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The second prequel novella is sadly the last so far. It’s obvious there should be a third story, but after nine years, all we have is an independent side story, so I am worried that we will never get the final(?) story here, much less the sequel to the original set of stories.

I can imagine a number of problems that may have led to this situation. But, I’ll stick with what’s in front of me.

Hunter of Vermin is a direct sequel to Deadly Nightshade, and starts with the usual action-oriented death-defying antics.

This is also the start of things going a bit wrong from my point of view. Max isn’t really in charge of his destiny here, and it’s fairly obvious this is a test by the Vaach (the latest in a series). Max is doing everything he can for himself, but is also just getting pushed around by aliens with extremely high levels of technology.

The worst part is that while Honsinger is generally on the wordy side, and it’s turned up to twelve here. Max’s internal thoughts are the bulk of the content, because for much of the novella there’s no one else around, and they get interminable in many places. The Vaach themselves, while saying that humans talk too much spend way too many words to say so. There’s another alien who is extremely loquacious, and the word count goes up even further, but this part is much more entertaining, and more enjoyable.

Finally, for me, I signed up for military SF featuring ship-to-ship battles, and this moves to ground pounding, which I found I didn’t appreciate nearly as much. If you’ve been reading Honsinger’s military SF space operas and enjoying them, keep going, but this is the weakest of the stories so far, and I really hope we get to see more of Max as an adult, in charge of a full destroyer again, and I recommend the original three far more than these prequels.