If you are a serious sci-fi audiobook listener, you’ll will definitely notice that this story shares many similarities with other sci-fi military space adventure books.
However, Heppner’s world building is a bit stronger than others in this sub-genre.
His characters get significantly more depth / back story exposition than others.
His pacing is better than most. There’s still a bit of the crisis-to-crisis drumbeat like cadence of other military space adventure books (like Craig Alanson’s works) but it feels more skillfully executed.
I generally like my sci-fi to be a bit heavier on the discussion of the “science” than anything anyone does in the contemporary “military space adventure” genre. Heppner still takes too light of a touch for my taste in regards to science in his story but it works better than others. I know, I know… not everyone can be Greg Egan. I just hope that the rest of the series will surprise me with a bit more time on the theories behind the tech.
That said, as soon as I finished this book, I spent 2 credits on Books 2 and 3 in the series.