From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

"Manifest Destiny: Wolfhounds - Book Five" by John Van Stry

https://www.amazon.com/Manifest-Destiny-Wolfhounds-Book-Five/dp/B0DSQ5KXWB

Book number five of a six book science fiction space opera series. And
there is a prequel series of two books and a sequel series of a few
books. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand)
trade paperback self published by the author in 2025 that I bought in
2026. I own the other book in the series and will read it soon.

I love Space Opera. And I love pulp science fiction. This series is
both and a great example of the merging of the two. In fact, this
series reminds me very much of the Robert Heinlein juvenile books, the
Piers Anthony "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series, the "Mutineer's Moon"
series by David Weber, and the Perry Rhodan series. The dialog is very frequent and the action moves along quickly.

Chase Collis is a street rat. He and his mother lived in government
housing in Imperial City until she died of a drug overdose when he was
12 years old. Just before that was the last time he saw his estranged
father who screamed at his mother to keep hiding Chase or else the
Emperor would kill them all. Chase ended up on the street at the age of
12, running with the street gangs, being arrested by the police time and
time again.

When Chase became an adult, he murdered another street rat and was
caught by the police. He purposely got caught to go to the Imperial
Prison for a few years to get more street cred and rise to the top of
the street gang. But to his shock, when he went to his trial, his
father was the judge. His father sentenced him to ten years in the
Imperial Navy rather than the four years in Imperial Prison that he
expected, and then escorted him to the Naval Basic Training school.

In the far distant future, The Solarian Imperium consists of 38 star
systems including Earth and the Sol system which were made uninhabitable
in the War of Succession. Emperor Charles Morgan, Chase's grandfather,
was the latest in a long line of Morgans ruling the Imperium. His
family keeps power because they are genetically modified with machine interfaces in their DNA. So are all of the Nobles: the Earls, the
Dukes, the Counts, and the Barons. Any machine of any importance, and especially the space ships and the military weapons, requires a human
with machine interface to tell the AI what to do. And the Imperial
family machine interface in their DNA is the best of all the interfaces
and has special rights with all of the machines in the Imperium. And
nobody knows or understands how tight the Imperial human machine
interfaces are with every AI in the Imperium.

Chase Collis ended up in the Emperor's own Wolfhounds after his Navy machinists mate training to be a glorified broom pusher. The Wolfhounds
are special military fleet embedded in a large asteroid capable of FTL
flights to anywhere in the Empire. The Wolfhounds were standing down in cryosleep until needed by Emperor to protect him or to take care of a
special task. But their cryosleep lasted for over ten years when it was supposed to be for six months at the most, treachery of the most high.
And upon the Wolfhound's accidental awakening, the Emperor and his
family were dead for ten years and the Parliament and the Speaker have
taken over the Imperium.

Prince Chase has now been to the Tomb, what everyone calls the
uninhabitable Sol System, and verified to be the new Emperor by the
ancient AI there. So now Emperor Chase and the Wolfhounds have to
finish reconquering the Imperium, one star system at a time. And Chase
has found less than a half dozen of his Imperial relatives alive so far
and is coming to realize that the Parliament and the Speaker have
managed to kill off most of the nobility with their embedded human
machine interfaces that all of the machine AIs rely upon and are now
timing out due to lack of authorized human contact.

The author has a website at:
https://jvanstry.blogspot.com/

My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (2,208 reviews)

Lynn

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