"End Game: Wolfhounds - Book Six" by John Van Stry

"End Game: Wolfhounds - Book Six" by John Van Stry
    https://www.amazon.com/End-Game-Wolfhounds-Book-Six/dp/B0FMYP5HJ9

Book number six of a six book science fiction space opera series.  And 
there is a prequel series of two books and a sequel series of a few 
books.  I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) 
trade paperback self published by the author in 2025 that I bought in 
2026.  I own first book in the sequel series and will read it soon.
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2JB5DF2

I love Space Opera.  And I love pulp science fiction.  This series is 
both and a great example of the merging of the two.  In fact, this 
series reminds me very much of the Robert Heinlein juvenile books, the 
Piers Anthony "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series, the "Mutineer's Moon" 
series by David Weber, and the Perry Rhodan series.  The dialog is very 
frequent and the action moves along quickly.

Chase Collis is a street rat.  He and his mother lived in government 
housing in Imperial City until she died of a drug overdose when he was 
12 years old.  Just before that was the last time he saw his estranged 
father who screamed at his mother to keep hiding Chase or else the 
Emperor would kill them all.  Chase ended up on the street at the age of 
12, running with the street gangs, being arrested by the police time and 
time again.

When Chase became an adult, he murdered another street rat and was 
caught by the police.  He purposely got caught to go to the Imperial 
Prison for a few years to get more street cred and rise to the top of 
the street gang.  But to his shock, when he went to his trial, his 
father was the judge.  His father sentenced him to ten years in the 
Imperial Navy rather than the four years in Imperial Prison that he 
expected, and then escorted him to the Naval Basic Training school.

In the far distant future, The Solarian Imperium consists of 38 star 
systems including Earth and the Sol system which were made uninhabitable 
in the War of Succession.  Emperor Charles Morgan, Chase's grandfather, 
was the latest in a long line of Morgans ruling the Imperium.  His 
family keeps power because they are genetically modified with machine 
interfaces in their DNA.  So are all of the Nobles: the Earls, the 
Dukes, the Counts, and the Barons.  Any machine of any importance, and 
especially the space ships and the military weapons, requires a human 
with machine interface to tell the AI what to do.  And the Imperial 
family machine interface in their DNA is the best of all the interfaces 
and has special rights with all of the machines in the Imperium.  And 
nobody knows or understands how tight the Imperial human machine 
interfaces are with every AI in the Imperium.

Chase Collis ended up in the Emperor's own Wolfhounds after his Navy 
machinists mate training to be a glorified broom pusher.  The Wolfhounds 
are special military fleet embedded in a large asteroid capable of FTL 
flights to anywhere in the Empire.  The Wolfhounds were standing down in 
cryosleep until needed by Emperor to protect him or to take care of a 
special task.  But their cryosleep lasted for over ten years when it was 
supposed to be for six months at the most, treachery of the most high. 
And upon the Wolfhound's accidental awakening, the Emperor and his 
family were dead for ten years and the Parliament and the Speaker have 
taken over the Imperium.

Prince Chase has now been to the Tomb, what everyone calls the 
uninhabitable Sol System, and verified to be the new Emperor by the 
ancient AI there.  So now Emperor Chase and the Wolfhounds have to 
finish reconquering the Imperium, one star system at a time.  And Chase 
has found less than a half dozen of his Imperial relatives alive so far 
and is coming to realize that the Parliament and the Speaker have 
managed to kill off most of the nobility with their embedded human 
machine interfaces that all of the machine AIs rely upon and are now 
timing out due to lack of authorized human contact.  So the new Emperor 
and his Wolfhounds and Foxhounds are headed to Cor Imperii, the capital 
planet of the Empire to cut off the head of the DPRS and kill the 
leaders of the coup.

The author has a website at:
    https://jvanstry.blogspot.com/

My rating:  6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating:  4.8 out of 5 stars (1,529 reviews)

Lynn