Wilson Cole is the most highly decorated officer in the Republic's Navy. He's also a little bit of a maverick, believing that the only important thing is getting the right result. This makes him more than willing to disobey orders and live outside the conventions of the Navy when he judges it necessary to get the job done.

Unfortunately though this independent streak has landed him more than one enemy within the command structure of his own side. So whilst his standing with the citizens of the Republic is high, within the Navy it's a completely different matter, and now the Navy has decided on a method of removing their problem.

So as the novel starts Cole has been stripped of his command and assigned as second officer on the Theodore Roosevelt, an ancient starship that in peace time would have been decommissioned decades earlier, crewed by a crew of malcontents and degenerates.

In wartime every ship that is space-worthy is still in service, and the Teddy R. is no exception, although its uses are restricted to merely routine patrolling far from the front line. And this is the fate that the Powers-That-Be have set for Cole.

But Wilson Cole does not intend to sit out the rest of this war. He sets out to make the best of his situation. He starts learning all he can about the region of space he finds himself in, forming alliances with the best of the crew, and encouraging the rest to improve themselves - by means of some typically unconventional methods.

Very soon Cole notices something he feels needs investigating, as a vessel from a world recently-announced as allied to the Republic's enemy is detected heading towards a backwater Republic world. So he diverts the ship from its regular patrol route to investigate, and knowing what the response would be from his by-the-book senior officers aboard the Teddy R, he heads down to the planet to uncover their actions, before his command shift is over and this decision would be countermanded by their orders.

And this is just in the first part of the book. It does give you an idea of the pace of this book. This single story alone would make an entire book from any other author. But Resnick manages to tell this entire story in just the first third of the book – and without making it feel rushed.

Mike Resnick is the king of intelligent space opera adventure. His future universe where the majority of his sf novels have occurred is superbly real, and characters, both human and alien, are the folk of legend. But despite this it never feels too out of the ordinary, there is a definite realism (accepting the setting aboard starships that is).

And, although in this tale, this story is set within the confines of the military structure of the Republic rather than the freer less-restricted realms of the galactic inner frontier of many of Resnick's prior titles, there are still a host of typical Resnick characters. We meet the heroic Wilson Cole, the four-eyed Molarian Forrice – one of the only aliens Cole has ever met to share mankind's sense of humour, Sharon Blacksmith – the ship's ultra-efficient security chief, the ship's Captain – Fujiama, nicknamed Mount Fuji by the crew because of his near seven feet in height, a man who very much thinks his time has come and gone. And these are just a few.

This is a book that I believe cannot help itself when it comes to pleasing all of Resnick's many fans, and is one I feel should win him some new fans along the way.

This is book one in the the adventures of Wilson Cole and the Starship Theodore Roosevelt, and a fine start to the series it is. I want book two.

Synopsis
The starship Theodore Roosevelt is fighting on the far outskirts of a galactic war, its crew made up of retreads and raw recruits. A new first officer reports, Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding his orders (but getting results). He's been banished to the Teddy R. for his actions, but once there he again ignores his orders...

This is the first of five novels about the starship Theodore Roosevelt. The next four will be, in order, Pirate, Mercenary, Rebel, and Flagship.