The Guns of Two-Space (available here, either as an e-book or a print-on-demand) is the sequel to The Two-Space War, by Dave Grossman and Leo Frankowski, which I recently reviewed). Alas, Lt. Col. Grossman lost his friend in science fiction publishing when Jim Baen of Baen Books died, and this volume (written with a different co-author and privately published), although excellent in many ways, does suffer for want of a professional editor.

The Two-Space War told how Lt. Thomas Melville assumed command of his ship’s crew on the death of his captain, and captured an enemy ship which he named the Fang. Through inspired leadership and flexibility in adopting new weapons and strategies, he managed to thwart (or at least delay) an attempt by the evil Guldur Empire to conquer planets friendly to earth and humans. Acclaimed as a hero and a savior by alien governments, Melville was less appreciated by the appeasement-minded Westerness (human) government, and at the end of the book was dispatched to patrol and deliver mail between the most distant colony planets.

But the Guldur have not forgotten him, and The Guns of Two-Space wastes little time putting the Fang into peril again, under attack by four Guldur ships. Melville’s defense is nothing less than brilliant, and sets the tone for another (mostly) rollicking story of danger and mayhem in “two-space,” the Second Dimension in which interstellar travel is possible.

There is a very fine book here. Sadly it’s encumbered by a fair amount of fat—especially one long interlude of voyaging where nothing happens for a while, and the characters (excellent, sympathetic and funny characters, by the way) have too much time to lecture one another about the Art of War. Anything Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has to say on the Art of War is, needless to say, worth reading. But it’s too much in one place, and slows the story down. The book is 551 pages, and could profitably have been cut a great deal, from a narrative point of view. An editor could also have refined some things, hammering less on the jokes and cutting out the use of exclamation points in exposition, for instance.

But where Col. Grossman is on his own turf, describing battle and its effects on human beings, he is exciting, rousing and moving. Strong men will weep at points, as they read The Guns of Two-Space.

Not that I did. I’m made of iron. But you girly-men who look to me as a role model, you’ll weep.