Synopsis
The wrong crew. The wrong ship. The right Captain.
Idealistic navy lieutenant Jacob Grimm just wanted to honor his mother’s sacrifice in the last great war. When he’s forced to return fire and destroy a squadron of ships to save his own, he thinks he’s the hero…
Until they discover the ships are full of children.
Disgraced and denied promotion, Jacob’s career is over. That is until the head of ONI needs a disposable officer to command a battered destroyer on the rim.
There’s just one problem, Interceptor hasn’t had a CO in months and the ship is a mess. Worse, the system he’s assigned to is corrupt and on the verge of all-out civil war with the Alliance.
However, no one told Jacob he was disposable.
Pirates, smugglers, and Caliphate spies complicate the situation and one captain with an old ship can’t enforce the law, let alone stop anyone.
The single greatest discovery of all time is about to change intergalactic politics forever. If Jacob doesn’t find a way to succeed, then it won’t just be the end of the Alliance, it will be the end of freedom for humanity.
Review
AGAINST ALL ODDS by Jeffrey Haskell is a military science fiction novel set in the United Alliance of Systems. I’m a sucker for these kinds of stories where a brash but disliked young captain proceeds to whip a bunch of disaffected crew into shape before accomplishing miracles. It’s a formula that I loved in David Weber’s Honor Harrington, Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet, and Robert Asprin’s Phule’s Company.
The premise is that Jacob Grimm is a Lieutenant on a starship that either makes a catastrophic error or is deliberately baited into blowing up a ship full of children. This results in the destruction of his career, as you might imagine, but he refuses to resign due to his belief that he’d be dishonoring his mother who died in the service. Jacob is thus assigned to the ass end of space with a ship that was already antiquated before Jacob was born.
As is typical in these sorts of stories, Jacob is just the right man to be in the right place at the wrong time. The local planetary government has decided to become involved in the galactic slave trade with the enemies of the Alliace, the Caliphate. Yes, the enemies of this particular story are a fundamentalist Muslim empire. It should be noted that the politics are fairly tame, premise wise, and one of the major characters on the “good” side is a Muslim but the baddies are a horrifically misogynist bunch of guys claiming to do all their nastiness in the name of God. Let the reader beware if this trips you up.
I very much enjoyed Jeffrey Haskell’s Full Metal Superhero books that were about a teenage girl genius who crafted a supersuit that allows her to take on everything from local baddies to alien. However, I’m going to say that I prefer the Grimm’s War series by a wide margin despite my love of superheroes. The author successfully creates a vivid space opera setting with multiple competing factions and political operators that never feel confusing or unbelievable.
The action is fantastic in the book with impressive space battles that are lovingly detailed across multiple chapters. We also get a decent amount of action on the ground as our heroes find themselves frequently at the mercy of mercenaries or Caliphate agents. It’s a very fast paced and enjoyable novel with strong good versus evil undertones. Grimm is an impressive captain but he needs his crew to fill in the action duties among others as no one is a genetic superhuman like Honor Harrington.
In conclusion, Against All Odds is a really good novel for those who love plucky crews and antiquated starships up against impossible odds. I’ve actually read all of the series up to the current novel (Grimm’s Legacy as of this article’s writing) and enjoyed them all. I think you will too but the setting may not be to everyone’s tastes.
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