The politics resemble small town city council wrangling and when the Princess of one bunch decides to take her ship and crew to investigate the disappearances of ships belonging to the friendly aliens both the over- protective and the over-suspicious insist on sending massive battle-wagons to accompany her. By the way, the Princess and the Grand-duchess of the somewhat hostile opposing clan (think Hatfield/McCoy cliches) agree that the multi-tentacled semi-aquatic alien is "kinda cute." Take it from there.
They discover the hostile aliens - who, imagine the horror, resemble human beings rather markedly (no heavy-handed message there). All the battle ships are destroyed and the Princess eventually manages to limp home with her cruiser to face court martial for something or other.
No story lines are concluded, everything is left hanging, and the Princess Pauline will doubtless live to be in peril another day - she may even someday be reunited with her security chief.
Complaints aside, it is space opera and it was mostly fun, if a little repetitive. I am informed that this is not the first book in the series, and that in earlier exercises there was more closure at the end of each. I have frequently had the uncomfortable suspicion that sometimes series writers feel that they must do something to trick readers into buying the next book. One might hope that good writing, good characters, and a satisfying plot ought to do the trick, but it would appear that the incomplete ending is less work.
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