We're more than a week from being able to discuss Episode 15, but we can certainly speculate about it now that the cover art and book summary have been released on Amazon.
First, the cover art. We can speculate from the presence of several Jung warships in orbit of the planet being bombarded that the Jung are responsible for the nuclear explosions depicted on the planet's surface. I doubt the Alliance would use it's captured Jung warships to launch an assault on a planet like that. I'm inclined to believe that it's the Jung bombarding occupied planets before withdrawing to deny the use of those planets to the Alliance and to burden the Alliance with the moral and ethical obligation to assist the survivors, placing a drain on the Alliance resources and diverting their attention from attacking the Jung.
Second, the book summary. The summary describes "political unrest". Does that mean on Earth? On Tau Ceti perhaps? Or could it mean the unrest already happening in the Pentaurus Cluster?
I think its safe to say that the Jung ships are responsible for those mushroom clouds... its unlikely that an alliance world set off Nukes to prevent the Jung from Occupying it... Although I will not rule out a non Alliance world doing that!!!
So speculation idea. So as of now they have Gravity plates on the ships to stave off floating around. What if they figured out a way to use grav plates to increase the gravity of the JKKV missles? So they can increase the kinetic output when they hit the battleships...
We can look at some 'loose ends' to see how they might progress:
1. Ship production line on Tannus, so there should be either:
a. Squadron action, perhaps to defend their world
b. Massive jump recon to find a pressure point for the Jung, to make them WANT to negotiate a truce
c. Combination of a and b: they nuke Tannus, and then the crews go rogue and lay waste to the Jung
2. The mysterious Captain
a. Has an important piece of knowledge that has to be delivered at a critical time
b. The nuked world is actually a Jung world that is showing plague
c. A combo of the two--a counter-plague that effects the Jung nanites
3. Pentaurus cluster in chaos
a. Nobles can't take the high price of imports, joins with 'pirate' forces to put puppet governments in place
b. Corinaire uses new SuperTalon design
c. The Karuzai modify some more missiles to make jumpships (note: they could take out cruisers prior to ZPG power)
d. Combination of all three makes a new alliance, but Tankara may still be in Noble hands. See Episodes 16-30...
4. The G-men have no replacements, will have to consider ethics of 'recruiting' or 'reproduction'. They do have philosophy and customs, so they are certainly thinking about this.
Enough for now, this will be fun!
Hamsterman
I don't think anyone wants to negotiate with the Jung except to negotiate their surrender. If the Alliance negotiates peace with the Jung it will be a short peace just long enough for the Jung to build their own jump drive and equip their ships.
While we know (or think we know) what the Jung standing orders are, what we don't know is what the actual goals and strategies are for the Jung leadership. With fast comm-drones, it is getting close to the time that orders from "Central Command" will be arriving for the Jung. Reuniting 'known space' may have been a goal as long as it could be done on 'autopilot', so to speak. It may not be so important that every system has to be destroyed in order to achieve it.
Consider the title is kind of the Ghatazhak motto (That which other men cannot do), I think it's safe to say that it's the Ghatazhak wreaking havoc on a world, hopefully JungCentral.
Perfect ending! I'll wait a day or two to post given that I don't want to give out any spoilers.
WTF, that ending was terrible I have to say I had enjoyed the series but 13 and 14 started to turn me against it and now this was the last straw. Mr. Brown I wish you well in your writing but I'm done I think by trying to rush these books out you kinda of lost your way, I suggest you slow the pace down a bit on the next series.
What was your problem with the ending?
Not finished the Book yet, really enjoying it. BUT I'm having difficulty following parts of it. It jumps all over the place during the combat sequences, from place to place, ship to ship with no obvious break in the text.
Has something gone wrong with the editing on my Kindle version?
30% in & loving it though.
I had some missing breaks as well. Like going from the view point of the Aurora to the Celestia.
I noticed it at least twice, but I must admin it could have been more as I was reading til 7am, then 4am the next night
During complex combat sequences in which the location shifts from place to place, (Aurora to Celestia to Falcon to Jar-Benakh, etc...) I've always used three empty lines between subscenes. Then I always try to start the next subscene with mention of the location within the first sentence or two. I don't like using the standard scene breaks (* * *) as they tend to disrupt the flow and tension of an action sequence. However, with the Kindle (as well as with printed books to some extent) if the subscene break occurs at the same location as a page break, it is really easy to miss that there is a break there.
I'm thinking about developing some other symbol to use for such subscene breaks, although I haven't decided which yet.
Of course, it is also possible that one of my editors removed a break and I didn't catch the mistake when processing their edits. I will double check.
The problem is that, at least with my kindle edition, the shift from scene to scene was only marked by a simple line break. Not a single empty line in between. This didn't happen once or twice, or even once in a while - it was pretty much every shift of location during battles that was un-noticable, usually in the middle of the page. (So it wasn't due to page break issues, either.) And quite often, there was several pieces of dialogue before I figured out where I was, most often because the Captain of the respective ship had been mentioned by name.
==> Aurora, bridge <==
Or...
~~> Tanna, bridge <~~
~~ Aurora, damage control ~~
>>> Jar-Benakh, bridge <<<
<<< Super Falcon 1 >>>
In some cases, it would have helped immensely. 🙂
Ryk, I like how you jump between ships in battle, the 3 line brake is fine as far as I'm concerned. If the change happens on a page brake, then it is a page brake and that is fine. you name your characters, it is clear which crew are which and when the names and conversation change we the readers will double take and start again from the break / page break.
I think it is too late to go adding a preface as its a complete change of format. But if you were to change I would do it like this:
"AURORA
Captain Scott Sat in his office wondering if he should tell Jess to get back to work."
Adding Engine room / Bridge or a time / Date is too much and will probably be either ignored by the reader or be picked up by reading the story.
