An excellent addition to the SW literature. It is both an explosive action story and a meditation on civilization, darkness in the philosophical sense, and the contradiction between being a keeper of the peace and a soldier at the same time. This isn't a SW story for kids though. It is filled with blood and guts and unsettling images of genocide. Stover has proven, much as he did in SW:NJO:Traitor, that he is a master of the mind-bending story that no other SW author I have read has matched. I remember reading or hearing that this story was inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. If so, he has far exceeded Conrad in this story!