The captain of our star ship is a giant mantis shrimp who speaks exclusively in bad haikus and carries multiple rocket launchers. He rocks. He also has tremendous character growth over the course of the novel as he deals with the trauma of his personal past and learns that the conservative societal strictures he grew up with are hurting him and his people.

Welcome to the fourth entry in the Children of Time series. We don't do simple stories in this series here. I cannot talk much about specifics without spoiling earlier books in the series, but suffice to say that it continues the broad themes of the series and very smartly revisits some ideas that weren't fully explored in books 2 & 3. All while telling its own story and exploring new themes - ones that are very important to the current times.

It is a story about how working together produces better results than competition and hoarding, of overcoming base instincts and trauma, and of personal growth. And most importantly, about how the extreme hoarding of wealth and power is bad.