Much of this book is entertaining, but God does it drag out sometimes. Towards the beginning, there's like a three page stretch that is nothing but describing the good guys' winter army gear. Coulda done that in a paragraph, tops. Unfortunately, this is typical of all too many passages. Progress on the overall plot is glacial, too. Some completely predictable victories against the remnants of bad guy forces in Siddarmark. The good guys who win every time because they've got such crazily superior equipment and also almost all the brilliant/capable/competent commanders are now winning again because they've got such crazily superior equipment and also almost all the brilliant/capable/competent commanders? YOU DON'T SAY. And the whole million man army of bad guys that the good guys were gearing up to fight at the end of the last book? Well, they've moved up a few miles so the good guys can gear up to fight them next year in the next book. *Hopefully* in the next book, anyway. On the naval side, there's a few more lopsided wins for the good guys as they take out entire enemy port cities with little to no trouble. But, here the other side does get at least a few licks in, and the good guys even suffer one pretty significant reversal, which does help raise the stakes for future engagements at least somewhat. Five thousand victories in a row like the good guys have on land tends to drain the tension over what might happen in the next fight just a little bit. Also, most of the more interesting and/or important characters from earlier books get relegated to the sidelines way too much. Cayleb? Gets to do nothing outside of some com conference peanut gallery stuff. Sharleyan? Ditto. Even Merlin, the ostensible primary character sits on his hands way too much, though he does get at least a couple reasonably kick-ass action scenes. Instead, we get yet more of Weber's "cast of thousands" approach. There's a swear-to-God *eighty page* list of characters at the end of the book. I'm not even kidding. The cast is that bloated. The lineup for Wheel of Time was lean and trim by comparison. 
 On the plus side: although sometimes it feels like ninety percent of this book is scene-setting for the future, some of it is pretty good scene-setting. It's fun watching the Group of Four freak out. Some of the battles are pretty good - especially the tenser, better-drawn naval conflicts. And though actual scenes from the concentration camps don't feature heavily, the bit we see is fairly legitimately wrenching. 
 On the whole, David Weber displays several of his usual virtues, but indulges too heavily in some of his usual vices. In particular, he shows his tendency to wind up giving his numerically outmatched protagonists such overwhelming qualitative superiority that them being outnumbered is like watching a grown man be "outnumbered" by toddlers. Who will win?! Man, or toddler? The answer will not surprise you.