“To me, there is no greater calling … If I can inspire young people to dedicate themselves to the good of mankind, I’ve accomplished something.”

— John Glenn, Marine aviator in World War II and Korea, United States Senator, and last of the Mercury astronauts. July 18, 1921 to December 8, 2016

Peter Grant has come out with the next book in his Maxwell Saga, Stoke the Flames Higher.  I was lucky to be a beta reader for the book, and it’s definitely one that will keep you up as you try to find out what happens on the next page.

Here’s the blurb:

Two planets, torn apart by the same fanatics – and Lancastrian forces are caught in the middle!

Major Brooks Shelby must keep the peace, on a world where radical terrorists want submission or death. Lieutenant-Commander Steve Maxwell must trace the source of their fighters and funding, deal with diplomats, and fend off a nosy journalist.

The marines are up against smuggled explosives and suicidal martyrs, while a suborned bureaucracy stymies the investigation. Brooks and Steve must find a way to stop their enemies at all costs, before the fanatics unleash their own version of Armageddon!

Peter does an awesome job of knitting together several storylines that pit his characters against terrorists bent on spreading their ideology across the stars using murder as a vehicle.  He’s created a great universe, and doesn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining it to the reader, so he has plenty of page space to enrich the story and the characters.

One thing that I like about the Maxwell series, as well as its companion “Laredo” books, is that Peter takes space combat away from dog fights in vacuum and actually thinks about how capital ships would be used in future combat.  It forces him to build tension rather than action, and makes the reader consider how terrifying sudden surprises could be when distances are measured in hundreds of thousands of kilometers and speeds are measured in fractions of the speed of light.

If you’re looking for an excellent read for a cold evening in front of the fire, look no further.