Admiral
Sean Danker
Roc Books
Hardcover $26.95
ebook $7.99

I’d like to thank Ace/Roc Books for the review copy of Admiral.  It was a fun space opera.  I’m looking forward to further installments in this new series.

The unnamed narrator is the last of four people to wake up on a damaged freighter that’s stranded on an unknown planet.  The other three people are all graduates of one of the Imperial military academies.

It quickly becomes obvious to them that our narrator is no admiral, even though the ship’s computer confirms he is an admiral.  The Evagardian Empire has just won a war with another power, and one of the graduates (who happens to have the highest rank among the three) thinks he’s a spy.

But they’ve got other problems.  The freighter’s crew are dead in an airlock.  They don’t know where they are.  The freighter has no power.  The planet is not suitable for human life.  Their air supplies are limited.  And they keep hearing sounds from other parts of the ship, as though something is moving.

The characters are well developed and have their own personalities.  There’s some depth to them.  Danke handles their interactions well.  One of the graduates is the first daughter of a minor noble family.  Pay close attention to the conversations she and the narrator have and think back to them while you read the last chapter.  They take on a somewhat different context then.  I also liked how the narrator and the ranking graduate start out as enemies and end up as teammates as they struggle to stay alive.

Things keep going from bad to worse.  One of the things I most enjoyed was watching the admiral use his wits to keep everyone alive.  There’s some good old fashioned sf problem-solving going on here.

The story reminded me at times of Alien.  That’s a good thing.  There were several scenes that were completely creepy.

Finally, one of the things I found most refreshing was the lack of graphic content.  While Admiral is clearly written for an adult audience, there was nothing in it that would make me hesitate to give it to my 14 year old son (provided I can get him out of his not wanting to read phase).  There was no profanity, sex, or graphic violence.  It was a nice change from the grimdark stuff I’ve been reading for the last few months.

In the end, Admiral was a lot of fun.  I’m looking forward to the next volume.