Empire From the Ashes/YMMV

• Complete Monster - The villains of the first and third books. Anu stands a good chance at being the most evil man in the history of mankind. To put it in perspective, Hitler was one of his subordinates! "Mister X" from the third book was one of Anu's followers and rivalled him in heartless evil.
  • "Mister X" arguably exceeds Anu - while Anu was utterly monstrous, he never actually tried to set up an entire alien species for genocide just to have a fall guy for his regicidal plot.
    • Neither did Anu actually plan to destroy an entire inhabited planet just to kill less than ten people.
      • He did, however, plan the nuclear bombardment of an entire inhabited planet just to revenge himself against one person.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome - Colin's Big Damn Heroes scene in the second book, which he follows up with not long afterward by blowing up a sun.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming - "Will there be a reply?"
  • This exchange when Dahak is too damaged to accompany the fleet to Earth:

Dahak: I have learned what 'loneliness' is...and it is not a pleasant thing.
Jiltanith: Worry not, my Dahak. Never shalt thou know loneliness again. Whilst humans live, they'll not forget thy deeds nor cease to love thee.

• Fridge Logic - The book really needed a scene where Dahak preserves the Apollo sites. Just because the Moon wasn't a moon doesn't mean people wouldn't be heartbroken is the sites were destroyed...
  • And exactly how does Earth's orbit remain stable when Dahak starts gallivanting around the galaxy?
    • The epilogue of the first book mentions that they put in place a gravity emitter for that problem. As for the Apollo site...given that Apollo was most likely driven by the mutineers humanity might not remember it so fondly as we do.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot - Humanity never does get around to advancing on the Achuultani homeworld...
• What an Idiot! - "I need to urgently tell the governor about the mole I placed in the terrorist organization, even though nothing's happening right now. This is on a strictly need-to-know basis, so don't tell any one. Why no, no I haven't told anyone else. Leave a message? Sure! Here's the datachip with all the information, as well as the codes to decrypt it." The third book is a little frustrating about this.
  • He also needed to stay at his desk to manage the upcoming operation, and so trusted the Lieutenant Governor to be his courier to the temporarily offplanet Governor instead of bringing another officer into the loop.
    • Indeed, he would never have told the Lieutenant Governor at all if the man was not legitimately in the chain of command for that information. How was he to know that early in the plot that said personage was also secretly the enemy mastermind?
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds - The Achuultani, once their backstory is revealed. Really.