This is book #4 in The Tower and The Hive series, and is a pretty direct continuation of Damia's Children with the same cast of characters. The overall plot point here is going from a defensive war against the Hive to taking to the offence and bringing the war to them. But along the way two other issues get involved. The first is that a significant portion of the Human polity is not sure that they want a war. Maybe there could be a peaceful solution, they think. That faces a couple of big problems since the Hive does not seem to be interested in anything except complete extermination, and in any case there does not seem to be any way to communicate with them. The other big issue is that Mrdini are not Human, and they have a different way of thinking, as becomes very clear in a dramatic incident.

I listened to the Audio Book version of this novel