Linnea Sinclair, Games of Command

Games of Command

Linnea Sinclair

Bantam, March 2007, $6.99, 564 pp.

ISBN 0553589636

The war between the United Coalition and the Triad is over, and the two former enemies now make up the Alliance, guarding against the llithians who want more inhabited worlds to conquer. Former Coalition Captain Tasha "Sass" Sebastian is now assigned to captain the Vaxxar. Admiral Branden Kel-Paten, a biocybe who is more machine than human, and the captain have played cat and mouse with each other during the war, and now that Tasha is in his space, the feelings he isn't supposed to have for her have begun to grow much stronger.

During a flight, they travel into the middle of a vortex to pick up Triad rebel Jace Serafino. He lapses into a coma and is able to take Eden the medical officer into a private dimension, a creation of his race. There he tells her he has an implant in his head, put there by Psy-Serv so he can't use his telepathic abilities for more than ten minutes at a time. The implant needs to be removed because he has information about Psy-Serv that could tear the Alliance apart, if he can get his memories straight so that Kel-Paten believes him. On the way to a space station, Jace, Eden, the admiral and Tasha are all caught by their enemies and sent to a dimension nobody knows exists; inhabited by an enemy that controls the people who thought to use it. The foursome must escape in order to warn the inhabited galaxy.

Every book Linnea Sinclair writes is better than the one before it, which says a lot, because they are all great! Readers will fall in love with Eden's pet furzel Reilly and Tasha's pet fidget (a baby furzel). Their antics and protectiveness to their humans and their play in trying to save the galaxy is so entertaining that the audience will want to adopt a fidget of their own. The developing romance between the two heroes and heroines in between galactic crises adds realism to a tense and thrilling science fiction saga.