book review - AGAINST ALL ODDS by Jeffrey H. Haskell
AGAINST ALL ODDS by Jeffrey H. Haskell is a fantastic military science fiction novel that manages to stand above all the others in its genre. I have read a large amount of space opera and military science fiction over the years, especially indie, and only a small number stand up above the rest. I was really impressed by this volume and have gone on to preorder the next two books in the series, not even waiting for their Kindle Unlimited release.
The premise is that in the distant future, mankind has settled numerous star systems and created a large galactic community of feuding states. Jacob Grimm is a naval officer for one of these and ends up permanently tarring himself with the mantle, "The Butcher of Pascal." This is an unfair charge but one that the Navy very much wishes he would resign over. Refusing to do so because it would dishonor his family legally, Jacob resigns himself to being eventually cashiered out after a set number of years.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, Jacob is the perfect disposable pawn for a plot by the Navy to restore its lost prestige. Sending him out to the edge of civilized space, he's given a poor ship and demoralized crew. It is the hope of the Navy to spark an incident that will result in a conflict that allows them to rebuild their forces. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, Jacob does too good of a job and exposes just how corrupt things have gotten.
I won't get into any more of the plot, but I found it to be quite entertaining from beginning to end. Jacob is a very likable protagonist and a calm, sober, professional in a sea of incompetent idiots in the genre. He also has a supporting cast that is very well-developed, each of them having a reason for getting dumped on his starship in the middle of nowhere.
Despite how much I liked Jacob Grimm himself, I enjoyed the characters more. People who are slightly more flawed and dealing with their own significant problems. The Fleet Admiral is willing to start an interstellar incident in order to save the Navy, but she's not wrong it may save millions of lives in the process. I also was very fond of Nadia, a tramp freighter captain who gets caught up in some truly repellent circumstances beyond her control.
The enemy states are familiar ones with the Caliphate of Hamid being a reactionary misogynist fundamentalist society and the Iron Empire being a neo-Russian expansionist dictatorship. It's basically Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in Space. I was pleased the author included non-Caliphate Muslims who aren't nearly the complete bastards that the rest of the country are depicted as. I was also interested in the character of Daisy, a Caliphate spy with very mixed feelings about her job, who I hope will show up in later books.
Jeffrey Haskell has an excellent grasp of action and there's several standout scenes. I will warn readers that the bad guys are human traffickers and there's one (offscreen) sexual assault that plays a role in the book. Still, I strongly recommend the book and will be picking up the sequels that are now available for preorder.
Link: https://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Odds-Military-Sci-Fi-ebook/dp/B09MZLQSXY