This is chronologically book 2 in the Company Wars sequence and happens not long after Heavy Time. This takes those characters and pushes them into a story about building the military that is going to go and make the colonies behave the way Earth expects them to.
Some of the same plot elements from Heavy Time are to the fore (trauma induced mental health for example), but this is a more political story.
Politics in getting the military funded.
Politics in getting the military going.
Politics in the military, who is in charge, who makes the decisions.
There is also an explanation of the motivations of people for being in the military. For a lot of this it's volunteers who want to play with the shiniest of toys. For others, backing up friends. For others, nowhere else to go. Most interestingly, there is an exploration of why some of the spacefaring clans want to fight. Pure xenophobia. This is a mind bend because they themselves have been bent far away from the human 'norm' by their existence to date.
Plenty to chew on here in a tight novel. Recommended.