Aries’ Red Sky

Space opera that plays out on a grand scale, and Young conducts it with aplomb.–Pop Cults, the website of Geek and Alternative Culture

For over seven hundred years, the Spartan Republic’s citizens have known one truth: Terra is coming. Descendants of exiles who dared to defy an emperor, the star nation’s 70 billion citizens spent the centuries training, arming…and waiting.

In 3035, Leftenant Ian Campbell, Spartan Defense Forces (SDF), discovers a strange anomaly on his corvette’s sensors…and realizes the wait is over. The Spartans must convince the Terrans of the cost of subduing their nation. If they succeed, the Republic survives. If not, the SDF will be forced to paint the stars red with their enemies’ blood.

The Confederation of Man was born in the terror of the Harran Empire’s death throes. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, humanity now spreads from its cradle on Earth to hundreds of stars across the Milky Way, and seeks out new worlds to add.

Captain Marcy Cochran was hoping to find a habitable planet; she didn’t expect the system to already have hostile humans. Now a captive, Cochran must contend with a crew proving to be as dangerous as their enemies, and prevent what has started out as a misunderstanding from becoming a full-fledged interstellar war. For Terran law is quite clear: All humanity will answer to the Confederation. For the Spartans, that makes the government on Earth no different than the empire it supplanted…and they would rather die on their feet than subjugate themselves once more.

Aries’ Red Sky is the newest novel in James Young’s Vergassy Chronicles universe. A prequel to An Unproven Concept, it is the first in the Spartan Trilogy. If you like space opera, high body counts, and capital ship battles on a galactic scale, pick up an author who has been recommended by Amazing Stories, Pop Cults, and The Midwest Book Review.