Review: The Relentless Legion

The Relentless Legion by J.S. Dewes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was disappointed by another space opera series I finished this year (the Devoured Worlds trilogy) but this series did not disappoint. In fact, it stuck the landing with a bang.

Unfortunately, this book won't make much sense unless you've read the other two, as it picks right up after the ending of the second book, The Exiled Fleet, without so much as a "the story so far" recap. (I can imagine the trilogy being re-released in a giant omnibus edition in a few years, but it would be about six inches thick.) However, the first two books are absolutely worth your time. This one, in addition to tying up all the outstanding plot and character threads, expands our POV characters--Adequin Rake and Cavalon Mercer, up to this point--to include a crucial third: Jackin North. Jackin traded himself to the series' villain, Augustus Mercer, at the end of the last book to enable Adequin's and Cavalon's escape, and this book shows us the full ramifications of that. Jackin is tortured and eventually broken, and is used as a Trojan horse to foil Adequin's and Cavalon's revolution.

All this is in addition to the overarching storyling of the universe collapsing, and Adequin and her Sentinels working with the alien Viators to halt the oncoming collapse at the borders of our galaxy. Cavalon is also attempting to undo the effects of the Viator mutagen of five hundred years before that threatens to make humanity extinct. This particular plot thread culminates in a trip to a parallel universe (which is mercifully a brief part of the story as a whole, as a multiverse setting is getting a bit overused by this point). At the climax, Adequin, Jackin and Cavalon team up to take Augustus down. The series ends with Cavalon taking up Augustus' rulership of the Mercer family in the Core worlds, and Adequin and Jackin returning to their Sentinel duties at the galactic border--with a new understanding and a new relationship unfolding between them.

As in the previous two books, the sometimes breakneck pacing is leavened by slower and deeper character moments, particularly for Jackin and Cavalon. The reason I appreciated this series more than the other one I mentioned (despite the first two books of the Devoured Worlds trilogy being excellent) is that this book does not introduce another high-level threat out of basically nowhere. The deadly and extinction-level obstacles were laid out in the first book and followed all the way through to the end, with no unlikely and unnecessary surprises.

I really liked all three of these books, and recommend them highly. If you are a space opera fan, I think you will enjoy them as well.



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