Empire from the Ashes This is an omnibus re-issue of a three-book series: “Mutineer’s Moon”, “The Armageddon Inheritance”, and “Heirs of Empire”.

This is my first encounter with David Weber, and boy this book was a lot of fun.  This is science fiction in the classic “space opera” mode.  Lots of action, some big but not terribly complex ideas, and things move along quickly.  The characters aren’t developed in a deep way, but encountering them is fun, and the overall outlook of the books is positive and upbeat.

Without giving too much away, we have Colin Macintyre, an astronaut and test-pilot who discovers that the moon is actually a giant, intelligent spaceship named Dahak, and that humans are actually the descendants of part of the crew that attempted to munity on Dahak fifty thousand years ago.  Those mutineers have survived to this day, some are real bad guys, some have realized they were duped and are good guys, and are engaged in cold war while manipulating humankind in the process.

All of these folks come from a vast interstellar empire that no one has heard from in a long time, and oh by the way, the whole point of the empire was to resist a xenophobic alien species hell-bent on destroying all other competing intelligence, and the real bad-guys appear to be on their way.

The first two books I think are the strongest in terms of delivering on the formula that Weber employs.  The third book gets bogged down a bit in what feels like a somewhat secondary plot, but overall I think the series is pretty successful.

If you like your sci-fi with popcorn and explosions, this is a fun read.