A solid conclusion (for now) to the Academy series.

Following from Omega, the Academy is basically dead (lack of funding / interest) and humanity is withdrawing from the stars. Then there’s a breakthrough in new FTL drive technology orders of magnitude faster than the previous incarnations. Hutch returns as one of the two pilots sent out on a high speed mission to the origin of the Chindi, a world SETI received a transmission came from, a black hole, and the possible origin of the Omegas (finally).

On the upside: we finally got something in the way of answers for both where the Chindi and the Omegas came from. It’s by no means a complete answer, but more than we’ve had thus far. I’ll take it. The addition of the new drive technology promises to really shake things up. I hope this isn’t the last book in the series–I want to see where this universe goes, now that you can fly to the galactic core in about four months… (As an aside, space is huge).

On a slight downside, some of the stops really felt undeveloped. What could have been an entire book earlier in the series was only a chapter or two. Even so, I think this book had the best flow of the six; I finished it in a day.