The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier Invincible review.

When the book begins the First fleet of the Alliance is reforming from the battle which concluded the previous book. As repairs go on the fleet discovers that the new hostile species, the second they have encountered, are herbivores which look like Teddy Bears and are apparently convinced that humanity wants to eat them. The fleets commanding admiral now faces the task of returning safely to human space having completed its mission of probing the empire of the Enigma species which had attempted to trick humanity into wiping itself out. He also has to deal with a distant relative who has apparently gone from being reasonable to trying to live up to his legend, a legend which led to a number of defeats in the century he spent in stasis when commanders tried to follow his example, ignoring the fact that his actions were far from a good plan, they were just his only course allowing him to protect a convoy. On top of all this his government doesn’t trust him, and a faction of officers under his command want him to launch a coup against the government. As the journey home continues they eventually make contact with a friendly alien species and begin to escort them back to Alliance territory.

I love this author’s fleet battles, in fact I would consider him one of the top 5 writers of space fleet actions whose works I have read. I wish that the series would give more technical detail about the ships though, it does a good job of explaining weapon systems but not nearly as good a job at explaining what the differences between different models of the same type of warship are. I also enjoyed the studies of the alien civilizations that the fleet encounters in the story as each one is unique and far from the cliche alien society modeled after sections of humanity.