Overall, I do think this is an excellent series, so far, and I highly recommend it to other fans of the space combat and diplomacy flavors of sci-fi.
With that said, I would like to vent some frustration about a pet peeve I developed while listening to this book and the prior two books in the series: That being the overwhelming quantity of WW2 quotes and references, typically at least one per chapter. These are often stated by extraterrestrials who have spent very little time on earth or none at all. It’s clear that this was written by a military history buff who gravitates towards WW2. The events of WW2 occurred about three centuries before the setting of this series. The quotes are very meaningful and important, to be sure, yet I found that the cumulative effect of so many of them ended up distracting me too often from the main story. This makes it harder to get immersed in it, because of the tug-of-war that pulls the reader’s/listener’s attention back and forth, between the 20th and 23rd centuries, with very little in between, as if WW2 was the last major conflict in history, and the last time there were historically significant military figures. References to more recent conflicts and historical figures would have been a nice addition to those from WW2. What’s more, I felt many creative opportunities were missed for references to fictional conflicts and historical figures, both from earth and from other worlds. The story was not absent of these, yet the thumb was very much on the scales in favor of WW2-related content, when it came to the quotes.
The above is really my only critique. The rest of the story is so very good, as is the narration. I am hooked and am excited to continue listening to this series!