Never Surrender (The Empire's Corps Book 10)

Never Surrender (The Empire's Corps Book 10) - Christopher Nuttall, Pacific Crest Publishing This is the tenth chapter in the Empires Corp’s series. This series have been jumping a bit back and forth between telling the story of The Empire’s Corps that was stranded on Avalon following the fall of the corrupt, bureaucratic and essentially dysfunctional human empire. This book is back to events that directly impact Avalon and the Commonwealth. In general that is the books in this series that I have preferred. Having said that, I have to confess that I did not like Retreat Hell that much due to the political manipulations, deceit, backstabbing and so on in that book.

This book takes off more or less where Retreat Hell left off. There are two main threads in the book. One, which I would say is the bulk of the book, is Jasmine working her way back to the Commonwealth and another one is Stalker & Co starting to unravel the spy organization that Wolfbane have put in place on Avalon. Now, you would not be a true marine if you just quietly sneak out of prison so, of course, Jasmine throws a few pieces of rock in the Wolfbane machinery on her way back to the commonwealth.

As usual the book is very well written, especially the characters. There are not really an enormous amount of action in this book though. It is more of a slower paced escape from prison as well as detective work kind of book. At times I have to say that I found it a wee bit slow. In particular the long talks including Gary and Kailee and their mental issues. I would also say that the book do not exactly take any giant strides in advancing the main story. It is more of a mop up of loose ends from Retreat Hell and a preparation for some more serious action between Wolfbane and the Commonwealth. At least I hope that Mr. Nuttall is building up for some nice clobbertime. Preferably with the Commonwealth doing the clobbering. Having said that there are some developments due to Jasmine’s rock throwing that are going to have quite some repercussions in the future.

Anyway, this is a good book. Mr. Nuttall do not disappoint when it comes to the quality of the writing and despite the fact that not all parts of the book was 100% my cup of tea I never really lost interest. I have read a good 20 books by Mr. Nuttall by now (and have about 10 more on my reading list) and none of them have been bad. On the contrary, most of them have merited very good to excellent ratings. This one falls in the very good range for me.