Before anyone goes freaking out thinking I’ve already reviewed this book, that’s not true. I did review Mr. Allan’s “Blood on the Stars, Book 9” which was also titled “Invasion”. The two books have nothing in common except they were written by the same author, I think! Now for the review of this book…
This has got to be one of the most disappointing books I have read in a long time. Jay Allan has been one of my favorite authors, but this book is got to be one of his worse! It was terribly edited, poorly written and just plain ridiculous! If you don’t want to read this book after reading my review then be assured you haven’t missed anything.
We have another story of how humanity is stumbling along on Earth fighting each other and almost destroying our world without any help. Then along comes an alien fleet that appears to be not so friendly. They won’t answer any hails and just keep speeding straight towards Earth. When they finally reach our planet, their intensions are made clear when they begin destroying all of our communication satellites and other space objects. Then they start bombarding our cities. Yes, these are unfriendly aliens apparently intent on invading and taking over our planet.
Yet, the bombs they drop are specifically targeted to major cities and no where else. They also are low yield atomic bombs, but they do the job as intended, we suspect. There are survivors, but they have nothing left of our modern world. Then the aliens send down their troops to invade. These troops are robots and they are deadly. Within a matter of weeks, months, the worlds entire military complex is wiped out. How did they do this? Well, you’re not going to find out.
From a military perspective, this book is garbage! An advanced race of aliens still use robots, not androids to do their dirty work? Then what are these robots equipped with, well, rifles, fast firing rifles, and that’s it. No mention of rockets or rocket launchers. We do find out that these robots can be destroyed just by concentrating fire on them and that fire only has to be from small arms. Only very late in the book does the author think that bringing more lethal weapons into play might be a good idea. Still, there is no details about how even the US military was wiped out so easily and no information on how the world’s military employed our own nuclear arsenal.
This book is written from the perspective of one 19 year old genius and it sounds like it. The kid has no tactical concept, he’s not even been in the military, yet here he is rounding up thousands of survivors and trying to teach them to fight. Oh, he does have his Marine brother and his Marine brother’s friend. The brought their Marine weapons home on leave with them, right? You got to be kidding me. That doesn’t happen, that’s ridiculous!
I’m almost at a loss for words on how badly this book was written. All the weapons talked about are rifles and pistols and a few rockets late in the book. No grenades, claymores, LAWS, tanks, artillery or other deadly weapons are employed. And then he says the rifles are loaded with “clips”. That right there shows some ignorance of the military. No modern weapon uses “clips”. We transitioned long ago to magazines and that’s the word he should be using, but this author should have known that. He should have also used a lot more weapon system against an alien invasion force consisting of robots!
Anyway, the editing for missing words and strange sentences, discontinuity from one scene to another was badly missing. Also, the book has a bad habit of saying the same thing twice in different paragraphs. If it wasn’t for the repetition, this book would definitely be half its size. This is well below standards for a Jay Allan book and I’m very, very surprised. I’m also very disappointed. I am waiting and waiting for the release of Book 17 of his “Blood on the Stars” series which is a fantastic work of military science fiction. I’ve read sixteen of his books in that series and everyone was just great. Now he produces this! I’m giving him credit for just writing a book, and that’s about it. I’d find something else to read if I were you. And even worse, this is supposed to be the start of a new series. Well, it’s one I won’t be reading! Sorry, but that’s my review!