James Review -- Freehold: Angeleyes

This week I decided to review Freehold: Angeleyes by Michael Z. Williamson. 

When the story begins Angie Kaneshiro is a veteran of the military forces of the Freehold of Grainne who now works as a temporary crewman on various freighters working her way across human space. But eventually the United Nations declares war and invades Freehold. Kaneshiro makes her way home only to be forced to escape a badly-damaged station, rescuing a young child in the process.

Eventually Kaneshiro encounters the Jack Churchill, a Freehold cruiser, in neutral territory. She reenlists and the vessel soon finds itself in battle against a pair of UN ships after returning to the Grainne system. Kaneshiro realizes that her knowledge of various stations throughout space could be invaluable to Freehold intelligence, but after her CO refuses to allow her to leave because her variety of skills makes her a valuable crew member, Kaneshiro has to go AWOL to reach her destination.

After doing so, she is attached to a team of Blazers, elite Freehold commandos, operating from a requisitioned freighter. The team moves through space gathering intelligence, sabotaging UN facilities, and aiding others in such efforts. But after the unit is betrayed Kaneshiro is captured and tortured for information by UN forces.

The team rescues her and continues its struggle, destroying one UN warship and capturing another, along with being forced to shift to another freighter. But with the UN dragnet closing in, the team is left desperately seeking a way to remain alive, free, and operational long enough to participate in the war’s final operations…

I give this book 8.5 out of 10. While the opening makes it clear that Kaneshiro survives and anyone who reads the series knows the outcome of the war due to this being the third book telling the story of the conflict from different perspectives, the possible fates of the other team members provide a great deal of tension. Also, I like the characters a lot, though there are a couple that I wish we could have learned more about. And there are a wide variety of crises faced by Kaneshiro both before and after she rejoins the military. However having a single point-of-view character is also a weakness in my opinion because there were several points, especially late in the story, where I wished I could see what was happening away from Kaneshiro.