Highs and Lows

Eric Thomson's Commonwealth universe spans several centuries, and he has sets of novels in different eras of human expansion through the galaxy. Captain Siobhan Dunmoore's time includes the war with the fierce Shrehari -- a group of intimidating space warriors who aren't too much unlike the Klingons of Star Trek. By the time of When the Guns Roar, the sixth book of Dunmoore and her crew, the war is going well for the humans and poorly for the Shrehari. The latter, plagued by the problems associated with weak leadership and a corrupt bureaucracy, keep rotating their best commanders to retirement or worse and elevating incompetent people with good connections.

While the humans have their own problems with people promoted beyond their competence, they've had the luxury of some significant wins and have taken advantage of the way the Shrehari underestimated them when the war began. Dunmoore and her disguised battle cruiser Iolanthe have brought about several of those victories -- enough that the Admiralty wants her brought into a larger squadron to dislodge Shrehari invaders from systems they captured at the start of the war. Dunmoore chafes at the restrictions the chain of command places on her and the way inexperienced but ambitious officers want to ride her people's hard work to their own promotion. Meanwhile, the disgraced Shrehari commander Brakal retires to his people's equivalent of the House of Lords and works to make his government accept reality: Continued war against the hairless apes of Earth will bring destruction and defeat his Empire may not survive.

He may or may not have intended to do so, but Thomson makes the Brakal segments much more interesting than those with his series protagonist. He's structured most of the Dunmoore books as mysteries that the captain and her crew must solve before they bring their real enemies to battle but doesn't follow that model here. Several plot threads of Dunmoore's part of the book wrap up abruptly and rather clumsily, especially when compared with the charismatic Brakal's race against time to bring about his bloodless coup and save his people. In fact, those segments are actually the strength of the book and make Guns a good entry of this series and a fun read.

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The rise of electronic publishing has let Jack Reacher creator Lee Child branch out a bit from his one-per-year schedule of Reacher novels. A handful of short stories and novellas, freed from the need to find themselves homes between the covers of printed books, have come out in digital format and let Child put out some quick and punchy -- pun intended -- stories about his wandering knight errant that couldn't sustain a full novel. About a third of the way into Blue Moon, a reader could be forgiven for wondering if it should have been one as well.

Reacher, on a Greyhound approaching an unnamed Midwestern city, spots an older man with a large amount of money in his pocket who's being targeted by a potential mugger. Being Reacher, he moves to thwart the crime and finds himself drawn into the circle of trouble being experienced by Aaron and Maria Shevick, an elderly couple enmeshed in a vicious world of loan sharks, warring criminal gangs, unethical computer entrepreneurs and soulless bureaucrats. Though the rival Ukrainian and Albanian criminal gangs have extensive numbers of thugs and guns on their side -- and don't even realize the Shevicks are caught up in their fight -- they'll learn that Reacher is never worth fighting against.

Child has dumped some clunkers in this 24-book series, but rarely has he crossed the line into, well, boring. We spend several chapters learning what exact problem the Shevicks face -- several more than we need to, with the couple themselves drawing the matter out with an unexplained reluctance that disappears with no more reason than it existed. The generic city that Child creates, unidentified so he can make it match the characteristics he needs for his story, feels flat and unreal. While the final battles with the different groups of bad guys come off with Child's usual panache, the buildup meanders and winds confusingly, offering repeated sequences that don't help clarify just where we are on our path to the endgame.

Blue Moon doesn't read like a novella or short story stuffed to make a full novel, but it does give the clear impression that it would improve immensely if it dumped about half of its length. It's not objectively lousy like Tripwire, Bad Luck and Trouble and Nothing to Lose, but it's most definitely meh. If the Reacher books were all summoned to give accounts of themselves and defend the series, Blue Moon is the one that would say, "The Jack Reacher series is one with a long tradition of existence to its readers" and then stop, at a loss to offer much more than that.