It was like two different novels that didn't quite work thrown together. Maybe if I were up for reading the series this aspect would work itself out?
In addition to committing some basic sins like mixing metaphors and making common names more "interesting" by replacing all the J's with Z's and I's with Y's, he took what could have been a very interesting naval-based alternate history and tried to apply a larger space opera and failed to have either be terribly interesting.