...any more than I do the "New Fontier" cycle. Both are built on a premise of a Long John Silver clone skipper and his raffish crew of square wheels. There's a growly amazonian officer here who decks her captain without really being in mutiny--presumably it's "for his own good". In the "New Earth" series this book is a sequel to, Starfleet pulls the cliche Cold War era stunt of taking sides in a nasty regional conflict in which neither side--Blood Many or the Kauld--are particularly civilized. In this book, a Bood Many "guest officer" tries to impose his culture's strictures on a Fleet vessel when an officer disobeys an order--their penalty for that is death...This is definitely beneath what I've come to expect from Diane Carey...