A condensed version of an X-wing book. Which has its good and bad points. Instead of juggling a twelve man squadron plus additional supporting characters, we only have a handful of pilots, assistants, and enemies to deal with. Instead of a full military campaign where the main characters go on several missions, there's only one assignment that's the focus of the entire book. Instead of a romance building over the course of the book between two characters, they just seem to decide at one point that they're now officially going to be a couple. I don't know if this is the shortest book in the X-wing series, but it definitely feels like it.

Over all, I enjoyed it. The sense of humor from Allston's previous work on the series is definitely here. Which helps to balance a bit of grimness that creeps into the story at the edges. At least with what I've read in other Star Wars novels before, I don't recall other stories where the heroes of the Alliance/New Republic have been quite so antagonistic towards each other.