Book Review: With Grimm Resolve by Jeffery H. Haskell

WITH GRIMM RESOLVE is the second volume of GRIMM'S WAR by Jeffrey Haskell. It is a military science fiction series that I very much enjoy. The premise is that in the future there is a conflict between the Caliphate, the Union, and several other nations that have an uneasy detente that is about to be shattered.

Jacob Grimm is the kind of awesome Captain Christopher Pike-esque gung-ho commander who is possessed of a sensitive, moral, and caring side. He was horribly defamed when the Caliphate sent a bunch of ships filled with children to attack his crew and ended up being the scapegoat (or one of them) when he blew the ships up. Whether he would have acted differently if he'd known about the tyke bombs is anyone's guess, but he refused to resign.

Well, due to the events of the first book, he's unfortunately become a massive hero and embarrassed the military by doing his job correctly. He's also dealt a black eye to the Terraformers Guild as his actions have led to exposing them as having engaged in a lot of criminal activity under the table. The Guild reacts to this in the stupidest way possible by seeking to inflict revenge on the Union by providing advanced technology to the Caliphate. This is, unsurprisingly, an incredibly stupid idea.

I'm not going to spoil things but it's not hard to figure out that a bunch of pragmatic bean counters and corporate stooges are going to have a fundamentally different view on how the world works from a group of fanatical theocratic fascists that practice, I kid you not, slavery. That plotline is more interesting to me than Grimm trying to investigate the Guild and determine what they've been up to in the dark regions of space.

The Grimm's War books have a strong appeal to those who love military science fiction where the captain is wise, the crew is determined to do the best job they can, and the enemies are awful. It has a lot of Jack Campbell’s LOST FLEET energy, though Grimm has the opposite problem of Blackjack Gerry who suffers from unwanted fame. I don't think there's any characters other than Nadia, Grimm's spy love interest, who stand out as much as the protagonist but that's not this kind of book. They're both good enough to carry the story.

I very much enjoyed this book even if a lot of it is set up for the ensuing conflict in the third book. The Terraformers Guild is not as interesting an enemy as the Caliphate or its pirates but nicely sets up how corporate interests can become entwined in international politics. Or interstellar in this respect. I think it was a bit too action-focused, though, because I would have appreciated giving more chance to get into Grimm as well as Nadia's heads.

The ending was a huge cliffhanger, and I can't wait to pick up the third book. It invokes real life events without liberally borrowing from them.