Guardian of Night worth checking out

I recently had the pleasure of reading a book called Guardian of Night by Tony Daniel.
As another reviewer has noted, it’s very very similar to Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, only in space.
In short, an alien race humans call the Sceeve nearly annihilated the human race and then turned back at the last minute to deal with some internal strife.
That internal strife cost the life of one Captain Arid Ricimer’s wife and child. He’s just been named to command of a new class of vessel, stealthier than any before it, and with a new super weapon — and he intends to defect to the humans.
Meanwhile an intrepid intel analyst named Lieutenant Commander Griff Leher has figured this out and with the help of attack ship Captain Jim Coalbridge sets out to help him do it.
Sound familiar?
Should. It’s the plot from the movie.
So what?
Daniel uses that tried plot device to explore the nature of totalitarianism, on the part of the sceeve, and pacifistic navel-gazing, on the part of humanity.
He comes to the right conclusions as well. Totalitarianism by it’s very nature is parasitic, and the sceeve revel in the almost religious idea that parasites (them) using “regulation” help to keep the universe stable.
Meanwhile, navel-gazing pacifistic idiots bearing some resemblance to the OWS protesters (coincidental to be sure, he would have had to have written this book before the “protests” started) nearly destroy what’s left of humanity in their insistence that if we’d just quit provoking the skeeve by, you know, existing, they’d leave us alone. Sound familiar at all?
Is this book the next great work of moder literature?
No. But then it doesn’t pretend to be.
Like all great (or just good) SF, Guardian of Night merely uses the device of the future to look at the present and ask some questions we might not otherwise be willing to ask.
Daniel does this ably and entertainingly.
If you just have to read it right now (and you should, it’s that much fun, I read it in about three days while working 16 hours a day) you can get the eARC from Baen’s Webscriptions for fifteen bucks. If you’re willing to wait it’ll be available in dead tree from Amazon.com in February for 8.99 or in every conceivable format from Baen for probably $6 (their usual price for a new ebook.)
Pick it up, great read.