Review: Loyalty To The Max by Maya Darjani
Blurb:
Max Dupont stars in his own standalone adventure in the second installment of the Broken Union series, taking place one year after Ancient as the Stars.
Captain Maxime Dupont of the Earth Union is a rogue. A maverick. A clear-headed arbitrator of right and wrong– rules be damned.
But even Max stumbles when he encounters his latest challenge. The Union is collaborating with former enemy Mars to fix the collapse of interstellar travel–but at the cost of vulnerable citizens. Max has to figure out where his loyalties lie–and if treason is a price he's willing to pay for doing the right thing.
Meanwhile...
Lieutenant Ren Yilmaz has finally found a crew. A home. A rewarding career, on the ESS Knight.
But Ren gets drawn into a web of espionage. Her captain, Max, has shady dealings with anti-Union rebel groups and assigns her shipmates off-the-books tasks. It's Ren's duty as an officer to investigate. But snooping can be disastrous. Not only would she be betraying her newfound family, but Ren has secrets too–and if she digs too far, her own past as a spy could get spectacularly exposed.
As tensions mount, the choices Max and Ren make will test their loyalty not only to the Union, but to each other--and the crew they call family.
Review:
The TLDR version of Loyalty: Max has a hidden past coming back to bite him. Max is also prepared to throw away everything to stop the Union from doing something that crosses a personal red. In the process he risks alienating his closest friends and crew. Is he prepared to lose everything?
Ren is placed squarely in the middle trying to manage a bewildering gambit of internal conflict and tested loyalties. Ren’s own hidden past is coming back to bite her and her older self, Admiral Lakhani.
There are spies, terrorist, and antagonistic star nations all in play.
Space travel is “broken.” Attempting to travel between star systems might as well be considered suicide. Of course, this detail of the universe plays a crucial role in the plot. Shipboard life and planet side shenanigans dutifully accompanied by layers of espionage and betrayal on multiple fronts provide an engrossing backdrop for our players to perform
In ‘Loyalty To The Max’ prominent side characters from ‘Ancient As The Stars’ have the opportunity to take center stage. Max (Maxime) Dupont with Ren Yilmaz provides the majority of forward momentum while others like Solly and the fiercely loyal crew of the ESS Knight have their turn playing crucial roles in advancing the tale. I believe Maya did a splendid job with the utilization of Peggy, a baby AI that is most likely illegal that you could say has some moral conflicts along the way that provide interesting twists in the plot.
Everything is centered around Max. He is a rogue and maverick within the Earth Union Fleet. His moral compass supersedes rules, laws and regulations. Until now he has been able to balance his personal and professional loyalties keeping him out of the brig. The narrative is driven by his internal conflicts, the choices he makes, and the resulting stress this imposes on his closest friends and loyal crew.
Max could be a close cousin of the cigar smoking People’s Navy ‘Captain Cowboy’ Lester Tourville from the Honorverse. Much like Tourville, Max very consciously cultivates his roguish reputation.
Max is an exceptionally well-told character that is a joy to read. Providing just the right measures of moments that spark laugh out loud fun along with wanting to shake some sense into him. He is easy to become invested in.
Ren Yilmaz, the time skipping younger version of the Captain Karenna ‘Yilmaz’ Lakhani from ‘Ancient As The Stars’, comes into her own with in the pages of this installment. Her journey is easy to identify with and will keep you guessing as to which fork in the road she will ultimately choose. It was satisfying to see her character’s potential developed.
She owes much to Max and the crew of the Knight, but her older self, now Admiral Lakhani, will have Ren testing the boundaries of her loyalty to Max, the crew of the Knight and the Earth Union. Lakhani takes a backseat in this installment but her presence and influence over the plot are nicely leveraged.
I have also read Maya’s ‘Ancient As The Stars’ and ‘The Star-Crossed Empire’. As a reader I find Maya’s writing style to be fun, fluid and a joy to read. Her progression and growth as an author are evident and has been a pleasure to follow. AATS was good, I had a lot of fun and highly recommend it. TSCE was even better.
Maya is quickly sharpening the authorial saw with each finished work becoming an auto-buy author. Maya has delivered an exceptional read with this one.
To sum it up, Maya’s writing hits my reader’s Goldilocks zone. Pace, timing and a deft touch in cobbling together each line makes for a delightful page-turning experience. The characters are fun, interesting, will pull at your heart strings and exhibit realistic emotional depth making them easy to accept and identify with. Loyalty To The Max is one of my favorite reads of 2025.
