This is Book One of a five-plus-book series that spans several years of the main character’s life, as he struggles against corruptive forces around him and struggles to do what is necessary amid chaotic times. The galaxy has been recovering from a recent-past idealogical war over some issue (which I’m working on) that has been only been put under control in the last third of a century.
The galaxy/universe where this series occurs is not "our" galaxy; but a similar one with many spacefaring races, including many humans, humanoids and non-humanoids. It features a wide variety of technologies, both mundane and wildly exotic beyond the mind’s comprehension.
This galaxy also contains many forms of government and governance, a sizeable portion consisting of multiple star systems; as the decades and centuries pass, governments rise and fall, or merely struggle to prosper and do right by their citizenry. One such struggling government which spans a mere fifth of one galactic quadrant is a Commonwealth of many lesser stellar polities; but then it also has its detractors, dissidents, and assorted malcontents. But life goes on for the average person; the Commonwealth has its standing Fleet forces, Academies for training officers and crew of its gallant forces, as well as many career potentials for its citizens.
The antagonist for much of the series is of a self-proclaimed emperor who has for the last two decades been growing an imperium, by capturing defenseless worlds and independent infrastructure; along with his imperial heir and a few bold and arrogant fleet commanders, this empire has steadily grown to more than a handful of worlds, intersecting the stellar borders of more than two polities.
The main character of the series is a young man just graduated from schooling on a not-so-unbelievably-backwater planet, seeking to join the Commonwealth Fleet, to find answers to mysteries of his heritage and the gnawing feeling that he is meant for something, some purpose. Orphaned soon after birth, he was raised by an adoptive mother without knowing the truth of his heritage, but only through ingenuity and investigation had he determined who they were: his father, a notable Commonwealth Fleet admiral who that had been a paragon of virtues, his mother a disowned former princess from a now-isolationist stellar imperium which is still in contention with the Commonwealth. These parents had been murdered by the antagonist imperial heir, but the infant (our main hero) had been secreted away to be raised in secrecy.
And so begins Book One: Path of the Pupil, Way of the Warrior. But his joining this Commonwealth Fleet Academy has kicked off a series of events, both within the Commonwealth’s pseudo-omniscient watchfulness and without, among other empires and organizations. Some would like to use this young pupil, either for his father’s fame or notoriety, or for his mother’s infamy; yet others would like to dispose of him for just those same reasons.
Not knowing any of these tentative dangers, Jeffery Theodore Thornton leaves his homeworld to join the Commonwealth Fleet, to find answers to questions.