It's been about a year since the war that drove the events of the Valor Confederation books, and while Kerr is no longer an official member of the military, the Justice Department still calls on her and her team to handle the slightly dirtier missions that need getting done. Joining Kerr on her jobs is the former salvage operator Craig Ryder, Kerr's lover and the team's pilot; Lance Corporal Binti Mashina, a highly skilled sniper; Master Corporal Werst, a Krai marine; his bonded partner Ressk, a hacker of note and Alamber, a di'Tayka that the team has been trying to steer away from the life of crime he was on when they first met him.
When Kerr and crew are called into a secret meeting with the heads of Military Intelligence instead of their normal contacts in the Justice Department, they know that whatever they are about to get into, it isn't going to be pretty. The crew is informed that some ancient H'san tech has started showing up on the black market, and while they don't believe any of the items seen so far are dangerous, the worry is that someone is looking for a cache of weapons that still exist, even though the H'san abandoned war a long time ago when they founded the Confederation.
Kerr's team isn't given much information. They are told that the weapons were stored on the H'san homeworld, which became a planet-wide cemetery after the race's final war. Their mission is to find the grave robbers and stop them at all costs. There is also heavy emphasis on making sure no word of the grave robbing gets out, as it will put the Younger Races of the galaxy in a bad light, since the desire for war and violence is a major point of contention between the Younger and Elder Races. If word gets out that someone of the Younger Races is seeking the ancient weapons, Military Intelligence believes it will be just the excuse the Elder Races are looking for to quarantine the more violent peoples until they can mature more and get past the desire for war.
While the mission seems straightforward, there is one major problem, no one actually knows where the H'san homeworld is. Kerr and company must backtrack from the places where the black market tech was sold in the hopes of learning where to look before they can even confront their objective. Of course, the entire time the team is trying to work out exactly what they will do when they find the grave robbers. Is it really a group looking for ancient weapons? Could they just be a batch of rogue archaeologists? How far are they going to have to take their responsibility as judge, jury, and executioner? The internal conflicts that these questions bring up in the different members of the group really helps to add a lot of definition to the crew and helps to make them feel a lot more complicated than the space-marine or cocky-pilot or super-hacker archetypes that they could all easily fall into.
An Ancient Peace does a great job of kicking off a new chapter in Kerr's story, and it's definitely crafted to be a jumping off point for anyone new to the universe. Even if you don't know who Kerr is, much less the state of the Confederation, the book reveals to the reader any necessary information in a way that shouldn't leave newcomers baffled or feel like an unnecessary rehash for long-time fans. I've enjoyed Huff's books since I discovered her Blood series back in the 90's and An Ancient Peace is yet another good read that is hard to put down.
