"The Hostile Takeover Trilogy" by S. Andrew Swann - Mini Review

This whopper of a trilogy ("Profiteer", "Partisan", "Revolutionary") follows two brothers as they battle over Bakunin - an outlaw planet of congenital individualists located in the heart of the vast Confederacy. As the title hints, Bakunin is crawling with various corporations, each of which is a power unto itself, right down to having their own security forces which more closely resemble national armies.

Dominic Magnus, a Bakunin CEO, and his brother Klaus, an agent of the Confederacy's covert operations branch, have had a lethal beef with each other going back to the death of their mother years ago. At first Dominic thinks Klaus' showing up with an invading force and taking over his corporation is just a continuation of their whole Cain and Abel dance, but we soon learn that the brothers are merely proxies for forces far greater then themselves. There is intrigue galore in these stories which, to me, give a hint of the Machiavellian politics that flavored the Italian renaissance.

I'll admit that it takes a while to get into the dense narrative of these books, but I recommend sticking with them as once you tag who's who and what's what, you're in for an enjoyable ride. Recommended.