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Imperative (Starfire) MP3 CD – Unabridged, September 20, 2016
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The war with the Arduans - profoundly alien invaders who originally arrived in STL ships - is over. Most of those attackers are now probationary (and very productive) citizens of the Rim Federation.
However, many among the Arduans' warrior caste have accepted neither defeat nor the personhood of any of the other intelligence races. Their leader, the ruthless admiral of the second Arduan exodus, Amunsit, is in firm control of the Zarzuela system. Along with a fifth column among the peaceable Arduans, she hopes to find allies in subsequent refugee fleets that abandoned their race's now-dead home system long ago.
But as the victors' diplomats attempt to soothe tensions with these warlike neighbors, two heroes of the last war - veteran admiral Ian Trevayne and young troubleshooter Ossian Wethermere - suspect they have stumbled upon a deeper Arduan plot: one that could shatter the Pan-Sentient Union and perhaps interstellar civilization itself.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAudible Studios on Brilliance Audio
- Publication dateSeptember 20, 2016
- Dimensions6.5 x 0.63 x 5.5 inches
- ISBN-101531876188
- ISBN-13978-1531876180
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Product details
- Publisher : Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (September 20, 2016)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 1531876188
- ISBN-13 : 978-1531876180
- Item Weight : 3.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 0.63 x 5.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #6,188,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #34,537 in Space Operas
- #45,703 in Books on CD
- #62,035 in Science Fiction Adventures
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Go to his website at: www.charlesegannon.com
Dr. Charles E. Gannon is a Distinguished Professor of English (St. Bonaventure University) and was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in American Literature & Culture from 2004-2009.
Dr. Gannon's series include hard-sf interstellar epic (the Caine Riordan series, set in his Terran Republic universe, nominated for three Nebulas, two Dragons, and winner of the Compton Crook Award) and epic slipstream fantasy (the forthcoming Broken World series). He also collaborates with Eric Flint in that author's New York Times Best Selling series "Ring of Fire series" as well as with Steve White in the NYT Bestselling "Starfire" series. He has also worked in universes/shared worlds such as War World, Man-Kzin Wars, the Honorverse, etc.) and in various anthologies and Analog SF Magazine. You can visit and learn more about his various SF universes and projects--past, present, and future-- at: www.charlesegannon.com.
Along with about 50 other SF writers (such as Larry Niven, Ben Bova, John Hemry/Jack Armstrong, and Greg Bear), he is a member of SIGMA, the "SF think-tank" which advises intelligence and defense agencies (cf. www.sigmaforum.org). In his role as a subject matter expert on advanced military/defense/intel concepts, he has been featured on the Discovery Channel, NPR, Fox, and a wide variety of other national media outlets.
His earlier work includes various products and flash fiction for the gaming industry. He worked as both author and editor for Games Design Workship on their award-winning games "Traveller," "2300 AD," "Dark Conspiracy," and "Twilight: 2000."
Dr. Gannon has many credits in non-fiction; his most noteworthy is his book "Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Technomilitary Agenda Setting in American and British Speculative Fiction." Now in second edition, it won the 2006 American Library Association Award for Outstanding Book, and was the topic of discussion when he was interviewed by NPR (Morning Edition).
Dr. Gannon has been a Fulbright Fellow at Liverpool University, Palacky University (Czech Republic), and the University of Dundee. He also received Fulbright and Embassy Travel grants to these countries, as well as The Netherlands, Slovakia, England, and Italy. Holding degrees from Brown (BA), Syracuse (MS), and Fordham (MA,PhD), he has published extensively on the interaction of fiction, technology (particularly military and space), and political influence.
Prior to his academic career, Dr. Gannon worked as a scriptwriter and producer in New York City, where his clients included the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and The President's Council on Physical Fitness.
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Middle Answer: read In Death Ground at a minimum first. Then Imperative.
Long answer:
In 1977, Task Force Games published a little game of starship combat called Starfire, so small of a game that it came in a ziplock baggie. It was a huge hit. Fans and TFG kept adding to it and in the 1990s, David Weber of science fiction fame rewrote the rules AND made a truly wonderful scenario book called Stars at War, which reads like a novel (combining in depth narrative sections with scenarios) but you can actually play out the battles using the game system. This covered four different wars and the major races in the Starfire universe.
Next came Crusade the scenario book and Crusade the novel, so if you didn't play the game you could read about space battles the old fashioned way...in a book.
Then came In Death Ground and The Shiva Option, both novels, and the massive scenario book ISW-4 Arachnids.
Then there is the orphan novel called "Insurrection" which had just the novel and not a game treatment.
Then David Weber moves out of the picture and revised writing teams take over. This is where Exodus, Extremis, and Imperative slide into place as novels but no game treatment.
BaenBooks has reissued Crusade and In Death Ground as Stars at War One and Insurrection and Shiva Option as Stars at War 2. These are NOT the same Stars at War that David Weber wrote for Task Force Games back in the early 1990s.
The game system is now owned and supplied by Starfire Design Studios
Imperative unfortunately is simply silly. Spoilers ahead...
One of the main plot points is kinetic kills against numerous systems from generational ships from one source. The ships are allegedly moving at .6c to .8c. Ok, so far I can buy that. They align the ships and destroy them creating clouds of debris that continue at the same relatavistic speeds towards inhabited systems. Still ok so far although starting to get sketchy. The objects destroy planets and installations throughout the PSU. Ok, now we are into LotR fantasy and a complete disregard for basic physics.
The stars in the PSU, as stated many times, are hundreds of light years apart. The kinetic bombardment would have taken hundreds, if not thousands, of years to take place. Sublight objects starting from relatively close together, required by the storyline of fleets fleeing a supernova, would have a gap of 7 or 8 years just between Sol and Centauri, and they are close together. In the PSU three light years was considered incredibly close in an earlier story. The main characters would have been dead of old age generations before the bombardments destroyed the listed planets and locations. I don't mind suspending disbelief under certain circumstances but not when they are trying something like kinetic weapons.
The authors completely lost me at that point. I'm not even going to bother getting into the idea that an object weighing a few tons moving at .6c could destabilize a main sequence star while managing to pass entirely through it.
I wanted to like the book, and I'll read the next one, but I am very disappointed by the complete disregard for science in this one.
In this one the various human space empires as well as several of their alien allies come under attack from not one but two of their old enemies. This book is an excellent example of Military Science Fiction with good character development and great space battle scenes. The Arduans’ who appeared from space in slower than light colony ships were defeated in a very bloody war and at great cost to the humans and their allies. A few of them however fled and awaited more of their colony ships to arrive to reignite hostilities. During their wait they discovered a hidden colony of "Bugs", a species that had attacked with genocidal intend against all the other sentient species. They had been though to have been totally destroyed but had been in hiding biding their time before attacking again. Now both the Arduans’ and the "Bugs" are attacking on several fronts and things are looking bleak for the humans and their allies.
I highly recommend this book and this entire series to fans of Military Science Fiction and of Space Opera.
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