I didn’t really like this book for several reasons. While this book doesn’t contain zombies, the mindless humans are pretty darn close. The premise that an alien entity would go to the trouble of controlling humans just enough to make them kill each other is ridiculous. If they wanted us dead, then just send down a virus or something. Or they could have built some kind of death-ray to just destroy humans. I mean if they are intelligent enough to reach our planet, then they should be able to kill us off without all this effort.
Secondly, Max is a wimp and a pretty unbelievable wimp at that. He wines about not wanting to kill people, yet he picks up his weapon just like every one else and blasts away. He also doesn’t want to harm soldiers who are getting paid to kill others regardless if they are zombie-like or not, including trying to kill Max himself! I didn’t care for Max who’s the main character to this story. He is a very young man and has kind of been protected all his life as you will read, but I don’t think he’s got the right attitude to do the stuff required in this story.
What the story is mostly about is similar to sci-fi movies in general. Some alien intelligence is bent on taking over the Earth, but first they need to remove humanity. So, they make almost everyone go mad and start killing each other. Of course, these aliens don’t want these dumb humans to destroy everything, so they make a few in key places, like power plants, refineries, and such into automatons doing their jobs over and over to keep everything working. I think these aliens are very much more intelligent than we are.
Max has some kind of special gene that was created when he was born. Yes, he was genetically modified by our scientist to not be effected by this alien mind control and then he was raised by a pair of specially selected GDF Agents. That’s Global Defense Force Agents, a man and a woman that took the place of Max’s real parents who were killed in a car accident. The GDF has been around since 1943. It was established right after the Roswell, NM crash which was that famous “weather ballon” and not an alien spacecraft. Well, we learned a lot about these aliens from that crash and have been preparing for them ever since. Except we only had time to get one mind-controlled resistant kid grown in 60 or almost 70 years? That doesn’t sound right.
Anyway, the story is about Max and another GDF Agent who is trying to help him get to a secret bunker in Colorado. From there, Max is to lead an elite squadron of super advanced starfighters to take out the mother ship that is hiding behind the moon. All the other GDF Agents have been taking some kind of drugs that temporarily prevent them from going crazy like the rest of humanity as long as their supply doesn’t run out. The squadron that Max is supposed to lead will be made up of fifteen other Air Force pilots who have been training for a while. Max has never been in a fighter aircraft in his life! Again, he has to get trained and be ready to lead this elite squadron in just a few days. Max isn’t a genius so I think the author is really stretching thing here.
I don’t know if this will lead to a series. I for one, won’t be reading any more since I didn’t like the whole human zombie apocalypse thing. I prefer to read about humans standing up and fighting aliens right from the start instead of being treated like crazy cattle.