us through his 57-year-long reign, and if I can be honest is a bit of a killjoy when it comes to the myths and legends surrounding Mithridates VI. Which I'm not criticizing him for, as he's writing as a serious historian, not a storyteller. Dr. Rollins openly doubts in the text that Mithridates spent his entire childhood in fear of being assassinated by his guardians. Well, in any more fear than a royal of his time and culture, which still meant a healthy amount of fear. This is an era where parents slew children and siblings murdered each other for the throne regularly. Dr. Rollins does point out that Mithridates himself worked hard to create a mythology around himself and build himself up as a figure of legend and take on the mantles of Alexander, Cyprus, and other legendary kings and emperors. On top of this the Romans gleefully mythologized fallen enemies because they knew that you're only as hardcore as the people you've defeated. Because of this, he rightfully suggests that some skepticism is called for when looking at the approved stories that came down from us from yore.

Even sticking to only the cold hard verifiable facts still paints a vivid and compelling picture, of a King throwing everything he has against a vastly more powerful opponent and coming so much closer than anyone thought possible to victory. It would take Roman generals like Sulla and Pompey the Great to finally put an end to this King and even a young Julius Caesar would get in on the action. These wars not only cemented Roman control over Greece proper but would ensure Roman rule over Asia Minor. A rule that was so complete and deeply rooted that the Romans continued to rule Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean even after the fall of Rome itself and would carry the banner of that empire for almost another 1000 years. All things considered, this is a pivotal moment in western history if not world history and I think Dr. Rollins rose to the challenges of describing and leading us through it with aplomb.

Now I would suggest you read some other works first if you have no idea what happened after Alexander died or don't know the basics of the late Roman Republic. Because to save space Dr. Rollins doesn't wander off to discuss what's going on in Egypt or Iran or Italy, he stays laser-focused on Pontus. Considering this is what the book is about, I consider it a good thing. So I would suggest looking at books like “Dividing the Spoils” by Robin Waterfield to get a broader view of things before picking this book up. That said if you do have a good idea of what was going on in the eastern Mediterranean at the time, this book is great and I think would help fill in some blind spots as most histories aren't going to spend time with smaller nations like Pontus until they become relevant to the history of larger more dominant empires or kingdoms.

So with that in mind I am giving Empire of the Black Sea: The Rise and Fall of the Mithridatic World by Dr. Duane W. Roller an A, but warning you not to make this the first book you read about the post-Alexander world. As for this book to have the best effect you do need some prior knowledge and at least a basic grasp of the era. If you have though, this is a great read, as Dr. Rollins looks at not just the superstar king Mithridates VI but his entire dynasty and how they built the foundations for his ambitions and rise to power.

I hoped you enjoyed this review and the companion video that I’ll link to below.  If you did, consider joining the ever-wise patrons of this work for as little as a dollar a month where you can vote on upcoming content and discuss the reviews with others.  Next week, we turn back to science fiction and look at the last book in the Breach of Faith series by Mr. Stevens and Mr. Gibbs, the Iron Dice.  I hope to see you there until then take care of yourself, each other, and of course, Keep Reading.  Watch the video: https://youtu.be/9QP2svbBzn0 Join the ever-wise: https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Red text is your editor Dr. Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.