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The Torch of Honor is Roger MacBride Allen's 1985 SF debut, the first novel in the Hunted Earth sequence. The premise is a near-future Earth expedition arriving at the colony world of New Finland to deliver supplies and find the colony under occupation by the Guardians, a paramilitary expansionist group that has been quietly building an interstellar empire while Earth was looking the other way.
Allen writes the near-future political-SF procedural with care. The Earth-fleet command-and-control material is sourced from late-Cold-War naval doctrine; the New Finland colony portrait is the strongest part of the novel (the working farms, the small-town governance, the gradual normalization of occupation). The military-SF set pieces are competent. The relationship plot between the Earth ship's commander and a New Finland resistance fighter lands cleanly.
Recommended for fans of late-Cold-War military SF (David Drake's Hammer's Slammers, Jerry Pournelle's Falkenberg's Legion), and for readers looking for books like The Torch of Honor in the Earth-rediscovers-lost-colony subgenre. Four stars and a strong SF debut.
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