Ok, I’m getting sick of this series. What started off as a very good military science fiction story has dwindled down into a bunch of stupid comic book crap that’s barely worth reading! As I’ve said before, this is more a military science fiction horror story than anything else. The author seems to think that adding overly graphic content will fill up his book faster so this book is loaded with the stuff. And now the characters have all gone off the deep end. I understand dealing with PTSD. It’s not easy and it can be very painful. At one point, Marco Emery was really going through the worst of it, but eventually managed to work his way through some troubled times. His best friend and lover, Addy, wasn’t much help. She hasn’t been much help throughout the book although she did have her own war to fight. I know she went through hell during the Marauder war, but she’s a fighter. Still, I think it mashed her brain a little too much. Her actions throughout this book are down-right insane, idiotic and stupid. I, personally would have shot her easily during the first part of this book. Being stuck with her on a tiny spaceship would drive anyone to murder.
So, now that Emery and Linden are finally together, they take off in a beat up old spaceship supposedly resembling a VW van. They are off to find some idiotic guru who will show them “The Way of Deep Being”. What a crock! Turns out this guy is some five hundred year old elephant sitting on a dead planet. He’s supposedly the last surviving member of his race. This whole scene is so ridiculous that I would warn readers to just forget the book based on this part. And the story doesn’t stop there but it doesn’t matter because what Emery and Linden do in this book has absolutely no impact on the story. It’s a waste of reading time.
Then we see Lailani de la Rosa who is on a quest to go back in time and save a guy she killed. Some how this guy has become someone she was really interested in when that wasn’t true at all. Benny Ray, a.k.a. “Elvis” back in bootcamp was just another young kid that de la Rosa ignored. She had the hots for Emery and didn’t think much of this “Elvis” kid, so much so that she ripped his heart out during one of her alien-hybrid episodes. That was ten years ago and now she “regrets” doing that and wants “Elvis” to live. So she manages to get a hold of a time machine hour-glass. Wait, but first she has to get her mechanical friend HOBBS fixed. So she goes to some isolated planet where a nut-case doctor/scientist/murder has been confined thinking he will just help her fix her robot and let her go on her way. Another waste of time and reading. Really gross stuff in here and has absolutely no point in the book.
Then we turn to Captain Einav Ben-ari who single-handly tries to take on the entire fleet of flying saucers full of Grays. Oh, she doesn’t do this the first time while in her ship. She manages to fall out of the ship and then has to fight using a rifle and a jet pack strapped to her back. Then, after blowing up a gigantic flying saucer, she seems to be stuck in real space while her ship zips through slip-space heading for Earth. Never fear, though, since Einav figures out how to open a tiny slip-space stream just her size and is soon zipping along and eventually catches up to her ship. Now, is she’s using her jet pack with tiny rocket engines, how can she possibly catch up to a starship that’s on full-blast through slip-space. Idiotic! Eventually, we get down to Earth with Einav seemingly the only true warrior for the entire planet. Oh, while she’s aboard the spaceship she is Captain Ben-ari, but now down on the ground she has to revert to Major Ben-avi for whatever reason I don’t know. This battle for Earth gets really comical. The Grays have air superiority in their thousands and thousands of flying saucers. Yet, they want to land troops and fight humans in tanks, with artillery and all sorts of weapons, except nuclear bombs for some reason. And the Grays bring out their gigantic multi-headed caterpillars, spiders and even Chariots with mechanical horses pulling them! Oh, yeah, the Grays are supposed to be the culmination of millions of years of humanities advancement. They have evolved and their technology is beyond comprehension except when they start showing up with mechanical, horse-drawn Chariots! Well, in a nutshell, Ben-ari manages to defeat the major effort of the Grays in Mongolia. Yeah, it was just about her alone there for awhile. She loses and arm, but gets it repaired to almost better than before since it’s a bionic arm now.
So, we end this book with Einav being ordered to take her battered, but space-worthy spaceship and go find help with the Galactic Alliance. I guess the Galactic Alliance has been kind of ignoring Earth and it’s troubles all this while because they certainly haven’t been offering any help. I won’t even guess as to why they would now. But, that’s her mission. Lailani is coming back to Earth with her time-machine hour-glass which could just wipe out all their enemies by just going back in time and eliminating them in the first place, but that might cause problems. And, Emery and Linden have found two gigantic mechas that, although thousands of years old, still work and can fight, although Addy might be too busy trying to eat hot dogs once she returns to Earth to do much fighting.
If you’ve gone this far in the series, I would really hate to tell you to stop now. I believe there is one more book, but I’m not going to be in a rush to read. This series has just gotten too stupid for me.