This is book 1 of the "Manticore Ascendant" series.

This note does not contain major spoilers for the book.

 

Start of a new historic sequence, long before the Honor Harrington series. Written with Timothy Zahn.

Not bad, but it seems kind of jumping around, not really sticking anywhere, and not really establishing any strong characters.

Travis Long joins the Navy one step ahead of being arrested as an accomplice in a robbery with violence. He's known to everybody as a stickler for rules, so it's not quite clear how he comes to be hanging out with such people.

So, he goes through boot camp (and is sent to a court hearing from there, where the recruiter supports him), and gets close to some trouble by following rules but also refusing to turn in his fellow students.

The Royal Navy is not well established in the Star Kingdom of Manticore yet, and self-serving stupid politicians are trying to choke the life out of it, while the aristocracy try to climb the slippery pole of rank quickly before it's taken down. The majority of the ships in the navy are in fact mothballed.

But they still do decide to send a vessel to investigate some things at a sale of used ships that the Republic of Haven is running. There they learn the edges of some interesting schemes.

So, basically the problem is tht this book is nearly all setup and very little knocking down.