Ah, Prince of Havoc. That was a frustrating book from a lot of angles, and not all of it was Stackpole's fault. This was in the Twilight of FASA, and they had not been paying him his royalties, they cut his contract percentage (at a time when he was on the NYT Bestseller list, and the payments should be going up,) they had cut his page count and given him a hard limit, ROC had apparently farmed his cover art out to a middle school boy who loved the BT cartoon, and he had been orphaned by several editors at ROC. And he thought that because of all the above, as much as he loved working in BT and was loyal to the brand, it would be his last book for them. (Well, for FASA at least.) So no one was happy at all with that one.
From a story standpoint, the whole logic of the Great Refusal didn't make any sense, not even from the questionable logic of Clan thinking. And the Wolves getting a pass because they didn't lose? What? And then Focht, with the Invader Galaxy, which was designed to fight as if they were Claners, chooses to use no captured Clan 'Mechs and has to march far enough they have combat losses from the walk, and then forgets everything they know about fighting Clanners. I know they had to give Pryde the win to because she is the “future of the Falconsâ€, and the Falcons needed a win to keep them from getting killed off as a Clan, but really, that could have been better handled.
Oh, and don't get me started on how Katherine/Katrina ends up with all of the FC and Victor does nothing but take up gardening. I know that the Civil War was going to be the Next Big Thing, and they didn't want to dig into it yet, but that just fell flat.
Cripes, considering I haven't read the book in years, the bad parts apparently stuck! ;D