Terra and Imperium – Glynn Stewart

Politically and technically, Stewart’s Duchy-of-Terra galaxy has three layers. Earth is a new-comer to space. The ‘Arm’ polities have the resources of numerous systems, and have been in space for centuries. Earth was lucky (in retrospect) to be conquered by imperialists rather than slavers. The ‘Core’ polities have been in space for millennia. Luckily for the Arm, they have their own balance-of-power issues, and mostly leave the periphery to its own devices. In “Terra and Imperium” a McGuffin that everyone (including Core powers) wants is discovered on a human colony.

I’ve been enjoying the Duchy of Terra series. It mixes space opera with an awareness that sometimes life is complicated, the good guys can lose, and messy compromises happen.

It is hard to write military space opera that isn’t dishonest. The genre pushes the author to stage space battles in which the heroes are massively outgunned - but win anyhow. In “Terra and Imperium”, our plucky heroes are facing Core ships, and the balancing act becomes impossible. The Core ships have to do stupid things to keep the fighting from being one-sided.