A Broken Alliance

Sentenced to War, Book 5

By: J.N. Chaney, Jonathan P. Brazee

Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer

With the war against the Centaurs won, is a lasting peace finally at hand?

Staff Sergeant Reverent Pelletier has been attached to the Congress of Humanity’s Home Guard, tasked with keeping the home system safe.

Old rivalries and new enemies threaten the alliance, despite the counsel general’s mission to ensure humanity doesn’t fall into their old ways of conflict and war.

It’s a noble cause, but can humankind break the scourge that has affected them since they emerged from the trees? Has the war with the Centaurs that almost wiped humanity from existence taught them anything?

Experience says it is unlikely, but still, anything is possible. Get ready for the fifth entry in the international best-selling series, Sentenced to War, from USA Today best-selling authors J.N. Chaney and Jonathan Brazee. If you're a fan of intense military science fiction and realistic battle scenes, you'll love this ongoing scifi epic.

©2021 Variant Publications (P)2021 Variant Publications

Military Acronyms

For a military sci-fi story this book is awesome….just one thing that kind of chafes me. When using military acronyms like “casevac” which stands for casualty evacuation but the narrator is saying it wrong. It’s not said case - vac. The proper term is cas - evac.

whats to come?

the future looks bleak as the Juman Race finds new ways to defeat itself. rather then coming together the govt forces then to play politic police. sounds familar

Things are heating up

If you've made it this far, you know this is a great series. This book sets up some interesting new concepts and shifts things around a bit, setting the stage for book 6. I'm excited to see what happens next for our heroes.

Just keeps getting better.

I don’t know how the two authors divvy things up, but they’re doing it damn well and I’m hoping they continue for a long time to come. This is definitely one of the best book series I’ve listened to in recent memory.
Kafer is just awesome. Enough said there.

another banger

Just like the last four, this book delivers the goods. Can't wait to see what happens in number 6. Great cast of characters and storyline.

this series is plagued by the same problem.

The books all seem to have 60% filler, 20% action, 20% character development.
I don't mind except it seems that the books need another 50-80 pages if you are going to use these ratios. I don't mind the ratio as long as I get a certain amount of action and dev time. I understand a lot of times Publishers cut a book up for printing or marketing purposes. the books I wrote were cut 3 times because I had approval in my contract and I didn't like it. I have also seen an editor over polish a book, that may be the case here. great content, Mr kafer needs to get with the writer more to learn pronunciation of a few terms outside of normal civilian use. but it's a great series and I want to see where it's going.
keep it up.

great book

Rev is growing with each book and getting stronger. He's also learning what he actually wants in life. I am so excited for the next book in the series. Hopefully we can get some resolution with Tomiko.

Best of the Series so Far

Part 5 in this series continues with Rev at the Home Guard, his unit having just returned from a successful mission to the planet known as ‘Cat Scratch’ to prevent a serious conflict between people who believed they had a right to live there, and a company who believed they had mining rights.
Fox Company (Rev’s Unit), continues to be sent around the system to put out more ‘spot fires’ as these various factions all try to via for bits of power.
This series continues to develop and grow, as it is not just a basic story about grunts killing each other with big guns, there is this intriguing political story that has been building since before the end of the Centaur conflict. With so many major powers making up the Human Sphere, each with their own beliefs, and financial interests, and more importantly, their own significant military assets, as they vi for control and power over planets, and other regions of space to control viable interests (Mining etc), the Congress of Humanity begins to struggle to bring unity to everything. This is where the Home Guard is brought into action, to enforce the CoA’s rulings, but they are made up of these different factions, and so elements of the Home Guard are suddenly acting against their own people, making things very difficult.
Broken Alliance comes to a head, when the Manifest Destiny Sphere or Mad Dogs (MDS), pull out of the Congress of Humanity, and take several other factions with them, forming their own alliance.
Within days of pulling out, War breaks out, as the MDS attacks multiple locations to lay claim to planets and other places, stating that these are under MDS control, and are rightfully theirs now.
Whilst a diplomatic option is initially sought, it does lead to a small skirmish for Fox Company against the MDS and without spoilers, events happen that lead to significant impacts on both Rev and Fox Company.
As a result, the remainder of this book becomes a rather intense set of battles with the Manifest Destiny Sphere.
One of the other aspects of this book, is that the CoH have started to view Rev and the other IBHU marines as potential threats it becomes apparent, and each of them has been assigned a ‘Nanny’ as such. For Rev, that is Lt Bundy, his friend, for Randigold, it ends up being Tomiko, which is great for Rev who has been missing her.
This opens up a new storyline arc though, as Rev starts to secretly investigate what is happening here, and why Punch has been acting so strange since the battle of BlueBonnet Meadows.
This is a fascinating book, as with the others, there is some intense, often brutal and violent combat scenes that are written with outstanding skill to create this fast-paced action story. However, this book has also started to develop the character of Rev, so that he is not just a super-soldier, but he is also an incredible tactician and strategist. It has not been just blind luck that has gotten him through (as he once thought), it has been his instincts, training, and just an innate ability to assess and work out a situation. He is now applying these skills to the greater scenario, and we are starting to see the bigger picture as well – the human sphere and the fractured state it is in, the conflicts and how it is slowly pulling the alliances that stood against the Centaurs into multiple parts that are intent on killing each other.
It isn’t just Rev that continues to grow, there is the addition of multiple new characters to this story (no spoilers), and several other characters continue to grow and develop (and of course, they take out several as well – no one is ever safe it seems!!)
Sentenced to War continues to evolve and develop into an intriguing and intelligent series, it is the thinking mans Mil Sci-Fi, as it not only has the combat scenes that are so exceptionally well done, but it also has this fascinating and intriguing political aspect to it along with some extraordinary character driven storylines.
Book 5 is easily the best book so far – I can’t wait to read book 6 – this is one of those must read series if you haven’t already!!
Jeffrey Kafer is one of the best narrators around when it comes to Mil Sci-Fi, he has such an outstanding voice for narrating this style of story. He can do a great set of voices, both male and female, and he does a great ‘range’ of voices to – so that you can distinguish who is talking during the narration (without having to be told), Kafer has this brilliant, almost clinical narrating style, that is perfect for a Military Sci-Fi story. I have always been amazed that he can create such exceptional voices, and provide the emotional background for these voices to, and at the same time, switch back to this detached style for the rest of the Narration – allowing you to know when someone is talking, and when the story is being told. His prologues and when he is filling you on background story is just exceptional.
Kafer is one of the best Narrators there is for Audio – and this is one of those that you just have to listen to as you will get so much more out of it rather than reading the book.

Love this series but

I love this series but I’m really getting sick of Rev getting lectured by side characters only because the author wrote it in officers yeah I get that but from every book up until this point Rev is a certified badass who lived through multiple battles and has grown and is constantly educating himself so he doesn’t fail his team then all of sudden the minute he goes to the home guard and even in the last book he suddenly forgets how to do half of his job and becomes childish and needs to be told about fifteen things he “forgot” to take notice of just to keep others semi relevant probably because the author has a plan for the side character or characters later on in the story and they can’t pump the brakes on Rev so now they have to make him into a lackwit who needs to go apologize to the air recyclers for wasting all the oxygen they gave him but when he’s on the battlefield suddenly he’s capable of playing multiple scenario’s for not only himself but his entire platoon out in his head while riding a battle wagon into enemy fire the dichotomy is extremely jarring for me

Another solid addition

This one dragged a little bit but made a nice progress in the overall story, I would say a 4.5 out of 5.